This blog posting, A 1962 Vision of the Twenty-First Century Book Trade, made me unexpectedly nostalgic.

First off, let me acknowledge some of the prescience of those prognosticators of fifty years past. The prediction about microfilm could easily be seen as prefiguring the e-reader. And they predict modern audio books and reading on computers and one person was right on in predicting the rise of the Borders and Barnes & Noble style bookstores (though he did not predict their struggles).

But it was Mrs. Ross’ comment about books being sold in groceries, drugstores, and filling stations.

Of course, one of the big stories of the book business has been how warehouse stores like Wal-Mart have cannibalized a decent percentage of the business of bookstores by stocking a small collection of best sellers.

But I remember the circular, spinning wire racks in drugstores filled with thin paperbacks. Mostly of the Harlequin and Zane Grey type, but sometimes with some kids novels or science fiction or fantasy. You can still find a few thick romance tomes in drugstores, but I haven’t seen one of those wire racks filled with pulps in a drugstore since visiting Arkansas for my aunt’s wedding. We stopped in a drugstore (with a soda fountain counter) and there it was. The last I can remember in such a place.

I know I must have bought a few books from such racks. Though as a kid, mostly I just looked at the cover art and read the back of the book in awe.

Mrs. Ross was right, but the books in drugstores didn’t really make it to the twenty-first century.