Many times, it’s a happy accident that certain bookstores are
beautiful. It’s nearly impossible to imagine someone planning for the
Elliott Bay Book Company to become such a gorgeous bookstore; it’s just
happened, over time, as the store has grown and expanded. The small
main entry room of Ophelia’s Books in Fremont, too, is one of those
rare spaces. Not every bookstore needs to be beautiful—Magus
Books, for example, is more overwhelming than aesthetic, and that’s the
way it should be—but it’s always nice to have a couple lookers
around, if just to class up the city a little bit.
It’s an embarrassing truth that, for a long time now, the most
beautiful bookstore on Capitol Hill has been the Half Price Books on
Belmont Avenue East. This isn’t to say that it’s embarrassing because
it’s a bad bookstore; in fact, that particular Half Price Books is the
best place to buy used comic books in Seattle. But it’s
beautiful because it’s planned. The sweeping beams and glorious waste
of space between the high ceilings and the tops of the tall shelves are
signs of forethought, which is a rarity in bookselling.
You want your favorite neighborhood bookstore to be more organic.
It’s no fun when somebody gives you exactly what you want. That’s why
it’s so wonderful that the new Twice Sold Tales location at the corner
of Harvard Avenue and East Denny Way is a perfectly beautiful
bookstore. The old storefront, which was shuttered to make room for
the eventual light-rail station, was one of those functional
nonbeauties that relies more on character and personality.
But the new Twice Sold Tales is made up of nooks and rooms and
hallways, and it feels respectful. The new location doesn’t have the
sarcastic signs that covered the old cash register area like a halo
of snark, but it’s possible that the four-block move has shaken off
some of the bus stop–dwelling eccentrics who made the chitinous
shell of cynicism necessary. The store is lined with windows, and
natural light, and places where you can be alone and sit quietly among
the books. It’s like the prom scene at the end of a teen movie;
the perm has been straightened and the braces have been removed.
Readers with allergies won’t be happy to hear that the
bookstore’s cats have moved to the new store, too. Because it’s in
a residential building, Twice Sold Tales won’t be open past 10:00 p.m.,
which means the frenetic weekend late-night sales are gone; and the
treasure-laden cartsful of 50 cent books have disappeared, too. But the
gains are so incredible—a new heart in a rapidly changing
neighborhood—that I have to keep returning to the bookstore, just
to make sure that it’s real and not a figment of my imagination.
