I'm a book junkie. There's nothing quite like a good bookstore -- especially an independent one. In Seattle, it's tough to beat the Elliott Bay Book Company. It's in an old brick building in Pioneer Square, above Seattle's famous Underground Tour.
The store is spread across multiple rooms, with uneven wooden floors, that creek when you walk around. Footsteps echo through the room. The air is thick with the smell of paper and quiet crowds filter through the aisle.
The bargain bin is in a loft and features a wide array of fiction, poetry, coffee table and other books. It was up there, that Jon and I uncovered one of the classic finds. A 16-CD audio book of Johnny Cash reading the New Testament. There's no witnessing quite like listening to the Man in Black reading the Book of Revelation in the Wisconsin night.
At this point, I figure I have somewhere between 500 and 1000 books at least. Plus 200-300 CDs. Amateurish compared to many, but I have lost track.
That's why I'm thinking of moving to a bar code scanner. Collectorz.com sells a book, movie, and CD inventory program that inlcudes a handheld scanner that reads ISBNs and UPCs and logs them into my system. I can download book information then, and maybe get a handle on library.
Then the next step will be to rearrange the shelves in some logical order. Most of my books are still where they ended up when I moved to Seattle from Mountlake Terrace. Of course in MLT, they were on the same shelves they ended up when I moved there from Boise. And when I was in Boise...well, you get the picture.
And maybe one day I'll finish reading them. For now, though, there are few things as comfortable as being in a room filled with books.
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