Showing posts with label Bookshops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bookshops. Show all posts

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown by Shaun Bythell (Profile Books 2022)



Left the shop at 10 a.m. for a book deal in Dunscore (an hour away). The house belonged to a woman who had inherited her brother’s books. It was full of dogs (I lost count after seven). The books were in a predictably filthy state, and their content was even more unsavoury than their condition – Holocaust denial, extreme religious right, anti-abortion. After a while I discovered that these were her books, rather than her brother’s. She had decided to keep her brother’s books because she ‘didn’t want that kind of liberal nonsense to be read by anyone’ and to sell some of her own. She was a member of Opus Dei, and while he was alive she would regularly send her poor brother cuttings from the Daily Telegraph; he was a Guardian reader. I managed to salvage a handful of the slightly more palatable titles.

Tuesday, November 02, 2021

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell (David R. Godine, Publisher 2020 )

 



Yesterday, a man telephoned the shop and asked for a copy of my second book, Confessions of a Bookseller. The total, including postage, was £18. As I was taking down his credit card details, he said, ‘Please add an extra £10.’ When I asked him why, he replied, ‘Because I know how hard this time must be for businesses like yours, and I want you to still be there when all of this is over, so that I can come and visit the shop again.'

Saturday, May 09, 2020

30 Day Song Challenge - Day 09



A song that makes you happy.

A bit random with this one. I didn't really think too much about this choice. Another time I could have picked 20 other songs, but this song hit the spot on the day when I picked it. I can't remember if I bought it as a single, but I do remember that I would listen to it again and again in the Charing Cross Road branch of Borders back in the day. I'm sure I convinced myself at the time that there was a Marxian tinge to the lyrics - for the obvious reasons. I was deluding myself:


Propellerheads feat: Miss Shirley Bassey - 'History Repeating'


Thursday, October 24, 2019

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (Profile Books 2019)



FRIDAY, 6 MARCH

Online orders: 2
Orders found: 2

Nicky in. She has hijacked the shop’s Facebook page again and left this typically bewildering post:
Good morning everyone!
With a song in my heart, I skip in to work only to be berated for buying books off a customer for £45, whereas the BGC would have paid £175. Happy customer, happy me, disgruntled tube, sorry, I meant to say ‘boss’.
BGC is Nicky’s current nickname for me, and stands for Big Ginger Conundrum. ‘Tube’, for the uninitiated, is a Scottish insult, the politest interpretation of it being ‘idiot’.”

Monday, May 27, 2019

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell (Profile Books 2017)



FEBRUARY
Would I like to be a bookseller de métier? On the whole – in spite of my employer’s kindness to me, and some happy days I spent in the shop – no.
George Orwell, ‘Bookshop Memories’, London, November 1936
Orwell’s reluctance to commit to bookselling is understandable. There is a stereotype of the impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor – played so perfectly by Dylan Moran in Black Books – and it seems (on the whole) to be true. There are exceptions of course, and many booksellers do not conform to this type. Sadly, I do. It was not always thus, though, and before buying the shop I recall being quite amenable and friendly. The constant barrage of dull questions, the parlous finances of the business, the incessant arguments with staff and the unending, exhausting, haggling customers have reduced me to this. Would I change any of it? No.