When the King of Pop Went Book Shopping

Nancy Bass Wyden at The Huffington Post [via Reading Copy] has the story about the day Michael Jackson went shopping for books and spent $6,000 in the Strand bookstore :

Michael picked out a young Hispanic employee to help him. He had his name, Jesus, written in black magic marker on his plastic oval Strand name tag. I would think this was the thrill of the young man’s life. Michael handed the books that he wanted to buy to Jesus, who then gave it to us in a basket to be sent to the cash register to be added and packed. Occasionally, Michael had requests. He wanted books on black folk music, books by Roald Dahl (including James and the Giant Peach), and something on Versailles. I would send my troops to look for the books and hand the findings to Jesus. On a previous visit, my dad had helped him, and he picked out books on Howard Hughes, dictionaries and first edition children’s books.

The picture is of Jackson, complete with band aids over his botched nose job, in another bookstore in 2007, taken from Mrs. Grapevine. As Reading Copy points out, he must have had some library and I wonder what will happen to it now.

(*I knew I had to squeeze in a reference to Michael Jackson somehow! And yes, I've always been a fan and have happy memories of the KL concert back in the '90's.)