The Diary of a Bookseller

I've just finished the most delightful book, one that I discovered by accident, and one that has convinced me to add a new town to my "places to visit before I die" list. Wigtown, Scotland, (http://www.wigtown-booktown.co.uk/) is the unlikely village, apparently known throughout the world for having the largest number of bookshops anywhere! Who knew? 

I downloaded Shaun Bythell's book, "The Diary of a Bookseller," to my kindle ages ago courtesy of Net Galley. I was several pages in before I even realized that it wasn't a novel but Bythell's actual hilarious, wryly subversive diary of a year in the life of the used book store unassumingly called The Bookshop. https://www.the-bookshop.com/

Shaun and his wife Anna live above the shop where an assortment of lost souls, part time staffers, and visiting dignitaries to the annual book festival simply doff their shoes at the store and settle in for supper, the night, or weeks.

Shaun is extremely well-versed in his profession and reading his diary will open up vistas for those of you who may think what a nice, easy life it would be to run a bookshop. However, he's probably the last person who should be dealing with the public as he suffers no fools gladly and had me laughing out loud in the doctor's office yesterday, appalled at some of the comments he makes to his own customers. What's so wonderful about them is that they are pithy rejoinders to idiotic statement that you know we all wish we had the courage to speak aloud but don't. 

Bythell abhors Amazon and rants at length about their policies which bite into any potential profit for independent booksellers, and, sad to say, he has no love lost for librarians either. He hates the way we treat our discards, stamping them all over, removing the verso page, and basically depriving them of any value they might have had before we got our grubby little hands on them.

He introduces us to Nicky, his right hand gal with the indecipherable method of subject heading shelving, who hews to Foodie Friday by bringing in leftover goodies she's found in a "skip," a dumpster behind a local grocery store. Yuk! We go with Shaun and the volunteers and employees as the "skip" out to the local pub or spend the morning fly fishing for salmon. In fact, Shaun is all over the countryside on book buying expeditions, sometimes even unearthing a gem of a book that makes it all worth while. 

For any "bookie" this diary is a must read. You'll yearn to head to Wigtown for a stay in a local bed and breakfast and a mosey down the main streets. But when you pop into The Bookshop, just don't tell Shaun that you're a librarian!