Long Live Books - Sneha

Books have had countless opportunities to become irrelevant, and yet, they haven’t.

What makes this interesting is not simply that books survived technological change, but that they survived cultural change. We live in a time shaped by speed. Everything around us is optimized to be faster, shorter, easier. Attention is fragmented into seconds. We are constantly encouraged to move on to the next thing.

Books resist this. A book does not adjust itself to your impatience. It does not become shorter because you are distracted. It does not compete aggressively for your attention. It simply exists, waiting. And that makes books strangely radical.

Most modern systems are built around engagement. They want to hold your attention, predict your preferences, and reduce the time between desire and satisfaction. Books ask for your time, attention, and patience. Reading is one of the few experiences left where progress cannot be outsourced. No one can read on your behalf, and no shortcut can replace the act itself. 

Perhaps that is also what makes bookstores so interesting. A bookstore is a strangely defiant space; people walk in without certainty. They browse without urgency, they pick up books they may never buy, read a few lines, and move to another.

From a transactional point of view, this makes little sense, and yet, it happens every day because bookstores do not only facilitate purchase; they facilitate consideration, and consideration is becoming rare. To consider something means to pause long enough for curiosity to form. 

Books ask for that pause. Bookstores protect it, and working at The English Book Depot, I get to witness this often.

People still walk in, they still browse, they still pause at shelves longer than they planned to. Books endure not because they keep up with the world, but because they refuse to. 

Long live books.

Lasting Relevance of Independent Bookstores

In a time when almost everything can be bought with a single click, one may wonder why independent bookstores still matter. After all, online platforms offer convenience, speed, and endless choices. Yet, stepping into an independent bookstore offers something that cannot be packaged and delivered. It offers discovery.

Unlike large retailers that mostly focus on bestselling and commercially popular titles, independent bookstores often carry books that are difficult to find elsewhere— rare editions, niche genres, academic works, regional literature, and books by lesser-known authors. These stores make space for stories and ideas that might otherwise remain unnoticed. They allow readers to explore beyond what is trending.

What makes independent bookstores even more special is the experience they create. Buying a book from a bookstore is rarely just a transaction. There is something deeply personal about walking through shelves, picking up books, reading back covers, and stumbling upon a title you were not looking for but somehow needed.

Independent bookstores also offer something that algorithms cannot replicate: human connection. A bookseller (shelf-mates) can understand not just what a reader buys, but what they are seeking.

These bookstores also become an important part of a city’s cultural identity. Places like The English Book Depot in Dehradun are more than retail spaces; they become landmarks of memory. Generations of readers walk through the same doors, carrying different stories but sharing the same love for books.

Independent bookstores matter because they preserve something valuable in today’s fast-moving world: slow reading, reflection, and meaningful connection. They remind us that books are not simply products to consume, but experiences that shape how we think, feel, and understand the world. And no doubt bookstores do more than sell books; they keep reading humans.

-Sneha