Confessions of a Bookseller

Shaun Bythell’s first book, The Diary of a Bookseller, was a charming read about the trials and tribulations of running a second-hand bookshop in Wigtown in Scotland. This follow-up is just as charming, just as funny, and just as page-turningly easy to read.

It’s very much the same formula as its predecessor (and that is not intended as a put-down). We have the same idiosyncratic bookshop staff, the same struggles with online sales (and what this has resulted in for actual bookshops)… and the same eccentric, often mind-numbingly infuriating customers.

They’re the characters who make the most impact on me, from the woman who approaches the counter and asks, ‘Do you respond to questions?’, to the man who says he was in the shop two years before, saw a book by Roger Penrose and wonders if the owner knows what’s happened to it. There are the customers who want to pay in dollars, the customers who expect an automatic discount because everything on offer is second-hand, and the customers who are handed precisely the book they are looking for and then say No, that’s not what they wanted.

I’ve just seen that a third volume of diaries is on its way. I can’t wait.