Great post! Greetings from Charlottesville VA, where downtown has five bookstores (new and used) within two blocks of each other. (Cupla more a few miles away.) All thriving. Along with book-loving locals, we get a lot of tourists who love to buy books.

Me, too. Mom simply ignored my reading habits. I was reading Somerset Maughan in the 4th grade, as well as some rather sexually explicit stuff from my parents' bookshelf. (No internet then, so I just skipped all the words I didn't understand.) I survived with no lasting issues.