Having spent seven years of my life working in a Dublin bookshop, I’m enjoying reading Shaun Bythell’s The Diary of a Bookseller , which reminds me of all the fun, and occasional annoyances, of working day after day with the public . Bythell owns his own bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, which incidentally hosts an annual literary festival every Autumn that I took part in some years ago. He writes about the struggles of small business ownership, particularly in times of recession when people have less disposable income.
The book is filled with great humour. The staff he employs are often hilarious in their day-to-day behaviour but so are the customers who come in with strange requests. I remember only too well how exhausting retail can be but Bythell manages to treat all his customers with a mixture of respect and amusement. There are certainly some larger than life characters who come through his doors.
There are many interesting aspects of second-hand bookselling that are described too. Bythell regularly visits homes where an entire library is being sold and makes offers for collections that might seem unsellable to the untrained eye but for which there’s a large market. His bookshop’s section devoted to trains, for example, has a very strong audience which will probably come as a surprise to readers.
But one of the most enjoyable aspects of the book is how connected both the owner and the shop itself are to the community. Many locals come in every day and there are even visitors from afar who stay the night. During the literary festival, the upstairs of the shop is a place for writers to gather and enjoy some spectacular hospitality.
As the title would suggest, the book is presented as a diary and I hope that Bythell publishes more volumes in the future. I enjoyed it very much.
The author’s most recent novel is The Heart’s Invisible Furies.
