{"id":959,"date":"2005-12-04T18:54:37","date_gmt":"2005-12-04T22:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2005\/12\/04\/jeremy-mercer-gift-idea\/"},"modified":"2010-11-27T19:03:05","modified_gmt":"2010-11-27T23:03:05","slug":"jeremy-mercer-gift-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2005\/12\/04\/jeremy-mercer-gift-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Mercer’s Holiday Gift Suggestion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time Was Soft There<\/I><\/A> is Jeremy Mercer<\/A>‘s story of how—if I can be glib for a moment—he fell in love with the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. while on the run from gangsters. As a former bookstore employee myself, I’m always up for tales of life among the stacks…and, like any good bookstore employee, Mercer couldn’t quite work his recommendations down to a single volume. But that’s okay…<\/p>\n

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\"jmercer.jpg\"For me, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood<\/I><\/A> is one of the most important books I’ve read and among the dozens of people I’ve urged to read it, there has never been a complaint. Capote is going through a renaissance, with two films about his life in the cinemas, and this is just recognition for a man who changed the face of American literature. In Cold Blood<\/I> may be the first example of creative non-fiction, and even if he is accused of taking minor poetic liberties, it buttresses one of my central beliefs: True stories are always more stunning and emotionally moving than anything an author can imagine. On a personal level, the book opened a new perspective on my work. I was a crime reporter when I read it, and was sinking in the mire of empty murders and drunken car wrecks. Capote taught me these tragedies could be turned into something beautiful.<\/p>\n

As my own book is an homage to George Whitman and his wondrous Shakespeare and Company, I would also suggest a copy of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot<\/I><\/A>. This is George’s favorite book and he considers himself a real-life version of Prince Myshkin. Set between a cold Moscow winter and the white nights of a St. Petersburg summer, it is a stark but enchanting look at idealism and love and what sometimes gets lost when they collide. I guarantee if you walk into George’s shop with a well-thumbed edition under your arm, you will be soundly embraced and offered a warm bowl of soup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time Was Soft There is Jeremy Mercer‘s story of how—if I can be glib for a moment—he fell in love with the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. while on the run from gangsters. As a former bookstore employee myself, I’m always up for tales of life among the stacks…and, like any good bookstore employee, Mercer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}