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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
This little year-in-the-life memoir had a charmingly disjointed, jumping into the middle sort of feel. I wasn't always sure who people were but found the narrator to be endearingly grumpy and the behind-the-scenes glimpses of the secondhand book business were really interesting- what has value and what doesn't, the trips to acquire libraries when a private collector dies or downsizes, etc.
funny
informative
slow-paced
dark
funny
reflective
sad
Got to the March chapter and was too bored, not enough humor and too many details I didn't care about.
Content Warnings
Minor: Cancer, Death
Got this book after hearing it is 'laugh out loud' funny - well, that didn't happen more than once or twice -- Scottish humor is very understated - but it's a sweet, endearing and charming story about life as a small town bookseller. Satisfying to read.
"It is a strange phenomenon that, when customers visit the shop for the first time, they tend to walk very slowly through it, as though they are expecting someone to tell them they have entered a forbidden zone, and when they decide to stop, it is invariably in a doorway. This, of course, is incredibly frustrating for anyone behind them, and since that person is usually me, I exist in a state of perpetual frustration. Anthropologists insist that it is an instinctive human response on entering a new space to stop and look around for potential danger, although quite what sort of danger might be lurking in a bookshop - other than a frustrated bookseller whose temper has been frayed to the point of violence by the fact that somebody is blocking the doorway - is a mystery."
Shaun Bythell's diary of a year of his observations as a second hand bookseller is both hilarious and for me, another person working retail, very relatable. He's a lovely mix between the misanthropic Bernard Black (from Black Books) and an exasperated Giles (from Buffy) which is just my kind of dry sense of humour.
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
This book made me want to travel to Scotland so entirely. I hope to make it to the book shop festival someday.
This book could be rather alienating if you fall into some of the categories of terrible customers he talks about, which I think we all do at some point, but it could well be used as a guide for how to avoid it, too.
This book could be rather alienating if you fall into some of the categories of terrible customers he talks about, which I think we all do at some point, but it could well be used as a guide for how to avoid it, too.
emotional
informative
medium-paced
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced