Bernadette Murphy (Herald Tribune)

Happy birthday and I hope very much you keep going to celebrate many more. Coral Gables must be one of the loveliest bookshops on the planet. Not only does the selection of books provide much food for thought, but the restaurant provides much food for pleasure and adds to the browser's experience. When I go to Miami, I stay near Lincoln Road so I am more familiar with this store. It is smaller and perhaps more charming in comparison. But what is remarkable is how its bright, cheerful persona is so perfectly attuned to the atmosphere on the rest of the street. It's always pleasant, interesting and tasteful. For the casual passerby who wanders in, buying a book becomes irresistible and certainly a pleasure. I look forward to my next visit.

Bernadette Murphy
International Herald Tribune
Neuilly, France.

Elisa Albo

Last fall, when I celebrated the publication of my chapbook with a reading at Books & Books, a dream come true, I recalled with Mitchell how nearly twenty-five years before, I would attend the monthly Friday night open poetry readings, at first much too nervous to even consider reading a poem of my own until I shakily did and gradually, over the years, grew more confident so that my hands didn't at least visibly tremble. I also reminded Mitchell of the time I wandered over to the magazine stand in the original store on the night of a reading and to my astonishment, found a copy of Bomb Magazine, in which I had just been published. I rushed over to Mitchell to show him, and I will never forget his reaction: He took the magazine from my hands and standing there, read the two poems all the way through. Then, when I went to buy the four copies he had--and I probably shouldn't reveal this!--he gave them to me. His kind and generous support that evening sustained me for a long time, as I'm sure he had done for innumerable writers over the last 25 years. From the local writers' side, what would we do without Mitchell and Books and Books, our independent gem. Thank you, and congratulations!

Elisa Albo
Poet

Jane Friedman (Harper Collins)

When I hear the name Mitchell Kaplan, I always smile.

Mitchell and Books & Books are essential threads in the fabric of our publishing lives.

25 years is such a milestone. What you have accomplished is EXTRAORDINARY. You have made Miami (a second home of my childhood) a literary destination.

We have shared so many careers together. I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for so many authors and for the smart readers who come to you and your
superlative staff to see to their tastes and their needs.

I wish you everything you wish for yourself in the future.

Happy 25th Anniversary, and thank you from your friend and a "publishing veteran,"

Jane Friedman
CEO Harper Collins

Mim Harrison (Levenger Press)

The abracadabra ampersand

The books, of course, are just the half of it. There is an ampersand that joins Books and Books, and it has come to be a kind of totem that represents a union of a deeper sort. The abracadabra ampersand, symbol of the magic door that opens to community.

All the more remarkable given that it is here in South Florida, a part of the country where presumably there is no strong sense of community. Books & Books is the village well, the gathering place for a most diverse, disparate and far-flung network of people. We don’t even all know each other but we are drawn together, and not merely by a love of reading but by something more fundamental—something as elemental, perhaps, as the water in that well.

Only connect, said Forster. And so we do. The sustenance we take and the succor we find is in the sharing of ideas. It is a connection that grows stronger, deeper and more satisfying the more we come to the well. Can we achieve great things because of it? Perhaps. But more important is simply knowing that we can achieve.

Most infrastructures in a community grow weaker the longer they exist. But the infrastructure of ideas grows only stronger. The well simply never runs dry. And the magic door is always open.

Mim Harrison
Editor, Levenger Press
author of Words at Work

Walter Isaacson

There is no better spot on earth than a lovingly-run bookstore, and of such paradises one stands out: Books and Books. It is a haven of civility and letters. I have visited dozens of times, sometimes to talk and sign, but mostly to browse and replenish my mind. Congratulations.

Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe
and or Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

David Maraniss

When I think of going to Miami, my first thought is not of the beach, nor even a delicious Cuban pork sandwich, but of going to Books & Books and seeing the greatest bookseller in America, Mitchell Kaplan, who makes an author feel completely at home. Congratulations on 25 years of great books and friendship. - David Maraniss

Rabbi Harold Kushner

BOOKS AND BOOKS AT TWENTY-FIVE

The 25th anniversary of Miami’s premier bookstore coincides with my twenty-fifth anniversary as a best-selling author. But long before I was a creator of books, I was a consumer of books. Bookstores have always been magical places for me, and Books And Books has to rank high among my favorites.

How could it be otherwise when the single most memorable experience of all my book tours happened there. In 1989, I was promoting my book Who Needs God and my tour brought me to Books and Books in Coral Gables. I was about to end my talk by interpreting a parable from Gabriel Garcia Marquez when a paperback fell off the shelf and hit me on the head. It was a collection of Garcia Marquez’s short stories. It seems he was offended by my interpretation. But you see why I consider Books and Books to be a magical place.

The union of the bookstore and the people of Miami is a perfect marriage, a clientele that appreciates good books and a bookseller that knows how to meet their needs. I wish you many more years of prosperity.

Rabbi Harold Kushner

Mark Trowbridge (Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce)

When I think of our community’s most successful businesses and outstanding independent business owners, I immediately think of Books & Books and Mitchell Kaplan. It is hard to imagine Coral Gables without Books & Books, and for the past 25 years, we are most grateful we have not had to. In Books & Books, we have a business whose very heart beats to the rhythm of its customers and pumps conversation into our community. In Mitchell Kaplan, we have a community icon whose generous spirit and genuine bliss are bound together in the pages of a passionate narrative – his own true story. As a Chamber of Commerce, it is reassuring to know that we have an enduring community partner and stalwart friend in Books & Books and Mitchell Kaplan. We thank you both from the bottoms of our collective hearts for 25 years of delicious dialogue, delightful discovery and immense joy.

Mark A. Trowbridge
President & CEO
Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce

Beth Dunlop

An Ode to Books & Books

From the start, the name filled our consciousness like so many thrumming tom-toms: Books & Books, Books & Books, Books & Books. For many of us, our lives can be charted by the 25 years we’ve had this remarkable bookstore. My son — just months younger than Books & Books — grew up there, both of us sitting cross-legged on the floor of the children’s room with Miss Nelson (who went missing), George and Martha (having tons of fun) and Bill and Pete (who went down the Nile) not to mention grinches, witches, wild things, giant peaches and big friendly beasts.

All too soon, the grinches gave way to epic journeys, existential quests and unreliable narrators. We were in the “adult room” and following Odysseus, Captain Ahab, Holden Caulfield, John Dowell and Nick Carraway. In sequence, Books & Books opened on Lincoln Road, built its incredible new Coral Gables store and expanded in Bal Harbour. I’d venture to say that the Coral Gables Books & Books, with its elegant rooms and open-air courtyard, is arguably one of the handsomest bookstores to be found anywhere.

None of this would have been possible, of course, without the astounding Mitchell Kaplan. He would call himself a bookseller, plain and simple. But in an era of too few heroes, he is one. He is an idealist, an intellectual, a patron, a public thinker. Without him, we would not have the Miami Book Fair International. We would still be a distant outpost on the literary circuit, not be a must-stop for authors. With independent bookstores under siege from large chains, Kaplan has been a valiant crusader for the homegrown, for the local. And despite the national odds, he’s survived a quarter century with his own very local bookstore. There isn’t an author in Miami (or near Miami) who doesn’t worship him. And he’s family. He’s watched our children grow up; we’ve watched his. His very presence and his passion has made Books & Books a place where we discuss politics, philosophy, poetry, literature, history, music, art, architecture. It has been at the core of Miami’s intellectual and cultural growth.

Now, the very kids who came of age on Books & Books are the ones sitting cross-legged on the floor with their own toddlers, who will be the third generation to learn to love literature and architecture at Books & Books where our history and culture have been safeguarded so carefully for a quarter of a century now. First and foremost, bookstores are about books, but they are also about the structures that house them, and the cities that make them possible. Books and buildings are two key ways we pass on culture from one generation to another, and we should cherish the fact that in Miami, at this very special bookstore, the two come together.

Beth Dunlop
Editor-In-Chief
Home Miami Magazine

Susie J. Horgan

As Einstein imagined how a beam of light would appear if he could travel alongside it...I too imagine these rays every time Mitchell takes me through his latest dream...which hopefully then transcends onto my images. I have been making pictures of how this literary solar sphere fractally reaches and connects sun-soaked Miami with the outside world and beyond.

It is a magical cauldron mixed with...education...friendships...truth seeking...art...literature...expression...muse...knowledge...and humanity.

I thank all of those who have ever allowed me take their picture...
because you are that very moment which keeps the Books & Books organism moving.

Thank you, Mitchell, because from you comes the electro magnectic charge which ignites us all.

Here's to you my friend,
xSusie J. Horgan

Tone Blevins

a short haiku


pages turning ceaselessly:
work & words at Books & Books
twenty-five autumns,


thanks! tone

Russell Banks

Was it 1982? It must have been, or maybe sometime the following year, and I was hanging out in Little Haiti and down in Islamorada doing research for what became CONTINENTAL DRIFT and like most people not in the know didn't realize that there was an incredibly tasteful bookstore operating over in the Gables. I wish I had known. Because it wasn't until 1985 when CONTINENTAL DRIFT was published and I was invited to read at Books & Books that I got to visit the store for the first time and meet Mitch and in a single evening go straight to the center of the literary world in Miami. For it was already that, -- the store and the readers and writers and artists who hung out together, drawn together by the books and the readings, of course, but most of all drawn together by the warmth and intelligence of Mitchell Kaplan himself.

There are only a few bookstores that we think of as both classic and historically significant. One wants to call them "bookshops" instead, suggesting a place where books are made and not merely sold, because they function as the center of an entire community of readers and writers and artists. Think of Shakespeare & Co., Gotham Book Mart, City Lights, and maybe two or three others. Books & Books is in that league. They all sold books you couldn't find anywhere else in the city then, but they all also had a proprietor who not only loved books and writers and had great taste in both, but had made a personal mission of bringing those books and writers to the wider community -- whether it was the Left Bank in the 1920s or Manhattan in the 1950s or San Francisco in the 1960s. Those bookshops actually shaped their communities' literary imaginations. Which is to say, they shaped how those cities viewed themselves and how they came to be viewed by outsiders. Books & Books has done that for Miami. It's impossible to think of a Barnes & Noble or a Borders even attempting it.

Sure, all bookstores, whether chains or independents, provide a service; they sell books (and associated products, including espresso and whole grain muffins and scones). But the rare ones, like Books & Books and those other classics I mentioned, can make a city into a place where you want to live. That's certainly the effect Books & Books has had on me and my wife. And it's not about the books or the associated products -- we can find those most anywhere in America nowadays. It's about the specific community of writers and readers that has been nourished and sustained by Books & Books over the last twenty-five years, the folks who gather there to talk shop and exchange gossip and real estate tips and recommend titles new and old that may never appear on the Best Seller lists. One likes to think that a city has at least one place where its collective wisdom resides, where its imagination and self-knowledge are protected and shared with anyone who comes through the gate looking for them. For twenty-five years now, for those of us who love Miami, that place has been Books & Books, and the keeper of the gate has been Mitchell Kaplan.

Russell Banks

Evelyn McDonnell

I spend a lot of time these days trying to spelunk ideas in the wall-less ether of cyberspace – which makes me appreciate a bricks-and-mortar location all the more. There’s nothing like the physical sensation of being surrounded by shelves upon shelves of books – some overhead, some hip-high and on rollers. A good bookstore is the intellectual soul of a city, and in a city often derided for not having an intellectual soul, Books & Books is a good – a great – bookstore. Mitchell Kaplan has made Miami a book town. He’s a true miracle maker. And he also serves the best cupcakes I’ve ever had.

Though I do think they should get Wi-Fi.


Evelyn McDonnell, author of Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, & Rock’n’Roll and editorial director of MOLI.com.

Paul George

Books & Books is that rare creature: a bookstore so special, so important that it has changed the way a lot of greater Miamians look at knowledge and culture. From its beginnings in Coral Gables, Books & Books has put the customer first, has made him or her feel at home, has given him or her the opportunity to become part of a community based on knowledge and the sharing of knowledge. Books & Books is appealing to the eye, it is a center of a learning community that understands the uniqueness of reading, of listening to authors, or discussing ideas, events, and personalities. Books & Books has made our community a much better place by providing us with a wonderful experience everytime we visit one of the stores, and, by extension, wherever we go from there with a book or a new learning experience.

Thanks,
Paul George

Mike McGonigal

The shop had already been around a year or so when I discovered it. Being fifteen at the time, two years seemed an eternity. So to me, the store held institution-like status right from its start.

Miami in the 1980s had quite a few expertly-curated shops run by these gentle iconoclasts—Mike Dean with Yardbird Records in the Grove and M.
Leslie Wimmer with Open Books & Records in Miami Beach spring to mind alongside Mitchell. I won't say I took Books & Books for granted at the time, as my trek there by bicycle was thirteen miles round trip; I just looked it up on Google maps so you know it's true. And then of course we must all remember how culturally harsh and divisive the Reagan/ Bush era was; Books & Books always felt like an island of sanity to me. The poetry section alone was so strong that I labored to find anything comparable, even after moving to Brooklyn or Seattle.

The location was so gorgeous and the staff smart and helpful—even to a full-of-himself suburban teen who wrote really bad poetry (that would be me). I received my first real encouragement as a writer at the open mic readings Mitchell himself used to run. And at least once a month, I spent my allowance on these amazing things, books from Grove Press, New Directions and Black Sparrow. These weren't in any library I had access to as a high school student. I had no other way of discovering these books than to find them in Books & Books. In college, I adopted the store's own slogan, that Borges quote, as my own whenever anyone commented on the perilous stacks around my bed: "Dude, I cannot sleep unless I'm surrounded by books!"

I'm so glad that Books & Books has been around for twenty-five years, and hope it continues to thrive for at least another twenty-five! I know that sounds trite, but it's true.

Mike McGonigal
Writer/ Editor, YETI Publications
Portland, Oregon

Edwidge Danticat

The first time I visited Books & Books, I was twenty three years old and a student at the Caribbean Writers Institute summer program at the University of Miami. I had just graduated from college and had some stubborn notion that I wanted to be a writer so I had enrolled in the Masters in Fine Arts program at Brown University. Still needing extra fuel, commiseration and understanding from like-minded writers, I came to spend my summer in Miami, in part, to study with the great George Lamming, a giant of Caribbean letters. As part of the program, we had student readings at the older Books & Books, the one which preceded the glorious courtyard and looked like a fortunate man or woman's extensive home library.

I had never read my work in front of people before and I barely whispered my piece, never looking up once during my very first Books & Books reading. The place was packed with interested readers and in spite of my dismal presentation I still gained some admirers that night. I credit this not to myself, but to the warmth and intimacy of Books & Books. When you read there, you feel like folks are cheering for you. Everyone wants you to succeed. Whenever I am reading or listening to others read, or am just having some of the good food in the courtyard, I always feel like I am with friends. Not just the writers that the books represent, but the people they've drawn to the store.

I often hear writers say that they love Books & Books. And they don't just say it. They mean it, because Books & Books is not just a fortunate man's extensive library (Mitchell's?) but all of ours.

Edwidge Danticat

David Plumb

Books & Books is the best independent bookstore in Florida and beyond. Mitch Kaplan and company invite you to the intimate pages, to the awesome silence between words. Room to room, tier upon tier; it is one sweet literary ballet. Here real books live and breathe. Titles you have been looking for but can’t find? There. There it is. Titles you won’t in other bookstores. Yes. And what a staff. They know their stuff. As an author it is the best place I have read in the U.S or Europe. Beat Poet, Bob Kaufman said, “Everything I planned came as a complete surprise.” I’ll buy that. Thank you Books & Books.

David Plumb

Nan Graham (Scribner)

When I was sixteen, I drove from London to Cannes with an English family whose au pair I was going to be for a few weeks. They had planned their route in order to stop at the out of the way five-star L'Oasis in La Napoule. It was my introduction to the concept of a destination restaurant. Mitch Kaplan introduced me to the concept of the destination bookstore.

Books + Books started as the incredibly cool place, in Coral Gables, and then got hotter and hotter. At lunch, Frank McCourt would mention that he'd really like to go to Miami. Jeannette Walls would make a deal with her publicist to add a city to her tour. I thought they just wanted a little sunshine. But it was the light of Mitch Kaplan they were looking for.

This is a man whose passion for books and generosity to authors sustains us all. That he remains charming and ebullient and indefatigable at all times is uncontested. Put a thousand people in a room at a BEA and there will be a radiant presence, a low-buttoned shirt. It is Mitch Kaplan, a gaggle of authors around him.

Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Bal Harbour, Grand Cayman. Mitch, we need you in Tribeca, too.

Congratulations and infinite thanks,
Nan Graham
Vice President & Editor-in-Chief
Scribner

Susan Moldow (Scribner)

For people in New York publishing knowing for 25 years there was a literary landmark as significant as Books & Books in a place as culturally and climactically distant as South Florida, has often provided the impetus to keep going in those moments when it seemed no one anywhere else cared. We absolutely demand that you let up help celebrate your 50th!

Warm wishes to Mitch and the rest of the staff.

Susan

Susan Moldow
Publisher
Scribner

Russell Perreault (Vintage/Anchor)

I will always remember the first time I walked into Books & Books in Coral Gables. It was instantly clear that this was more than a normal bookstore: it was also shrine to books. I have never felt such a reverence for books. It was also a place where people share their love of books. The people who worked there and shopped there were real readers who devoured books, and couldn’t wait to share their discovery of great new books they’d read. What more can anyone ask of a bookstore? Congratulations on 25 amazing years of bookselling, and for helping nuture thousands of people in the love of reading.

Russell Perreault
Vice President/Director of Publicity
Vintage Books/Anchor Books