notANON

I went to Portland a month ago or so and went to the best bookstore I’ve ever been to.  It’s called Powell’s Technical Books.  If you ever go to Portland, don’t miss Powell’s Books.  It’s absolutely gigantic!  One of the largest book stores I’ve ever seen.  It’s very overwhelming in Powell’s but when I was there, I didn’t end up staying very long.  I came to find that as large as the store is, they required a whole separate building just for computer and technical books.  We were on our way out of town but still needed to eat.  Lucky for me, the place we ate just happened to be 1/2 a block from the Powell’s Technical Books location.  We went in for a little bit and I was pleasantly surprised.  The store is the size of a Trader Joes and it’s all Computer, Engineering and other technical books.  In the back corner was a real treat though.  They have a bunch of vintage computer hardware and vintage computer books for sale which is something I’m currently interested in.  Some of the prices were fairly steep and many of the items weren’t priced at all but it was fun to see this hardware on display at the very least.  I ended up leaving Portland wishing and wondering if there would ever be anything like this in Seattle…

Today I was reading the DC206 mailing list and noticed someone mention a hacker space on Capitol Hill.  They went on to add at the bottom that it is across from a great bookstore, Ada’s Books.  I had not heard of this store before so I clicked the link and found that Ada’s Technical Books just opened to the public on June 11th, 2010.  Hoping that it has any resemblance to Powell’s Technical Books I found myself jumping in my car instantly to go see it for myself.

When I arrived I was a little surprised that it was smaller than it looked in the pictures.  I decided not to let the size cloud my judgment however.  When I walked in, I was greeted by a Zenith portable lunchbox computer that was in excellent condition.

Upon further investigation, I found a couple of books to buy.  One was Programming the IBM Personal Computer: Assembly Language by Chao Chien.  I felt the price was very fair at $4.50.  After browsing through the rest of the computer books, I found the electronics book section.  I was pleasantly surprised by the selection available in that section.  Ada’s has one of the best selections of electronics books that I’ve seen in any local bookstores.  I picked up a new copy of Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi out of that section.

When I went to check out, I learned more about the store.  The owner of the store is actually one of the folks that runs Toorcon.  Him and his wife were inspired to start this bookstore after visiting Powell’s in Portland.  They felt that Seattle needed a technical book store and I tend to agree with them.  I eagerly await to see what gems turn up on their shelves in the coming months.  I would hope for some more historical computer books and any books on 1980’s computers such as the C64, Atari computers, etc.  Those books are hard to find, especially at reasonable prices.

Ada’s Technical Books is located at 713 Broadway East, Seattle, WA 98102 on Capitol Hill.  I encourage anyone local to the area to go take a peek and buy some computer books from Ada’s.