I have envelopes containing paper debris — keepsakes, if you’re in a generous mood — from various periods in my life. They aren’t quite rigorously organized, since that wouldn’t fit my temperament, but most of the items evoke a certain bit of the past.

Such as the pleasant times I spent at Davis-Kidd in Nashville in the mid-1980s. The store gave away bookmarks. I still have one.

There are few pleasures like browsing a bookstore, especially an independent, intelligently stocked one, as Davis-Kidd was. It wasn’t enough to browse, either. I also bought books there.

Of course I have to report that the store is gone. About nine years gone, at least the one in Nashville. Nine years ago, the betting money was on the complete disappearance of the independent bookstore. Fortunately, that hasn’t quite happened. I do my part when I can, though such bookstores, new or used, are thin on the ground in the suburbs around me.

But I still find them further away. Last summer, for instance, I chanced across Squeezebox Books and Music when I was in Evanston.

I like a shop that has non-English versions of Calvin & Hobbes for sale.

I didn’t buy any books there — I don’t buy as many as I used to, since I have so many — but I did buy postcards.