Moon’s Rare Books

On a Saturday night in the “private room” at Moon’s Rare Books in Provo, poking at his phone among vaults of antique treasures, is proprietor, collector and storyteller Reid Moon. He’s an unassuming legend, wearing the simple wire-rimmed glasses his digital army of fans knows him by.

Turning to show his phone’s screen, Moon points at the top comment on one of his numerous viral TikTok videos with a palpable sense of pride. “This is the side of BookTok I’ve been looking for,” it reads, referring to a video of Moon showcasing a second printing of Shakespeare’s complete works from 1632.

Scrolling through the comment section, where even celebrities like popstar Lizzo share their thoughts, other viewers thank him for preserving history, try to imagine the smell of his bookstore – which is enchanting – and marvel at the almost unbelievably excellent condition of the Shakespeare book, which is currently worth more than $1 million.

Moon’s Rare Books is a museum disguised as a bookstore. That much is immediately clear upon stepping out of the contemporary shopping center it’s housed inside and into Moon’s carefully curated wonderland. Much of the floor is laid with French brick cobblestones dating back more than two centuries to the time of Marie Antoinette and Napoleon.

The store is a miniature Olde English village, where visitors can window shop through time, peeking into various themed display rooms holding books, artifacts and memorabilia from throughout history. In one room, Queen Victoria’s dressing gown. In another, a 400-year old Bible, or a letter to Dr. Seuss. Nothing at Moon’s Rare Books is ordinary. Behind every glass case is a puzzle piece that fits somehow into our great human story, and every day, Moon is working to fill in the gaps.

An employee enters the room to ask Moon about their earliest copy of A Christmas Carol available for purchase. He replies, matter-of-factly, that they have a first edition, but it might run a buyer up to $35,000.

Turning slyly, as if divulging a secret, Moon says, “There’s not another bookstore in the U.S. that has a first edition Christmas Carol. At any given time, we have first editions that aren’t available anywhere in the world except here. It shocks people that we’re in Provo.”

That’s true. Surprise bordering on disbelief is a common response to the caliber of his collection, amplified when it’s revealed that it is housed in Provo – a city that one TikTok user said they had to Google. Moon sees hundreds of TikTok comments along the lines of, “I wasn’t planning on ever going to Utah, but now I have to see this place.”

And now, with almost a million TikTok followers, nearly nine times the population of Provo, Moon’s Rare Books is getting more first-time visitors than ever, many citing his social media content as the catalyst for their stopping by.

Moon grew up in Dallas. His parents were bookshop owners, but he wasn’t initially inclined to follow in their footsteps. He made his first move to Utah after high school to attend Brigham Young University, where he changed majors four times before finally graduating in 1985. Afterwards, he sold insurance for a while, until finally he realized his true calling had always been books.

He returned to Dallas to open the very first Moon’s Rare Books, and it remained in operation for 25 years before once again Moon packed up for Utah. Having done ample business in Provo as he worked to build his collection, he figured it would be a convenient home base.

Perhaps, subconsciously, Moon had always planned to own a bookstore someday. He certainly wasn’t planning on becoming a social media star, but it happened all the same – now he’s getting recognized not only at book fairs but in breakfast buffet lines at out-of-state hotels. In his videos, he’ll usually share information about a particular book or artifact, give tours of his bookshop, or answer frequently asked questions.

The juxtaposition is interesting – displaying books of antiquity, often hundreds of years old, using modern technology that would be truly unimaginable to their authors. It turns out TikTok, the social media platform that has become synonymous with 2020s cyberspace, is a great way to connect the average contemporary human to the world of old. Thanks to its hyper-intuitive algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to predict users’ interests, people who might not have sought out information on first edition J.R.R. Tolkien novels or Joseph Smith’s personal copy of the Book of Mormon will be brought face to face with it regardless, making literary enthusiasts out of everyday internet wanderers.

Moon’s artifacts have a broader appeal than one might assume, simply because the historical value coupled with the distinct uniqueness of each work is impossible to deny. Each book has a story, a path it traveled through time before it reached Moon’s (clean and dry) hands. But how does one amass a collection of such diversity and significance? Moon has been curating for more than 37 years, and the way he talks about his acquisition process, it’s clear he doesn’t think of his job as work.

“Every day is different,” he says. “When I wake up, I don’t know where I’ll end up. And at the end of the day, I’ve acquired some new treasures.”

Moon tells people he has the best job ever – that he has yet to meet anyone he’d trade places with.

“I travel, I meet a variety of people, and then I get to share these stories with others.”

Moon is a seasoned professional by now, but he didn’t find his flow overnight. When he first started his business, he only sold new books. Slowly but surely, he introduced used books to the mix. It wasn’t until 1999 that he really kicked things up a notch and added “rare” to the masthead.

The farther he waded into the quicksand of the antique book industry, the deeper he sank, learning the tricks of the trade as he attended his first auctions and book fairs, joined booksellers’ associations and developed relationships with dealers who learned quickly that Reid Moon wouldn’t settle for just any old book. Ten years ago, with momentum building, he sold his new and used bookshop to focus on his true passion: the rare stuff.

Choosing to niche down proved advantageous for Moon, who remembers witnessing the downfall of independent bookstores following the 2008 recession. Well over 50 percent of all bookstores closed during that time, he said.

Another major challenge of the internet age, the No. 1 killer of the indie bookstore, is online shopping. Back when he was selling new books, people would often peruse his collection, then go home and order from Amazon. Now, however, he doesn’t face the same issue. Serious collectors know what they’re looking for, and they know where to find it – at Moon’s Rare Books.



Allie Wisniewski

It’s nearing 6 o’clock. From behind a wooden door comes the dull chatter of excited voices. “Show and Tell” is about to begin. Moon stands up from his chair and clears his throat, anticipating the momentary arrival of tonight’s guests.

“Due to our limited space, we can’t have everything,” he says. “Every book in here has to have a story. And that’s what you’ll see here tonight; that’s what people like – the books that have a story.”

Much is on display at Moon’s Rare Books, and Moon loves that visitors can get up close and personal with iconic works of literature and art. But the rarest, most valuable and fragile items, like a letter penned by Abraham Lincoln or a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, are housed safely in temperature-controlled safes in the shop’s “private room,” a small office area turned storage and event space at the rear of the store.

The only occasions guests are lucky enough to see these treasures in the flesh are at the monthly Show and Tell evenings, during which Moon chooses certain books to showcase and even pulls items from his vast personal collection based on guests’ interests and suggestions. One could say, in these scenarios, Moon himself acts as the TikTok algorithm, generating content for his viewers using just one phrase or subject as guidance.

“I like to challenge the group: Name any person, place or thing from the past 500 years, and I’ll show you something in this room that relates to it,” he says. “I get one degree of separation; I’m pretty hard to stump.”

This proves absolutely true, and for every guest’s prompt over the next hour, Moon generates a thematic book or artifact, seeming to conjure each near-perfect match out of thin air.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald!” someone calls out, and without a second thought, he retrieves a letter of gratitude Fitzgerald wrote to his nurse shortly before his death in 1940.

“Hemingway!” another guest yells. He points out a first edition copy of The Old Man and the Sea.

There’s oohing and aahing at a British first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone signed by an 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe, and gasps at a colorful, intricately illustrated, leather-bound copy of The Hobbit.

While Moon mulls over a suggested theme, the room seems to hold its breath, buzzing with silent anticipation as they wait to see what tale he’ll tell next. Nothing at Show and Tell is predictable, which, naturally, is what makes it so fun. Guests simply have no idea where his next rabbit hole might lead.

Moon is as talented as a storyteller as he is a curator. His tales are warm and accessible, and always told with humor, eliciting childlike laughter from his audience with ease. His Show and Tell is a curated, elevated version of the namesake kindergarten activity, evoking the curious, easily fascinated inner child in all who attend.

Oral tradition is as ancient as humanity itself, and beyond the physical written word that Moon takes such care to preserve, he is also immortalizing what is unwritten. There is more to a book than what lies between its pages, and if anyone understands that, it’s Reid Moon. Moon’s Rare Books is more than a bookstore because it prioritizes telling the stories of the stories it purveys.

And the collection is still growing – every week, in fact. One might think a guy like Moon would be running out of books to track down, but according to him, the reality is quite the opposite. When asked what piece of historical literature he would choose if he could have any book in the world, Moon has a ready answer: the Rosetta Stone.

“It was so instrumental in unlocking the mysteries of the past,” Moon says. “That would be the type of thing I would want.”

While acquiring the Rosetta Stone is likely beyond the reach of even as skilled a collector as Moon, unlocking the mysteries of the past is something he already does – for bookstore patrons and TikTok followers alike – every single day.