Shirley Shreidell, a book lover

Shirley Schreidell was a retired high school English teacher who worked in the Detroit school system. She was the first customer at Book Beat when we opened in late August of 1982, and for that we are grateful. Her first request was the book Blue Boy by Jean Giorno. After I handed her a copy from a stack on a shelf, she laughed about it being there and we became friends.

After that day she became a weekly regular, a person who enjoyed her reading and valued privacy. Shirley lived around the corner, in a small neat one bedroom apartment in Lincoln Towers. She’d often call with classics to order by Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Trollop, Turgenev, and many others. But Shirley was more worldly than her quite book-life would assume.

Shirley was a devoted and passionate opera fan, and spent almost her entire life savings following Pavarotti in concerts around the world. Her favorite place to visit was the city of Salzburg, Austria, the home of her beloved Mozart. She became known in elite Opera circles as the mysterious red-headed woman that handed Pavarotti a bouquet of red roses after every performance, and he later acknowledged her in his autobiography.

Recently I bumped into an old friend of Shirley’s who passed on to me her personal copies of a Joseph Roth series that follows the Trotta family which began with The Radetzky March. Her friend reminded me Shirley’s unusual quirk. She had an obsessive devotion to sports and sporting events. Shirley was equally passionate about tennis, pugilism, football, baseball, hockey, all Olympic sporting games and auto racing, never missing a major event or competition. Shirley could carry on long conversations and quote statistics on players and past games, she loved the competitive action and physical aspect of any sport, as much as she loved reading or the opera.

Shirley had a rich and secretive personal life, meeting and corresponding long-distance with those she met during her travels. One extended episode included an adventure with the American Oulipo writer Harry Mathews, whom she met in Paris. They became a clique of two and traveled around Europe together and shared a horse-drawn carriage ride through Vienna. She seemed a little upset after reading Mathews books, it just didn’t add up to who he was.

Shirley’s reading list was the best of great writing. From conversations, letters, and requests through the years, she helped build and shape the spirit and content of Book Beat. Our reading group begun in the late 1990s, grew out of conversations with Shirley, but she was never interested in sharing her thoughts in a live group setting.

In 2008, I asked Shirley to compile a list of her favorite top ten books. She wrote back in a letter and said, “I have so many loves, just Dickens could almost fill the list…. I omit some lengthy choices like Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, (a page-turner!); Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet; Trollop’s He Knew He Was Right, and probably the greatest novel, War and Peace…Whoops! I knew ten would not be enough. How about plays? or short stories? or memoirs? I have loads of loves there, too. Bestest, Shirley”

Shirley had a son who was an attorney living in Los Angeles, California, and she would fly out to visit him yearly. During the holidays she would always send the staff of Book Beat a box of “the best” chocolate truffles from her special chocoalte shop in Beverly Hills, California. During her last few years, Shirley had become physically too frail to travel and legally blind. She no longer could read or enjoy her operas, but her mind and memories were sharp as a tack.

Our friend Sharon Zimmerman befriended Shirley when she worked at Book Beat, and as Shirley aged, Sharon took care of her daily affairs and was closer to her than any living relative. Loosing her eyesight was the worst tragedy. Being surrounded by books she could no longer read was painful. For some reason she refused to listen to books on tape–it just wasn’t the same, and she even stopped listening to her classical music and opera record collection she revered.

Sharon helped her move into a Jewish assisted living apartment but she didn’t stay long. Shirley died on April 17, 2020 at the age of 96. We don’t know if it was Covid, but the service was held at the cemetery with her dearest friends present, masked and six feet apart. We love her memory and think of her often.

I regret not writing down more of Shirley’s comments and book suggestions. She was one of liveliest, worldly, and most intelligent and educated women I’ve known. She lived life to the fullest and beyond. Her list of books are a guide to an educated life. There should be an opera written about red-headed Shirley. She was a heroic adventuress in life and books, a lion-hearted woman.

Here are Shirley’s favorite books, along with her comments about them on our Bookshop affiliate page: Shirley Schreidell’s Top Ten