The Diary of a Bookseller

Bythell, Shaun. The Diary of a Bookseller. New York: Knopf 2021. Print

First Sentences:

[George] Orwell's reluctance to commit to bookselling is understandable. There is the stereotype of the impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor...and it seems (on the whole) to be true.


Description:

What lover of books, bookstores, and quirky bookdealers can resist reading about the ins and outs involved with the actually running of a bookstore? Certainly not I. Therefore, it is with great joy that I stumbled on and now recommend to you, Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller.

 

Bythell, is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. He is either 1) the typical quirky book dealer; or 2) simply an ordinary man facing a world of odd-ball customers who wander into his world with their own idiosyncrasies and who daily drive him almost to despair. After several years of observing his customers and reflecting on his other book operations (buying collection, pursuring book fairs, inspecting a family's inherited collections, etc.), Bythell decides to record his book life in a daily account over the period of one year to share his odd world. 

 

In this notebook, Bytgell jots descriptions of the daily actions in his store, the town and his book-buying expeditions. He records his cranky thoughts on these activities and people, plus notes each day on the number of customers, money in the till, online orders (with the number of books that were actually found on their shelves to fulfill these online orders). 

 

While this bean-counting info may seem boring, it is quite interesting over the days, especially the shop's number of unfulfilled online orders. These failures most often occur due to Bythell's worker Nicky's unique convoluted system to shelve titles. She had once filed British Trees: A Guide for Everyman, in the section "Scottish poetry." Of course, many of these books now cannot be located. This is the same bookshop worker who, every Friday ("Free Food Friday" to her), brings in food to share which she had salvaged from dumpsters.

Here are a few of Bythell's other observations:

• Any bookseller will tell you that, even with 100,000 books neatly sorted and shelved in a well-lit, warm shop, if you put an unopened box of books in a dark, cold, dimly lit corner, customers will be rifling through it in a matter of moments. The appeal of a box of unsorted, unpriced stock is extraordinary.

•  [A customer asked] "Do you remember me? I bought a book about bowling from you five years ago."

• Flo [an employee] was in today. She seems to have mastered her pout, and spent most of the day demonstrating it.
  

•  I noticed that the staple gun didn't appear to be working, so I tested it on my hand, at which point it decided to work.

•  At 10:00 a.m. the first customer came through the door. "I'm not really interested in books," followed by "Let me tell you what I think about nuclear power." By 10:30 a.m. my will to live was but a distant memory.

•  [Observing a customer reading in the poetry section] I noticed that he had removed his false teeth and put them on top of a copy of Tony Blair's autobiography which had been left on the table.
  

To me, it is a dryly humorous book through Bythell's use of deadpan observation of odd characters and situations. You feel you are perched on his shoulder as he slowly works through each day's obstacles, many caused by his own indifference to planning, avoidance of confrontation with annoying people, and general lack of seriousness about the organization and decisions faced regularly in his book business.

A thoroughly absorbing immersion into the world and people in a bookseller's world. I loved it as I knew I would. Hope you will, too.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels.   

Fictional account of a woman's perspective on operating traveling library housed in a small horse-drawn cart. Delightful, with several sequels leading her to finally open a bricks and mortar bookstore described in The Haunted Bookshop.