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A review by holly_keimig
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.5
I had a feeling I'd like this book and I was right! I was excited to get to read it for book club this month. Having had the honor of being a bookseller myself, I found myself nodding along with the customer stories and other associated challenges of working in a book store. The book is written in the style of diary entries with stats given for each day of an entire year. There are mundane spots, as there are in real life, but when I had time to sit and read lots of pages at once, it flowed really well and I was sucked in. Highly recommend for the all the book (store) lovers out there!
Favorite parts:
-p.22-"She has been calling for several years now, and while initially I would read titles to her and try to see if we had anything in stock that she might want, after years of consistently being on the receiving end of her disappointment, I have given up and just invent titles now."
-p.35-"Really bookish people are a rarity, although there are vast numbers of those who consider themselves to be such. The latter are particularly easy to identify-often they will introduce themselves when they enter the shop as 'book people' and insist of telling you that 'we love books'. They'll wear T-shirts or carry bags when slogans explaining exactly how much they think they adore books, but the surest means of identifying them is that they never, ever buy books."
-p.46-"I am putting a mental jigsaw together of what a hobbit looks like, based on a composite of every customer I have ever sold a copy to."
-p.93-"As he was leaving, I noticed that he was missing his left shoe."
-p.187-"You really would have to be on the most dismal holiday to find the following phrases useful..."
-p.250-Staple gun story.
-p.256-"I returned in the middle of the afternoon to discover that she had taken it upon herself to wallpaper the section of the wall near the children's section with illustrations of wild animals she had cut out from an encyclopedia. I despair. She is a law unto herself. ... "I've got a great idea, why don't we turn the shop into a disco?"-Nicky"
-p.263-Customer telephone interaction (ordering a book).
-p.273-"At 10:00 a.m. the first customer came through the door: 'I'm not really interested in books' followed by, 'Let me tell you what I think about nuclear power.' By 10:30 a.m. the will to live was but a distant memory."
Favorite parts:
-p.22-"She has been calling for several years now, and while initially I would read titles to her and try to see if we had anything in stock that she might want, after years of consistently being on the receiving end of her disappointment, I have given up and just invent titles now."
-p.35-"Really bookish people are a rarity, although there are vast numbers of those who consider themselves to be such. The latter are particularly easy to identify-often they will introduce themselves when they enter the shop as 'book people' and insist of telling you that 'we love books'. They'll wear T-shirts or carry bags when slogans explaining exactly how much they think they adore books, but the surest means of identifying them is that they never, ever buy books."
-p.46-"I am putting a mental jigsaw together of what a hobbit looks like, based on a composite of every customer I have ever sold a copy to."
-p.93-"As he was leaving, I noticed that he was missing his left shoe."
-p.187-"You really would have to be on the most dismal holiday to find the following phrases useful..."
-p.250-Staple gun story.
-p.256-"I returned in the middle of the afternoon to discover that she had taken it upon herself to wallpaper the section of the wall near the children's section with illustrations of wild animals she had cut out from an encyclopedia. I despair. She is a law unto herself. ... "I've got a great idea, why don't we turn the shop into a disco?"-Nicky"
-p.263-Customer telephone interaction (ordering a book).
-p.273-"At 10:00 a.m. the first customer came through the door: 'I'm not really interested in books' followed by, 'Let me tell you what I think about nuclear power.' By 10:30 a.m. the will to live was but a distant memory."