 "Photo: Braden VanDragt | The Spectator")
 "Photo: Braden VanDragt | The Spectator")
A cat stretches lazily on top of a worn-down computer monitor in a room that smells like the yellowing pages of old paperback books. Her name is Malanga, the owner of the store explains, just one in the long line of bookstore cats that have called Horizon Books their home.
It is likely that, in a few months, Malanga will find herself without a dusty, wood floor to sleep on.
After more than 30 years as a neighborhood fixture on 15th Avenue, Horizon Books is set to close its doors by the end of March. Horizon Books will eventually merge with Recollection Books, a store located on 10th Avenue, much closer to the increased retail life-force of Broadway in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Though the current economic downturn has played its own hand in the problems plaguing the store, 63-year-old owner Donald Glover believes the Internet is to blame for the access given to prospective book buyers to purchase with a click of the mouse.
A surplus of material, says Glover, is the end of desire.
"If you go online looking for a book," Glover explains, "you type in your title and come up with 237 copies available."
He says this results in something akin to closing the refrigerator door. Why grab what you want right now when you know it'll be there when you open the door again?
It is for this reason that the Capitol Hill neighborhood will lose yet another used bookstore, closing the door on a long history of serving the residents of the area.
Glover opened the store in 1971 after filling the first few rooms on the big blue house on 15th with books he had collected during his years working in Shorey's Bookstore, an older staple of Seattle's literary community.
"I looked at it in that particular time as if every neighborhood that didn't have one should be able to use and support a used bookstore near where they live," Glover says.
So Glover packed up his boxes and rented the house, originally living in the back while the front served as the store. In the process, he opened his doors to the community around him.
Glover and old employees tell stories about science fiction groups that used to set up shop in the front of the store, writers and readers that would sit for hours with a cooler of beer between them. They recall old poets and authors from Seattle that would hang around.
Retired employee Mel Flournoy, 66, says that during his 25 years of working at the store people used to come from all over the Northwest to find rare books.
Glover displays an older guidebook written for travelers looking for things to do in Seattle. On the very last page, there is a picture of a dearly remembered store cat named Gino, lounging in front of a portrait of himself that is still visible on the front porch.
Now, the store is quiet. The creaking sounds of Glover walking from the front as he helps a young woman find Spanish-language literature cracks loudly against the
silence that is custom.
It is still not hard to imagine this store as the center of a neighborhood that Glover clearly loves. There is a collection of newspaper articles written about the store protected by glass at the front counter. They go back years and years. One is an obituary for Gino, the cat.
As it is, this is not the first store of Glover's to close.
Though, Horizon Books was his first.
"If I end this store," says Glover, "I won't end being a bookseller. I will continue to do this in some way or form."
A young woman asks for Spanish-language novels and returns with a stack of books on pregnancy. It is then that her belly becomes noticeable. Glover asks the young woman where she is from. Barcelona.
Glover affects a Spanish accent and professes his love for the city in her native language. She smiles and laughs as she exits the store.
Glover explains he is saddened by the closing of the store's location. He will miss this kind of interaction.
As the owner of the store, Glover is aware he owns a business in which having a conversation with his customers is just a natural part of the interaction. He has a right to ask what people are reading and recommend and direct them to new literature.
Glover has nothing but kind words for the customers that come into the store.
"You can't make a long time customer feel guilty for now keeping you stay afloat," he sighs.
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