Borders to Shutter Swampscott Bookstore

Earlier in the year when Borders books announced it was closing 30 percent or about 200 of its stores nationwide, Leslie Arillotta of Swampscott wrote the company.

“Whatever you do, don’t close Swampscott,” she told them. 

The Swampscott Mall store survived the first wave of closures but not the second.

Fifty-one more Borders stores including two in Massachusetts are slated to shut their doors, according to federal bankruptcy court documents filed Friday in Manhattan.

“It’s disgusting,” Arillotta said before entering the store Saturday on her weekly trip the store to buy her weekly read. 

She said she doesn’t want to travel Route 1 every week to another store and perishes the thought of curling up in bed with an e-book.

The closure news pleased none of the book readers spoken to outside the 970 Paradise Road store on Saturday.

Michelle Hough of Marblehead came to the Borders Express store with her son Brian who bought summer reading books for an advanced placement class, among them The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The prospect of a vacant, book-less store saddens her.

She fears it’s a sign that people aren’t reading books, and she will miss the recommendations she has received from the Swampscott store's staff over the years.

From the time her son was in the fourth grade she has been calling the store manager on a regular basis asking her to recommend books for him.

Betsy Barreda of Nahant also relies on the Swampscott Borders staff for recommendations.

Not long ago an associate recommended a terrific Sudoku book.

Saturday she was headed into the store to browse the shelves. She expected to hear a recommendation from an associate.

“I’ll say, ‘I just read Cutting for Stone,’ and they’ll say ... .”