Mike la librarie

As reported in the L.A. Times. Doug Dutton, proprietor of the legendary and now, alas, defunct, Dutton's Books in Brentwood, was at a dinner with people from Book Soup, Skylight and other L.A. bookstores.

"Someone mentioned that Michael Jackson had been in their store," Dutton recalled. “Everybody said he'd shopped in their store too."

Doug first met Jackson in the early 1980s when the icon came in his shop wearing "very large sunglasses" and a suit of bodyguards. MJ was solitary and quiet. "There was no display of 'I'm Michael Jackson,'” he recalled. "I don't remember him actually saying anything." Jackson bought four-five books during visits.

Doug’s brother, Dave, remembers getting a call in the late '80s - early '90s from an MJ minion, who requested that the shop be closed early so Jackson could privately shop. "We did close early," Dave said. Then, "about a quarter to nine he showed up in a big van. Once you got over the initial caution because of those burly guys with him, he was very nice. He loved the poetry section," Dave’s son Dirk asserts that Ralph Waldo Emerson was Jackson's favorite author. "I think you would find a great deal of the transcendental, all-accepting philosophy in his lyrics."

I would have bet the farm that, considering his obsession, Michael Jackson would have been a compulsive collector of all things Peter Pan, the collecting completist’s completist, acquiring every single edition of the book, every scrap of paper associated with it, and everything from the story’s subsequent incarnations.

"He was a longtime and valued customer," a spokesperson for Hennessey + Ingalls, the renowned art and architecture bookstore in Santa Monica, said in the L.A. Times piece.

It turns out that Michael Jackson was a sort of Johnny Appleseed of reading, spreading books to all children. Former Los Angeles resident Cynde Moya remembers that "back when I worked at the Bookstar in Culver City, his people would have us keep the store open after hours, and he'd come in with a vanload of kids, who could buy whatever books they wanted."
TheMichael Jackson - The Bookworm
The Los Angeles Times reports. "Owners of Los Angeles area bookstores (some no longer in business) recall encountering the late pop star perusing their shelves. A few years ago, Doug Dutton, proprietor of the former Dutton's Books in Brentwood, was at a dinner with people from Book Soup, Skylight and other area bookstores. "Someone mentioned that Michael Jackson had been in their store," Dutton said by phone Thursday, "And everybody said he'd shopped in their store too." "I've always wondered if there was a library in Neverland," Doug Dutton mused. Indeed there was -- Bob Sanger, Jackson's lawyer, told LA Weekly that Jackson's collection totaled 10,000 books.
"He loved the poetry section," Dave Dutton said as Dirk chimed in that Ralph Waldo Emerson was Jackson's favorite. "I think you would find a great deal of the transcendental, all-accepting philosophy in his lyrics." Largely an autodidact, Jackson was quite well read, according to Jackson's longtime lawyer. "We talked about psychology, Freud and Jung, Hawthorne, sociology, black history and sociology dealing with race issues," Bob Sanger told the LA Weekly after the singer's death. "But he was very well read in the classics of psychology and history and literature "