SEATTLE'S USED BOOKSTORES - 1999 AND 2019

Brown celebrates Seattle’s used bookstore scene in this nonfiction book.

“While the magic may reside in the books,” the author writes in the introduction to this work, the libraries, bookstores, and personal bookshelves that house them “offer both a refuge from exterior chaos and the thrill of possibility within their rows and nooks.” While libraries have historically discouraged socialization for quiet, individual study, and homogeneous big-box chain bookstores are designed to maximize profit, used bookstores offer bibliophiles a friendly respite. In addition to their randomized inventories, which include offbeat and out-of-print titles, they promote “a sense of comfort and accessibility that invites one to look, read, and stay for a while.” Labeled as a “love note to books, print, and a thank-you note to the booksellers,” this book is a celebration of the used bookstores that dotted Seattle’s landscape over the last two decades. The milieu is also an effective lens through which Brown explores broader changes in Seattle’s recent history: The Seattle of 1999 was an eclectic city defined by its underground music scene, bohemian sensibility, and a proliferation of bookstores. Following the internet and tech boom—driven in large part by Seattle’s own Amazon and Microsoft—the city shortly thereafter became a center of American capitalism, with a new aesthetic of homogeneous neighborhoods and traffic gridlock. The declining presence of used bookstores in today’s Seattle is emblematic, per the author, of these larger cultural changes. The origins of the book stem from a college project completed by Brown in an architectural photography class, and the book blends its astute analysis with photographs taken by the author of Seattle’s used bookstores (both interior and exterior shots) in addition to images of owners, book lovers, and store cats. Sadly, many of the city’s used bookstores open in 1999 have since closed; Brown makes an effective case that the “literacy, community, and human connection” that such institutions engender are an invaluable “way to hold on to some of the best parts of our cities and societies in the coming decades.”

A poignant and visually stunning tribute to used bookstores.