Stranger than Fiction book store closes this weekend, making it one of several Island businesses that has taken down its shingle in recent months.

“I gave it my all,” said store owner Mel Michaels.

He opened the shop — located in the Old Fuller Store at Center — on Dec. 12, 2008. In the first four months business at the small book store was great, he said, but then it began to dwindle. Michaels offered both new and used books and began an online program as well in an effort to stay afloat. But the competition for online book sales is too stiff for a small operation to succeed, he said.

“It was not supporting me,” he said of the book store. “It wasn’t for a lack of trying.”

Michaels is in a doctoral program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He will continue with that program, he said, and look for work as a teacher, hopefully at a college.

“Keep books alive,” Michaels said. “Keep reading.”