Confessions of a Bookseller

by Shaun Bythell

Overview

One cozy, funny year with a Scottish used bookseller as he stays afloat while managing staff, customers, and life in the village of Wigtown. This endearing world is the next best thing to visiting your favorite bookstore (shop cat not included).

Inside a Georgian townhouse on the Wigtown highroad, jammed with more than 100,000 books and a portly cat named Captain, Shaun Bythell manages the daily ups and downs of running Scotland’s largest used bookshop with a sharp eye and even sharper wit. His account of one year behind the counter is something no book lover should miss.

Shaun copes with eccentric staff, tallies up the day’s orders, drives to distant houses to buy private libraries, and meditates on the nature of life and independent bookstores (“There really does seem to be a serendipity about bookshops, not just with finding books you never knew existed, or that you’ve been searching for, but with people too.”).

Confessions of a Bookseller is a warm and welcome memoir of a life in books. It’s for any reader looking for the kind of friend you meet in a bookstore.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567926644
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Pages:	324
Sales rank:	517,861
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop, the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland. He is the author of Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops, also published by Godine. Shaun lives in Wigtown, Scotland.

Read an Excerpt

Cold, grey day. Nicky appeared at 9.08 a.m., blaming the weather for her late arrival. The rain came on again at 10 a.m. and the sound of water dripping into buckets in the shop window began its usual symphony.

As I was filling the log basket, I heard a frog croak in the pond—the first one I’ve heard since last autumn.

On the way to the post office, I spotted Eric, the Wigtown Buddhist, in his orange robes—a welcome splash of colour on an otherwise grey day. I’m not sure when he moved here, but Wigtown has absorbed him with the amiable indifference it shows to everyone, no matter how incongruous they may appear in a small rural Scottish town.

Nicky spent the day re-arranging things that didn’t need to be re-arranged.

After lunch I took down the Christmas decorations from the window displays. The left-hand window was still full of little puddles in places.

Today’s blackboard:

Avoid social interaction:
always carry a book.

Editorial Reviews

03/09/2020

Bythell follows up Diary of a Bookseller with an assortment of amusing and often cantankerous stories about a year in his life as the owner of a used bookstore in a Scottish village. The author painstakingly tracks sales, the number of customers who visit, and till totals for each day, punctuated by acerbic observations. There are the head-scratching requests (“I’m looking for a book but I can’t remember the title. It’s called The Red Balloon.”), unexpectedly hilarious purchases (an elderly man buying a guide to wild sex), and the clueless (“It’s a bookshop.... So does that mean that people can just borrow the books?”). Bythell’s scathing commentary about customers drives much of his narrative, including a description of a woman wearing an unpleasant fragrance (“which I can only assume was manufactured as a particularly unpleasant neurotoxin by a North Korean biochemist in a secret bunker. Kim Jong Ill, indeed”) as well as cheap customers asking for discounts or complaining about prices (“ ‘That’s outrageous! Who would want to buy that?’ Well, you for a start”). Bibliophiles will delight in, and occasionally wince at, these humorous anecdotes. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Confessions of a Bookseller and Shaun Bythell

“Bythell’s wicked pen and keen eye for the absurd recall what comic Ricky Gervais might say if he ran a bookshop.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Something of Bythell’s curmudgeonly charm may be glimpsed in the slogan he scribbles on his shop’s blackboard: ‘Avoid social interaction: always carry a book.’ ”
—Washington Post

“Warm, witty and laugh-out-loud funny...”
—Daily Mail

“Bythell is a skillful writer . . . he creates a full, appealing world populated with colorful characters. The Scottish landscape—geese flying over the salt marsh, the meandering river where he likes to fish—is gorgeous . . . an endearing and thoughtful book.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Among the most irascible and amusing bookseller memoirs I've ever read.”
—Dwight Garner, New York Times

“…amusing and often cantankerous stories [that] bibliophiles will delight in, and occasionally wince at...”
—Publishers Weekly

“Bythell writes with biting humor . . . he is a man on a mission, and a year seen through his eyes convinces the reader that is a mission worthy of undertaking.”
—Chicago Tribune

“An enveloping account from the front lines of an industry in flux.”
—Foreword

“Bythell remains an unwavering correspondent whose daily rambles reminds us of the joy in real bookshops.”
—Fine Books & Collections Magazine

“A bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland, recounts a year in his life as a small-town dealer of secondhand books....Irascibly droll and sometimes elegiac, this is an engaging account of bookstore life from the vanishing front lines of the brick-and-mortar retail industry. Bighearted, sobering, and humane.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Bythell’s witty descriptions of cheap customers, the drudgery and comfort of his daily routines and the consistent weather manages to create a sense of place strong enough to capture my flittery mind for long enough to feel settled-in near his fire.”
—Portland Herald Press

From the Publisher

2020-02-05
A bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland, recounts a year in his life as a small-town dealer of secondhand books.

“The pleasure derived from handling books that have introduced something of cultural or scientific significance to the world is undeniably the greatest luxury that this business affords,” writes Bythell. In a diary that records his wry observations from behind the counter of his store, the author entertains readers with eccentric character portraits and stories of his life in the book trade. The colorful cast of characters includes bookshop regulars like Eric, the local orange-robed Buddhist; Captain, Bythell’s “accursed cat”; “Sandy the tattooed pagan”; and “Mole-Man,” a patron with a penchant for in-store “literary excavations.” Bythell’s employees are equally quirky. Nicky, the author’s one paid worker, is an opinionated Jehovah’s Witness who “consistently ignores my instructions” and criticizes her boss as “an impediment to the success of the business.” His volunteer employee, an Italian college student named Emanuela (whom the author nicknamed Granny due to her endless complaints about bodily aches), came to Wigtown to move beyond the world of study and “expand [her] knowledge.” Woven into stories about haggling with clients over prices or dealing with daily rounds of vague online customer requests—e.g., a query about a book from “around about 1951. Part of the story line is about a cart of apples being upset, that’s all I know”)—are more personal dramas, like the end of his marriage and the difficult realities of owning a store when “50 per cent [sic] of retail purchases are made online.” For Bythell, managing technical glitches, contending with low profit margins on Amazon, and worrying about the future of his business are all part of a day’s work. Irascibly droll and sometimes elegiac, this is an engaging account of bookstore life from the vanishing front lines of the brick-and-mortar retail industry.

Bighearted, sobering, and humane.

Kirkus Reviews

Wigtown—Scotland's officially designated “Book Town”—comes to listeners through author and shopkeeper Shaun Bythell and narrator Peter Kenny. Interweaving his personal life, observations of Wigtown's residents and bookshop visitors, and daily sales figures, Bythell's diary forms an engaging composite of his and his community's life throughout 2015. Kenny communicates the social interactions, as well as Bythell's often ironic declarations, with judicious pacing, incorporating the few footnotes without distracting listeners. A few of the people Bythell observes—a shop clerk, potential customers, those he visits to buy book stock—are given unique voices. Anyone who has been to Wigtown will find this listen thoroughly accurate; anyone who likes books will find it a pleasing virtual visit. F.M.R.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2021 - AudioFile