Depends on the neighborhood. In plenty of American neighborhoods, the giant B&N in the strip mall is the closest they've got to an emotional connection to anything.

I'll never forget the time I went to the one on Kauai. It was MOBBED with people, all local haoles from the mainland who thought they wanted to live in paradise but discovered after a year or two that they were living on a remote tiny island with not much going on, to which they would always be strangers, looking for some kind of connection to the outside world. Books, that is.