This is full of the charm of the original book, with Bythell's usual introspective views on life, love and buying and selling books to various oddball customers.Īlthough misanthropic, Bythell still manages to come across as genuinely witty and down to earth. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.Īfter enjoying the first book from Shaun Bythell, The Diary of a Bookseller, I was excited to read more diary installments from Shaun Bythell's life as a second hand book seller in Wigtown. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Profile Books for an ARC. I can imagine it appealing to many readers, many of whom probably dream of running a bookstore, with its eye opening account of just how difficult it is to survive in this business sector.

It is full of eccentric and quirky characters, not to mention the unforgettable Granny, home invasions and book festivals. This is a fun and entertaining read, often hilarious, that provides a real sense of place and community, of the memorable Shaun, his life and his bookshop. His descriptions and accounts of customers are a joy to read about, some real oddballs abound, such as those who cannot differentiate between a bookshop and a library, in search of a book they have practically no information about, and many other embarrassing scenarios. His love of books is unmistakable, the pleasure he gets from handling books, and from reading. He finds scraps of paper in old books that turn out to be worth a lot more valuable than he could ever have expected. We follow him as he makes trips to buy book collections and meets their owners, books sent to FBA (fulfilled by Amazon), because there is insufficient space in the shop, despite his hatred of Amazon and Kindles.

The bookshop has over a mile of shelving, real log fires, a dream destination for all book lovers.īythell gives us a real sense of Wigtown's community, that includes many from from various parts of Europe and the American Anna, Shaun's partner for five years, who has slotted into the area with ease, although their relationship breaks up, thanks to what he refers as his fear of commitment, as he continues to miss her. Nicky, a woman in her late forties, is the sole remaining employee left with her foodie Fridays and there are belly dancing classes that take place in the store. It is in the format of a diary, where every entry gives us information on the amount of online orders and orders found, the day's weather, the total taken at the till and the number of customers who come into the shop. This is a biographical read guaranteed to delight all of us book obsessives and those curious about the nature of the book trade in all its glories and vagaries, narrated by a man who describes himself as both cantankerous and a curmudgeon.

Shaun Bythell takes us through a year of his life in 2015 as a second hand bookseller, a financially precarious business, in the small Scottish town of Wigtown.

Confessions of a curious bookseller