LA But Make it Intellectual: Mystery Pier Books
I sit down with father-son book selling duo and literary advisors to the rich and famous, Harvey Jason and Louis Jason, to discuss their first-edition book shop, Mystery Pier Books 📚
Los Angeles always surprises and stimulates me in some unexpected and out-of-the-box way, and it’s one of the reasons why I love the city. Despite LA not being known for its intellectual side – it is the land of entertainment, Selling Sunset and parties after all – I was curious to find out if there was a place in the city which had an intellectual dimension.
To my delight, I discovered Mystery Pier Books, named “one of the most important first-edition bookshops in the United States”, at the end of 2024 when I was in the mood for some book-browsing in the city. As a Brit, I was immediately struck by the British-higgledy-piggledy and cosy interior of the shop, with layers and layers and layers of books in every cranny and corner. Was I really in LA or was I in the UK?
Unsurprisingly, the shop is run with a British sensibility (Harvey Jason is a former actor from England, his son Louis is a native Angeleno with English roots) but with a Hollywood-sprinkle-of-magic-and-mystery twist and dash-of-pepper-English-eccentricity-and-politeness which is a great combination for a book shop (or at least for me who likes and relates to all of these things). If you’re going to have a first-edition bookshop just off the Sunset Strip, you have to make it quirky but cool. Mystery Pier Books is just that.
One of the first things I thought about when I heard about the devastating wildfires impacting LA was whether Mystery Pier Books was still standing. Thankfully it still is.
My regular readers will know that books are very important to me – they communicate information, events and people like no other medium can. They’re immersive, inclusive, wholesome, enriching and deeply human – each page tells you something about a person’s character or story and nothing distracts from that. It’s why I will continue championing books as they’re one of the few story-telling devices that doesn’t hound you with advertisements or irrelevant information; it’s only the book itself and the purity of the story or information that is important.
With brain rot continuing to dominate international discourse, I think it’s important to talk about things which enhances brain nourishment. What could possibly be better for your brain than books?
As someone who is British, likes Hollywood and has an appreciation for creativity, big characters and surprising stories, I couldn’t resist asking Harvey and Louis if they would like to be featured in The Breakout Room. To my delight they agreed.
Enjoy!
Joanna: Hi Harvey and Louis! So tell me, how did Mystery Pier Books come about?
Harvey: We opened the shop in August 1998. At the time Louis was selling books online and at book fairs. I was just finishing a movie. And I remember I was sitting in my trailer with the director Steven Spielberg, and I said to Steven, you know what? When we wrap up this film, I'm going into the book business. He said, what are you talking about? You're one of the stars of this movie. You're an actor. I said, I know, but I've done this all my life and I'm going to be a bookseller. He said, I don't believe you. I said, well, we'll see what happens. And as it turned out, it did happen. Louis and I we went around looking for a location and then we found this place.
Joanna: I think everyone who enjoys reading secretly harbours a wish to own a bookstore. What was it about first-edition books that captured your interest?
Harvey: The only books that have any sort of commercial value are first-edition books. Book collectors will only want first-edition books because they have more financial value. That's why when we opened the shop, Louis and I determined that every book in here would be a true first edition. Sometimes we go around and look at some of these books and think, my God, how did we get this?! It’s amazing.
Joanna: LA and Hollywood don’t have a reputation for being particularly intellectual, at least not in the traditional sense. What do you think about this?
Harvey: That's quite true actually. It's not known for its intellect, this place. But it is known for the love of money. And so consequently, a lot of the Hollywood personalities who come in here will really collect for financial purposes and also for the sense of possessing a library of value.
Ben Affleck came in and bought 48 books for his daughter who wanted to start a library. But there are certain celebrities of an intellectual bent who do collect and who are knowledgeable about books. And that's always great because you have great conversations with these people when they come in. People like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers loves books. He's very knowledgeable about literature. He's been coming to us since the first week that we opened.
You never know who comes in. Did I tell anybody about the woman that came in here, the homeless woman? This is an amazing story. Many years ago, in the height of summer, it was boiling hot outside, and a woman came in who I now know was 80 years old at the time. She looked like a homeless woman. She was covered with dirt and earth, holding two bags full of tin cans, empty soda cans. And she comes in here and asks if we have any first-edition Charles Dickens. So I said, as a matter of fact, we do. And she said she could marry him.
We thought oh, she's a bloody lunatic. But there was a sweetness emanating from this woman so I said would you like to see some of these things? She said she would love to. So we took out some books and asked her if she would like to hold the first-edition copy of Nicholas Nickleby? She said oh yes and that she would take it and take them all. I thought what?! And then she takes out her Black American Express card. Unlimited credit, as you know.
You can’t judge a book by its cover. Not only is she an incredible client of ours but a very close friend of mine that just teaches one to never judge people. These kind of unlikely things have happened to us with a degree of regularity over the years.
We had a guy come in, I guess about month ago now, who was followed by a bodyguard. And it turned out that he was a member of the Saudi royal family. He bought a whole bunch of stuff from us. You just never know who will come in. It's very exciting.
Joanna: Books say so much about a person and their character. Many celebrities visit the shop. Which visit has surprised you the most in terms of the book that a celebrity purchased?
Harvey: Flea likes Isaac Bachev Singer. He's a real collector. We used to get a lot of stuff for U2 because their manager used to come in. They wanted all Irish stuff.
Joanna: As someone who used to work in politics, I have to ask – what is the most interesting political book in the shop?
Harvey: We’ve got the first English edition of the history of the Communist Party signed by Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov. We got a call from somebody in Budapest wanting to sell it to us so we authenticated the signatures and now we have it. It's a very good first-edition of this very collectible book. We’re selling it for $45,000 and it’s 362 pages long.
We go from one extreme to the other. We do all these scripts signed by all these actors and producers and so forth. And that's turned out to be a highly successful market for us, getting film scripts and then having them signed by everybody. We have a first-edition of Midnight in the Gone of Good and Evil, which was the book by John Burant. And that's signed by the entire cast and crew of the film including Clint Eastwood, Kevin Spacey and the entire crew including lighting and location assistants.
Joanna: Which book intrigues customers the most?
Louis: I don't know if there's one specific book. Somebody came in the other day and saw the Churchill collection and was absolutely amazed by Churchill’s signatures. The first imprintings of Shakespeare's get mentioned a lot. The very first time that the Shakespeare plays were published was 1734. Otherwise, Gone with the Winds by Margaret Mitchell.
Harvey: We were also the first people to bring Harry Potter to America. We were in London at a friend's bookshop and a big carton of books got delivered. And we asked what's that? He said it’s children's books. And Louis said, let's take some back. And I said, why do you want to take him back for? We just decided to do it. And then Maggie Smith, may she rest in peace, was a friend. So she got everybody from the movie to sign the books. And then typically Maggie forgot to sign it herself.
Joanna: It’s well known that Americans are reading less each year. What’s your message for the despondent reader?
Harvey: That's a very good question. I would say some people who come in here will say well, I don't really read as much as I should. Find something that interests you, a subject that might interest you and then find a book that relates to that and read it. I don't understand people who don't read. I just can't. My mother had me reading when I was two years old. It's so rewarding to read as it takes one into another area of life. It's really enriching to read.
Joanna: Finally, what’s your favourite books in the shop that you would rather keep for yourselves?
Harvey: My favorite book is the one that we just sold no matter what it was!
I think the first separate prints of Shakespeare's plays are just wonderful. Sometimes we'll come in and look at a book and say, geez, I didn't know we had this book. That's very exciting.
Louis: For me, probably the Doctor Who’s and the Dutch Anne Frank was published in an edition of only 3,032 copies. We were very fortunate to get one. The other one that jumps out, at least for me, would probably be the inscribed copy I've had is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And then probably the cast signed Harry Potter, you'll never get them all in the same room again!