A review by ardenwhit
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

3.0

I was so utterly disappointed in this book after seeing such great reviews here. I enjoyed the grumpy author and the cast of characters, and I even enjoyed the quirky folk who came to visit the bookstore. Unfortunately, I just felt like there wasn't a real story here - no plot to speak of, whatsoever. I would have preferred the book to be about 150 pages shorter and have been comprised of short stories rather than a journal/diary format. So much of what he describes is so mundane - hundreds of cups of tea, entries on who is working the shop that day (I'm not sure why we care about this?) and boring descriptions of software that stops working. I really wanted to like this book about books as a lover of second-hand books and reading but this feel painfully short for me.