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in the land of olde, there were plenty of bookstores across the land. However, something called the economy turned beastly against them, and these castles of literary magic were defeated by power greater and darker than their own.
It is in this environment that we find our heroine–me, in case you were curious. No, I’m not going to speak in the third person, I just really 
wanted to call myself a heroine and live out a few literary fantasies of my own. Ahem, anyways! My story begins at an ungodly hour of the morning, because that’s when any smart person begins their quest because of how freaking long they always are. It almost ends before it begins, however, because I had to wake the monsters my brothers up hours before they ever become coherent. However, having bravely fought them into wakefulness, my motley crew of family could finally hit the road.
If this were to be a real dramatic quest we would have walked, and if we’d been really smart and awesome we would have just rode our flying eagles. But no, we took the middle route and drove. And drove and drove and drove. Onwards and onwards we drove, down winding roads and dirt paths (mostly because our GPS doesn’t believe in main roads, ever). We left the small hamlet in which we live and traveled to the greatest city around us.
And then we kept going.
Why keep going when we reached the greatest city around us? Why, because the end goal of our quest what one of the Fabled Bookstores of Olde, and this great city did not HAVE one! It had a huge malls, multiple shopping complexes and enough restaurants to wrap around the world, but the Borders that had once been was no more. Once, my quest could have happily ended here. But no. It was time to burn up more gas, spend more money on travel and pollute the earth even more. All for the sake of a Fabled Bookstore of Olde.
Our journey went on hours more. It was not to end even in the Great State of New York. Instead, we had to race our car to the ferry crossing of 
the Magnificent Lake Champlain, just manage to back the on-the-hour ferry and then wait as the boat crossed the Great Waterway, being buffeted the whole way by rain, waves and water spray. Unfortunately I can’t add “and we were pushed there by an old man with a long white beard and a pole,” because modern technology isn’t conducive to writing Epic Tales. After this long and arduous (read: fairly short and boring) water journey, we found ourselves in the Great State of Vermont.
But our trek was far from over, oh no! It was time for yet more back roads excursions, twisting and turning down dark, deserted paths in the rain. (Seriously, we need a new GPS that knows about highways.) It took a grand travel time of four and a half hours to reach heaven, nirvana, Eden, perfection:
A TWO STORY BARNES AND NOBLE. COMPLETE WITH ESCALATORS.
For one such as myself, who has too long been subjected to the evils and detachment of online book buying, it was the greatest gift of all. Some readers of today may be content with objects such as e-readers and websites like Amazon.com, but never I! Give me a bookstore any day, and quick! Before they go the way of the dinosaur too, eaten by the Internet dragon.
My Life is a Notebook 