Reading Local Seattle

{ Book Espresso Machine at Village Books (photo Lindsey Otta) }

This fall, three bookstores in the Pacific Northwest (Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island, and Village Books in Fairhaven) will be able to provide you nearly any book currently in stock with the countries largest digital book distributor, Ingram, or from the millions of archival books that have been digitized by Google. Instead of the three or four weeks required to special order a hard-to-find book, these stores will be able to provide a book in the length of time that it takes to order a cup of coffee and drink it. They will do this using a print-on-demand machine called the Book Espresso Machine.

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Seattle had become an inattentive lover.  I didn’t blame her though.  We all have such a short time on this earth.  But all the same, the ambition was really starting to affect our relationship.  It had become all about cupcake shops going IPO and hiptard boutiques selling second hand clothing, and t-shirts at Goodwill costing $10, and paintings at the yet-another corner coffee shop going for $600 because to sell them for any less would insult the world and quite possibly baby Jesus.  “I know, I know.  Everybody in Seattle needs to make heaps and heaps of money. I know”, I had begun saying, walking away down the hill with my hands in my pockets, still dreaming of stupid things like affection and warmth and light.  I also wondered how the working poor in this town make it.

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