Buying books in an uncertain world

Whenever you buy a book...
—you are helping to make a world that contains such a book possible;
—you are helping an author to write the sorts of books you like to read (and a publisher to publish those books (and a bookshop to make those books available to you));
—you are helping your bookshop survive;
—you are supporting the expertise of booksellers, who will lead you to new books (our newsletters, reviews and literary bulletins, for example, are only possible because of the books you buy); 
—you are both broadening and deepening our culture;
—you are committing yourself to a better world (a world in which you will be reading your book! (but better in other ways, too)); 
—you will be exercising your engagement with your world — but also your independence within that world — through reading your book;
—you will be building a reservoir of good reading, ready to use whenever you want it.
Buying interesting books makes interesting books possible.
Bookshop Day (7 October) gives us a chance to think about the importance of bookshops to the lives we'd like to lead — and to make those lives more plausible.