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Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co
 
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Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co (Hardcover)

by Jeremy Mercer (Author)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £16.99
Price: £12.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Customers buy this book with Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer

Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co + Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co.
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  • This item: Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co by Jeremy Mercer

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; First Edition edition (10 Nov 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0297850881
  • ISBN-13: 978-0297850885
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.4 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 469,487 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #68 in  Books > Biography > Novelists, Poets & Playwrights > Shakespeare, William

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Product Description

NICHOLAS CLEE, NEW STATESMAN

"His touching book suggests that his time at Shakespeare & Company was well spent."


Review

"a small classic of literary life.. There are enough shocks and secrets to make this account that unusual thing: the story of a bookshop that's a real page turner. " (TERENCE BLACKER SUNDAY TIMES )

"Mercer sketches a history of the bibliographic shelter, crowding its bunks with literary wannabes... LIke the shop itself, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs preserves the optimism of youthful ideals and perpetuates the sweet dream that any man can create - in words if not in reality - a better world." (RORY MACLEAN SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

"His touching book suggests that his time at Shakespeare & Company was well spent." (NICHOLAS CLEE NEW STATESMAN )

"As well as the tourists and thieves, there are those who stay at the shop, and Mercer portrays them well. The ruls are simple, each day they must read a book and spend an hour helping in the bookshop... Thankfully, Shakespeare and Company lives on, almost believing its own myths." (LITERARY REVIEW )

"Mercer's debut in Europe is a fascinating Odyssey into a historic bookstore as well as a confessional autobiography about having troubles with alcohol and drugs." (PUBLISHING NEWS )

"Mercer knows a good story, how to craft it... a book and a writer with heart... impossible not to warm to him." (HERALD )

"He entertainingly tells the story of his time there and the weird and wonderful people he meets." (CITY LIFE )

"Tender, disenchanted, self-castigating and bittersweet, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs is a book that is consistently surprising." (THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )

"with such stories to relate, the book cannot help but be charming" (GUARDIAN )
See all Product Description

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars you can almost smell the dusty book shelves, 2 Jan 2007
This review is from: Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs (Paperback)
As someone who spends their day dreaming of being a writer and their free time trying to be one, Mercer's book opened for me a little door of heaven. Life at Shakespeare & Co, though not easy by any means, really does sound like the kind of thing all writers/want-to-be-writers dream of experiencing. The crazy, insane and brilliant world of the owner, George, and the intertwining lives all all the come-and-go residents, are all written with such clarity and warmth that it's as though you're browsing through the books in the shop yourself and ear-wigging conversations. It's not rose-tinted glasses by any means, and it's very apparent that to survive at S&C requires more than a little ingenuity and bending of the rules. But it's obviously a place that not only offers sanctuary but a chance to grow and discover. Mercer has given me a little look through the window of S&C and now all I want to do is stroll in through the front door, roll my sleeping bag out among its shelves of books, and stay for a while...
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7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Romance and Reality in Literary Paris, 13 Dec 2005
By A Customer
In this memoir of his stay at Shakespeare & Co., Jeremy Mercer skillfully uses his talents as an extraordinary writer-storyteller. He captures the Romantic notions of all who go (or long to go) to Paris to experience the mythical pasts of the writers and artists who have flocked there for hundreds of years, and balances these notions with the often harsh realities of living the life of the starving artist. These experiences are couched in the Romantic life of George Whitman, the bookstore's founder, who in his free-wheeling life as an ex-patriot with all of its ups and downs, must ultimately face the realities of life as an aging rebel, grappling with the future of his haven - the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Flat and poorly written, 12 Sep 2009
By Boof (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs (Paperback)
I'm glad I have finished this book; it was really beginning to irritate me! I wanted to like it, I really did - Books, Paris, what's not to love? What a shame then that what started off as a very promising look into Paris's most famous of bookstores quickly descended into one of the most self-indulgent memoirs I have ever read.

Jeremy Mercer is a Canadain journalist who after printing the name of someone he promised he wouldn't name, did a runner one Christmas to Paris and ended up spending the next 9 months of his life living in the famous Shakespeare & Company bookshop. What did interest me was the fact that the shops owner, 86 year old George Whitman (an American) let anyone (usually with the claim of being a struggling writer) sleep in one of the many beds dotted around the shop, indefinitely. The backstory of how George came to be in Paris and how he came to set up the shop in the first place was intruiging (for about 50 pages). What confused me too was the fact that Mercer kept saying what a wonderful person George was, yet the way he portrayed him was as a rude, grumpy old man who perved after young girls 65 years younger than him! He also repeatedly talked about Georges wish for communism and how the world had it all wrong, yet he also seemed proud of the fact that the two of them would go to church sales to buy books for a few pence and then sell them on for a massive profit in his store. Infact, when one of the priests cottoned on to what they were doing, George had a physical fight with the priest over a book. Nice!

I am left feeling deflated and somewhat irritated by this book. Given the subject, I expected to fall in love with Paris over again through the book. While there were frequent references to getting drunk and telling stories by the river Seine, there was never a point where I felt that this was a magical city. The narrative was flat, it didn't make me feel like I was there (which is always a sign of a well written book, in my opinion), in fact I didn't even feel like Paris was somewhere I would want to revisit on the back of this book.

A self-indulgent, poorly executed excuse for a mediocre writer to cash in on his time spent living in a famous bookshop.
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