CONFESSIONS OF A BOOKSELLER

Wigtown bookshop proprietor Shaun Bythell turned his morose musings on the future of second-hand book dealing into a surprise bestseller with

The Diary of a Bookseller in 2017. And now he has followed it up with an equally entertaining and misanthropic sequel, also in diary form. ‘Enjoyably jaundiced’ was how Philip Boakes in the Times described it, while the Scotsman’s Stuart Kelly thought it ‘reinforces Shaun Bythell’s persona as the archetypally grumpy owner of Scotland’s largest secondhand bookshop’.

In the Guardian, PD Smith was captivated by tales of woe: ‘his

‘His staff and customers alike regard him as a curmudgeonly enigma’

disintegrating relationship with his partner (“I find it hard to see a future except as a cantankerous curmudgeon, living alone”), life in Wigtown and fishing in the local rivers (“it’s the perfect antidote to everything”) are wonderfully droll and often hilarious. It’s the kind of authentic humour that has been honed by years of infuriatingly close contact with the great book-buying general public.’ Adam Douglas in the Literary

Review also had his cockles warmed: ‘Picturesque scenery, hard work in uncomfortable surroundings, eccentric locals, the yearly round: all the ingredients for a gentle human comedy are here, as soothing as a bag of boiled sweets and just as tempting to dip into.

‘Bythell glowers past his till at a world in slow free fall. His staff and customers alike regard him as a curmudgeonly enigma. Internet uploads fail, customers annoy him with impossible requests and fatuous observations, a massive rock crashes through his leaky roof. Bythell’s suppliers of saleable stock are a fading, ghostly crew, forever succumbing to dementia, old age and death.’