bookstore review: amazon books, seattle

Seattle, Washington: my birthplace and the location of Amazon's headquarters.  I’m back in the area celebrating with family over the Christmas holiday. I visited a bookstore (is anyone surprised? no? good.). The bookstore that everyone is buzzing about – Amazon’s first physical book retail location. It was actually my mom’s idea to check it out, and I wanted to see it as a sort of curiosity. Instead of visiting the zoo on the day after Christmas, we went to Amazon Books.

I have some thoughts (the entire bookselling community probably has some thoughts!), I’m a consumer and a book blogger, so I'm doing a consumer review. Could be fun, right? I’ve never done a bookstore review before, so bear with me.

The first thing is that Amazon Books is located in a really tony outdoor shopping district called University Village, right by the University of Washington campus. When I was a teenager, going shopping in University Village made me feel grown-up (aka fancy).  I mean, there’s a Tiffany’s across the street from the Amazon Books location.  So make of that what you will (they’re right where the money is).

I just realized that if I keep listing things one by one in numerical order I will never be done with this review.  So here’s a big list of nice things about the bookstore: all of the books face out (so cover art is even more important than usual!), and they are arranged in general by interest area, but there are also a lot of freestanding shelves dedicated to award-winners, or Amazon’s top books of the year, or books for kids aged 9-12 who like sports, and so on.  In short? The browsing experience is a little different than most bookshops I’ve been in. 

The staff is super attentive – I was asked if I needed help 3 different times, and this while the place was totally packed!  Also, the prices are the same as on the website (cheap!), and are not listed on labels (browsers are encouraged to do price checks on their phones). I also appreciated the Amazon star ratings and short reviews listed under every title in the store (in a “staff picks” fashion).  I went around the YA section scanning the shelves for reviews by bloggers I recognize (I saw a couple!).  The staff was also restocking while we were there, leading me to believe that the large number of browsers translated to sales.

Now onto the “cons” list: the bookstore had VERY small aisles. If someone was in one, you couldn’t get past. When I stood with my back pressed against the shelf behind me, I could barely see any of the books on the bottom shelf in front of me. In a crowded bookshop, that’s a major issue (and it was quite crowded). I also learned that Amazon Books only accepts cards for payment, no cash allowed. That seemed unnecessarily elitist, as the unbanked might appreciate lower prices on books more than anyone.

There was also very limited seating throughout the store (I assume to encourage browsing, but not too much browsing).  That said, the window seats around the perimeter of the store were cool, according to my sister-in-law, who tried them out. My aunt noted that the store didn’t stock any Moleskine products (limited/no gift items) – the focus was on books and magazines only. I think the biggest difference between a traditional bookstore and Amazon Books (for me) were how few books there actually were in store. For the space, they fit in as many shelves as they could, and yet the majority of the selection was made up of newly-published books.  The selection of backlist items was random and haphazard.  There were also some notable holes in the selection – I kept looking all over for the Ron Chernow Hamilton biography, and couldn’t spot it.  That would be front and center in any other bookstore right now, due to the popularity of the Broadway musical.

You may be wondering if I purchased anything at Amazon Books. I didn’t. But! My mother bought me an early birthday present. I picked out two books: adult fantasy Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, and middle grade classic The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. 

Final verdict: Amazon Books is worth a visit. It was interesting from a consumer viewpoint to see what books Amazon prioritized in a store setting, and I found a couple of interesting titles I wanted to purchase while browsing. That said, this is not the store to go visit if you need a specific backlist book. The store space itself is also less-than-ideal. I think the concept needs a little bit of work. All told, I’m glad I went!

headed west

[art from poppyandpinecone's etsy shop]

I'm going home to the Seattle area today. One week of awesome with the family, coming right up!

chocolate is the fashion

On Sunday I had the opportunity to eat lots of chocolate, browse a quirky and fun Seattle neighborhood market, and meet some awesome area fashion bloggers. FASHION bloggers?! Yes. Insane. I’m not, you know, What Not To Wear material, but I’m not fashion blogger worthy, either. So, HOW did this happen?

I knew one wonderful fashion blogger already – the ultra-cool Clothes Horse. Her sister’s a close friend, and she just happens to live near my new residence. So when she called me up and asked if I’d like to tag along to the meet-up, I said, “Sure!”

Lesson #1: The Clothes Horse is unbearably cute.

We started at Theo Chocolate, the only bean-to-bar, fair trade certified, organic chocolate maker in the United States. We toured the factory (which smelled DIVINE), tried chocolate in different stages of production (the ‘nibs’ are delicious!), and then got to taste test most of their amazing varieties of chocolate bars.

After that we browsed the Freemont Sunday Market just around the block. Lots of used and vintage items for sale, along with a great selection of arts and crafts. The people-watching was superb – I even spied some vendors in steampunk garb! It was an all-around good time. Best part: I met two other lovely bloggers – Eunice of What’s Your Tale Nightingale and Kam of needle + thread. Both ladies are very talented and fun…and you should follow the links and check them out! Also, if you’re a Seattle-area blogger and would be interested in a meet-up sometime soon, let me know.

En fin, bloggers = great, whatever their stripe or fancy. Also, cell phone cameras are not ideal. Many pardons for the photos. If you want to see cooler/better/fantastic photography, go follow those links I told you about.

Lesson #2: hair nets are never sexy.

out of the ordinary

Last week I indulged and spent the day in Pioneer Square, Seattle, with a friend. I’m going to give you a virtual tour of our day, but WITHOUT photos. Well, maybe I’ll steal some from somewhere online…but none of my own.

We parked ($5 for two hours – not bad in that neighborhood!), and went looking for Sweet Petula, an awesome bath & body boutique that I originally found on Etsy, the homemade and vintage online market. I can’t go without their olive oil-based Ginger Blossom soap, so I stocked up with four bars.

Then we stopped by the Klondike Gold Rush museum. It’s run by the National Park Service, and offers free entry for info, stories, and interactive displays pertaining to the late 19th century and the role that Seattle played as a major stopover and supplier for those heading to the goldfields.

Next we headed up to the Elliot Bay Book Company, an awesome, creaky indie storehouse of wonderful books in many fabulous editions. I was almost sucked into the vortex that was their cookbook section, but ended up saving myself in YA and Fantasy/Sci-Fi. The best bits were the little hand-written ‘staff recommends’ cards hanging off of every shelf in all the bookcases…

By that time we were getting a little hungry, and we went over and stood in line at Salumi, a famous sausage deli (and Seattle institution). It’s right down the block from a fire station and police precinct, so we had a good mix of uniforms, bike messengers, tourists (me), and other regulars in the line. Anthony Bourdain featured the little place on his show, so it’s ‘famous,’ but it’s also still so small that you rub elbows with your neighbor regardless. I had the fennel sausage sandwich with fresh mozzarella and onions on Panini bread. Serious YUM.

We walked over to a little courtyard with a fountain next to the King Street Train Station to sit in the sun and eat our fill. Afterward we crossed the street to the Uwajimaya Asian market, where I bought some almond Pocky sticks for dessert and we scoped out the Manga in the bookstore.

Then we ran like the dickens back to my car, because we saw a tow truck on the block and were 5 minutes late! (No worries…no ticket…) And so ended a pretty perfect couple of hours tooling around the Pioneer Square district. If you’ve ever been, do you have a recommendation?

pike place market

I’ve never seen a Seattle tourist guidebook, so I can’t accurately claim to know the most popular destinations.  But as a former denizen of the area, I can tell you which places I’ve always taken out-of-town friends when they visit: the Pike Place Market and the Space Needle.  The Space Needle is an obvious choice: an emblem of the city as well as a pretty sweet watchtower.  There’s a rotating restaurant at the top and a huge science center at the base.  They shoot fireworks off the top of it on the 4^th of July and at the New Year.  How much cooler can you get?  It adds a lot of character to the city skyline, too.  The next best place, though (and the feature of today’s blog), is the Pike Place Market.

A little Seattle city history will set up the context.  You see, back in the olden days (alright, not THAT long ago, but early in the history of the American Pacific Northwest), Seattle was a lumber town.  Wood made its way from all over Western Washington State to the port of Seattle.  And Seattle was a city built on a couple of hills and a landfill.  You read that right.  Basically, it was super hilly, and to get some flat land to make the harbor accessible, they filled in the bay with the leftovers.  Of things.  I can’t give you particulars, but I like to think that it was mostly woodchips.  Anyway, at the bottom of the hill below downtown Seattle, right in front of the wharfs on Elliot Bay, someone put up a warehouse.  From the bayside, it has 4 stories.  From the street side (Pike Street, in case you were wondering) it looks like it’s only one story tall.  That will give you an idea of the grade that the city is on.  Like, if you made me drive a manual car up those hills, I would die of fright.  No, seriously.  The hills are suicidal.  I mean it. 

The Pike Place Market opened in said building in 1907, and is one of the oldest continuously operating farmer’s markets in the US.  The top floor, the one on Pike, is full of stalls which sell fresh fish, fruit, veggies, meat, flowers and other Farmer’s Market type things.  The floors below house eclectic shops selling things like marijuana paraphernalia, comics, used books, crystals, and of course the necessary Seattle tourist merchandise.  Across the street there are tiny restaurants, the original Starbucks store, and other curiosities.  The whole area is very eclectic, and you will find street buskers and entertainers on every corner.  So the atmosphere is often celebratory and the market full of tourists, city residents, music, clowns, street statues, homeless, and flying fish.  Yes, you heard that last part right.  There’s a fresh fish vendor smack in the center of the market that is famous for tossing the merchandise from person to person before they wrap it in newspaper and ice.  A crowd always gathers, and when a purchase is made, the vendors yell to each other, a huge whole fish (or lobster) go flying over the heads of marketers, and the tourists get their photos.  Here’s a typical tourists’ video.

There are a couple of things about the market that I really love: Left Bank Books, an employee-owned and not-for-profit used bookstore, the fresh fruit stands (in season white peaches = so amazing it’s ridiculous), the huge bronze piggy bank (named Rachel, after a prize-winning, real live pig), and the original Starbucks store.  Pike Place Market is noisy, colorful, a little chaotic, and a great taste of how the Seattle spirit works: mostly in the rain, and always with enthusiasm.