{"id":390,"date":"2009-04-23T22:15:45","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T03:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=390"},"modified":"2009-04-23T22:18:25","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T03:18:25","slug":"waldenbooks-columbia-mall-early-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=390","title":{"rendered":"Waldenbooks, Columbia Mall: Early 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/04\/waldenbooks01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/04\/waldenbooks01_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/04\/waldenbooks03.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/04\/waldenbooks03_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There was a time when I would have known within days that <i>Waldenbooks<\/i> at Columbia Mall had closed.  I guess it says something about the times (and me) that in the event I didn't even suspect until I started getting google hits on this blog for keywords like \"waldenbooks columbia mall closed\".  I went by today to check it out, and it is indeed gone, though there is still a (discount) book store in that storefront.<\/p>\n<p>I'm pretty sure <i>Waldenbooks<\/i> was one of the original stores in the mall when it opened, and one of the last of those (I believe only Sears is left now, though if you count <i>Macy's<\/i> through its purchase of <i>Rich's<\/i> there would be two).<\/p>\n<p>Books were actually pretty well represented in the initial mall.  There was <i>Walden's<\/i>, <i>Zondervan's Christian Books<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=240\">B. Dalton Books<\/a>, <i>Rich's<\/i> had a reasonably sized book department and I think <i>Belk's<\/i> had a smaller one for a while.  While I would often check <i>Rich's<\/i> for interesting closeouts, <i>Walden's<\/i> and <i>B. Dalton's<\/i> were my main hangouts.  In those days, you never knew when new books would be out so I would generally stop by at least once a week and make a run through the SF and humor sections.  Of course once I moved out of town, I stopped by less often, and by the time I moved back, I was an Amazon junkie, and the brick and mortar shops I tended to hit were either <i>B&N<\/i>, <i>Books-a-Million<\/i> or <a href=\"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=223\">The Happy Bookseller<\/a>.  The last book I can <i>specifically<\/i> recall buying from this <i>Walden's<\/i> was (South Carolinian) David Weber's <i>Honor Among Enemies<\/i> in 1996.<\/p>\n<p><i>Waldenbooks<\/i> as a chain is owned by <i>Borders<\/i>, and the parent company has been closing these smaller outlets for years.  According to <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.reuters.com\/article\/marketsNewsUS\/idUKN0146844920090401\">this Reuters story<\/a> the company plans to slash its <i>Waldenbooks<\/i> locations from 300 to 50 or 60, and I guess Columbia Mall didn't make the cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a time when I would have known within days that Waldenbooks at Columbia Mall had closed. I guess it says something about the times (and me) that in the event I didn't even suspect until I started getting google hits on this blog for keywords like \"waldenbooks columbia mall closed\". I went by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-stores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}