Visit a museum, a national park, a Castle in Europe or even the local zoo these days and you’ll likely exit through the gift shop. As award-winning journalist Peter Lovenheim realized on his recent family travels, a gift shop can be a metaphor for life. That’s the inspiration behind his new book, GIFT SHOP OF GRATITUDE: A Journal to Explore the Journey of Your Life (
Perfect for the parent or grandparent in your life, GIFT SHOP OF GRATITUDE prompts readers to recall and organize all the things in life for which they’re most grateful. Through the lens of 20 common gift shop souvenirs, consider the snow globes and ball caps, the t-shirts, postcards, and jewelry you have accumulated. What people, places, and life experiences do you hold dear and what memories do each of these items bring back for you?
After reading a chapter on scented candles, reminisce about the aroma of your mother’s cooking? Do key chains prompt memories of a friend or mentor who opened important doors for you? Does a bobblehead recall a beloved teacher or athletic coach? What legacy does each memory leave for your family?
This special journal will surprise and delight you with the stories it evokes. Then, by journaling in the Gratitude Pages your answers to its thought-provoking examples, you’ll create a personal memory book of all the things in life for which you’re most grateful.
GIFT SHOP OF GRATITUDE is the
- Perfect gift for parents and grandparents to chronicle their family legacy
- Evokes cherished memories that can be shared for generations
- Become co-author of this book about your own life
- Create a treasured family heirloom for children, grandchildren, and all those whom you love.
The gift shop of gratitude provides you with an abundance of suggestions to help you remember and appreciate your past.
Gift shops are meant to preserve the core ideas of wherever they are stationed. So the idea of curating one based on you and your legacy is a novel idea. Your own personal gift shop!
He writes of the things you would normally find in a gift shop like playing cards, TShirts, spoons, scented candles, coffee mugs, magnets, snow globes, bobbleheads and more, provides a little history on them and then gives you lined pages to write.
For instance: candles! What candle smells make up your life?
One of mine would be the smell of Sunday Dinner at Grandma’s house. Sauce that has been cooked from the morning, with meatballs and Parmesan all cooking in the bubbling deliciousness of the best sauce I ever had and will never have again.
Toy Animals: I would have a blue cream Persian cat who always lies under my knee or sits in the corner of the hall so she can see everything.
This is a great memory book perfect for gift giving or to fill out for yourself. Remembering our history is pivotal for preserving our legacy for future generations.
ABOUT PETER LOVENHEIM: Peter is an author and journalist whose articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Parade, Politico, The Washington Post, and other publications. He is Washington Correspondent for the Rochester Beacon, an online source of news and commentary for his hometown of Rochester, NY.
His books of non-fiction include Gift Shop of Gratitude: A Journal to Explore the Journey of Your Life (2024), The Attachment Effect (2018), an exploration of how early bonds with parents shape personality throughout life, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time (2012), winner of a Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the First Annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize, and Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf (2002), a first-hand attempt to understand the food chain, and three other books.
Lovenheim holds a degree in journalism, summa cum laude, from Boston University, and in law from Cornell Law School. He has taught narrative non-fiction at Rochester Institute of Technology and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and splits his time between Rochester, NY and Washington, DC.
