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Simogo has acknowledged an eclectic list of inspirations, including “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “Twin Peaks: The Return,” The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and John Fowles’s 1965 novel, “The Magus.”

So begins the mythology of Gabriel García Márquez, the magus of magical realism, a Nobel laureate who blended truth and fiction to fit the outsize reality of Latin American life.

When she and her husband Chris Weimer bought Magus in 2004, the shop was already an institution.

Weimer says with some satisfaction that customers frequently walk in to Magus “and they say ‘I went to college here in 1982, and the store still smells the same and looks the same.’

The most earnest, enthusiastic conversations about literature in Seattle happen in the aisles of Magus every day.