John Towle was a 19-year-old college student, working at a Wendy's in Oakland and smelling of fries, and he'd go into Jay's Bookstall across Fifth Avenue just for the pleasure that comes from being among books.

He's such a book guy that he can browse a shelf once and remember each title, so pretty soon he was answering customers' questions about where stuff was. Soon after that, Jay Dantry hired him.

That was 1983. About four years later, Mr. Towle wandered into Bookworks at Fox Chapel Plaza, saw its potential, and was soon managing it. That lasted until that store closed in 2000. By then he was ready for a bigger challenge, so, 10 years ago last month, he opened his own place, the Aspinwall Bookshop.

In other stores, you might find a shelf of "staff picks," but here there's no need because every book is, by definition, a Towle pick. A voracious reader, an old-fashioned man of letters, he isn't intimidated by any writer's reputation and might tell you to skip a book lately goosed by a movie tie-in and opt instead for another book by that author.

"I'm proud to say I've never made a sale that I couldn't personally guarantee or warn against,'' he said.

His store has been long embraced by the book buyers of nearby Fox Chapel and Highland Park. Seven days a week, people walk in with an eye toward discovery, but we'll soon be speaking of this store in the past tense. The inevitable end is near. It's just a matter of when Mr. Towle finds a new livelihood.

"I'm saddened, and stressed, but not bitter," Mr. Towle says.

He got to own a bookstore before they went the way of blacksmiths' shops.

The business pages tell us Barnes & Noble, the world's largest bookstore chain, lost $62.5 million in its last quarter. Longtime rival Borders is in even worse shape. People buy books online through Amazon and, lately, they've been moving to e-readers so even the printed page is unnecessary. The big chains have e-readers of their own, but their bricks-and-mortar base is crumbling.

"I should have seen the writing on the wall in the early Amazon days," Mr. Towle said.

The social class that has been his base is the same one most likely to shop online or buy a Kindle or other gadgets that pull digitized books from outer space.

I feel about bookstores the same way Will Rogers did about men: I never encountered one I didn't like at least a little. Greater Pittsburgh still has enough independent stores that they are too numerous to mention, but there's one set to celebrate its 20th birthday on Halloween. So when I left Aspinwall with a paperback copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (which Towle began plugging long before Oprah), I crossed the Allegheny and headed east for Oakmont's Mystery Lovers Bookshop.

Mary Alice Gorman and her husband, Richard Goldman, opened this store when "Amazon was still just the name of a river." And they're still thriving in an age when people are "buying best sellers while they're buying grapefruit, Mr. Goldman said.

Specialization is the reason. After romance, mysteries represent the biggest fiction niche, which "allows us to attract a very dedicated segment of readers," he said. Mystery Lovers hosts book clubs, authors' readings such as the "Coffee & Crime" breakfast series, puts out a bimonthly newsletter and has a national online customer base.

Mr. Goldman doesn't worry about e-readers because "there's a huge difference in the experience to the user." Reading is not like music where, apart from some purists, most listeners don't care how sound reaches their ears. There's a tactile pleasure to turning a page.

If all people want is the new John Grisham novel, a little store can't compete. But they can serve customers who desire expertise, suggestions, a little urbanity. Mr. Goldman flatly tells customers, "You have to decide if having this store is important to you. If it's meaningful, this is the price you have to pay."

Other local stores play different angles. Sixteen years ago, when the owners of Bradley's Books saw a Barnes & Noble open across from it on Smithfield Street, I worried how David would survive Goliath. As things turned out, neither Bradley's nor B&N lasted at that location, but Bradley's is growing as the giant shrinks. Bradley's' eighth store should open in Indiana Mall next month, its fourth new store this year. It can do that because bargain books represent 97 percent of Bradley's' business, and it's buying books that B&N is dumping.

As Bradley's sets up in malls the big stores have abandoned, says regional manager Eve Beck, book lovers shout through the gates, "When are you guys opening?"

The little general-interest bookstore, offering new hardbacks, is the one nearing extinction. I'm not sure I believe the stoic Mr. Towle when he says he'll be happy to put up his "Going Out of Business Sale," but he's looking for a fresh challenge.