Betsy’s Books are in Magnolia
Today started with a honey butter chicken biscuit for brunch at Fat’s Chicken and Waffles, followed by a visit to the Bonhomie Coffee Cart pop-up. I have been following the owners of Bonhomie on TikTok for the last few months (shout out to Michelle!) while they got things up and running and was happy to see that the community really showed up - we waited in line for coffee for an hour, and it was totally worth it.
After getting caffeinated, my friend Camille and I headed over to Magnolia (one of Seattle’s wealthier neighborhoods), to distribute about 75 books that I had processed over the last few days. We picked Magnolia because there was a high concentration of libraries, it’s a neighborhood that neither of us spend any time in, there are very impressive houses, it was a gorgeous day and we were guaranteed great views.
During our travels through the neighborhood, we got to meet the owners of one of the Little Free Libraries. They shared that the husband had the library built by their architect as an anniversary gift for his wife, and that during the pandemic, she had added a “joke of the day” to the library for the neighborhood kids. He noticed that Camille was holding one of my mom’s books about mountaineering. I explained that my mom had a particular interest in climbing the highest peaks and exploring the North and South poles. It turns out that he is very well connected in the climbing community, was familiar with several of the books that we had in the car, and recommended the book, “Touching the Void” by Joe Simpson. I’m confident that book is still in my possession and will put it aside before sending it out to a library!
Side Quest: We dropped 6 books in an empty Little Free Library in South Lake Union on the corner of Harrison and Minor. When we walked by after getting coffee, three of them were already gone. When we drove by several hours later, ALL of the books were gone. In the words of my friend Elizabeth, “South Lake Union must be starved for books.”
