There aren't too many browsing options available, however, if your interest is in Catholic books or other high-quality religious works. There can be no question of the value of Catholic bookstores in the heart of this big, busy city, whether it be Paraclete or any others. There is a question, however, about how much longer any Catholic bookstore will be able to survive. Their loss would be a pity, no matter how easy it may be to shop by Internet or in some other discreet but impersonal fashion. Books are meant to be taken off shelves or out of stalls or from the tops of tables and looked at, held in the hand while leafing through the index, compared with a half-dozen other works sitting nearby.
Bookstores are places for getting the most fascinating advice and insights.
A book is a book is a book. If it catches my eye in The New York Times Book Review, I'll send for it. Ah, but listen to G.K. Chesterton, that funny fat man who was infinitely wiser than the celebrated Delphic oracle of Apollo. Nothing is important except the fate of the souls and literature is only redeemed from an utter triviality, surpassing that of naughts and crosses, by the fact that it describes not the world around us, or the things on the retina of the eye, or the enormous irrelevancy of encyclopedias, but some condition to which the human spirit can come. But a phone call is significantly less than hypnotic.