One of the great tragedies of the seeming decline of brick and mortar independent bookstores is that one of the casualties is the specialty bookseller. Already, LGBT bookstores have almost disappeared (I wonder if the one that used to exist just a few blocks from my home in Midtown Atlanta is still extant?).

Like the Bodhi Tree in LA, these specialized bookstores take you far beyond your pre-existing knowledge of an area and expose you to a far end of publishing “long tail.”

This came up because I was browsing the selections of the surprisingly extensive bookstore beneath the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Religious history, theology, social justice, art history, meditations and prayers – all books I would likely never have happened upon in Barnes and Noble.