Where have all the bookstores gone?

On my recent vacation to Monterey and Carmel, I was dismayed by the lack of good bookstores in the area. I had packed lightly and, as usual, planned to buy a few paperbacks for my vacation. Monterey is the home of a jazz festival and Carmel is an affluent, very artistic city. I'm sure lots of writers and readers live in the area.

Monterey used to have a large bookstore about a block from my hotel. It was gone. There was a small independent religious bookstore in Monterey--not what I wanted. On Cannery Row, there was a used bookstore with not much selection.

Carmel used to have a lovely independent bookstore near or on Ocean Avenue, the main street. (I remember it had a kangaroo in the window with paperback books in her pouch!) It was gone.

I used Google to find an independent bookstore, River House Books, down the highway from Carmel, in a shopping centre. I found two books that interested me, both non-fiction, and M found one. M would have preferred to buy a SFnovel but they didn't carry genre fiction, only literary novels.

Thanks for saving my sanity, River House Books!