Hardback: Tuesday, 29 December. "Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?"
Monday, 13 April. A man approached me as I was pricing up stock and asked, "I wonder if you can help me, I'm looking for self-help books." I'm almost certain that he failed to see the irony, so I asked him what sort of self-help books he was looking for, to which he replied, "I don't know."
Saturday, 9 May. A very elderly man, walking using two sticks to help him get about, bought a copy of a book called 'Advanced Sex: Explicit Positions for Explosive Lovemaking'.
Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop, Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop, in Wigtown, Scotland. But if you think his days are taken up with sorting through rare and valuable first editions, snoozing by the fire with the latest literary gem, or chatting with interesting, well-informed readers, think again.
Bookselling, Shaun reveals in his sequel to the bestselling The Diary of a Bookseller (2017), is far from the idyll you might imagine. Beset by bizarre requests from customers who appear not to know what a shop is, locked in an endless struggle with Amazon and terrorised by his bin-diving, poultice-making employees, Shaun documents his trials and tribulations with a sharp eye and even sharper wit.
This the inside story of a life lived in books: from the pleasures of the unexpected find to the friendships forged over shared tastes and the sadness of finishing a really good book, Confessions of a Bookseller (2019) will delight and inform until the very last page.
About the author: Shaun Bythell bought The Bookshop in Wigtown on 1 November 2001 and has been running it ever since with an increasing passion for the business, matched only by a sense of despair for its future, and an ill-humour inspired by a decade-and-a-half of dealing with confused customers and surly staff. He is also one of the organisers of the Wigtown Festival.
His first book, The Diary of a Bookseller, was sold into twenty-three languages including Russian, Korean, Arabic and French and has been optioned for a television series.
Rating: 5/5
I loved this book, I think any book-lover would. I've reviewed it a while ago here. I wouldn't mind reading another book if he ever writes a second one.
ReplyDelete