If you like your bookstores warm and cozy and your booksellers chatty, you might not like Shaun Bythell or his shop.
You might, however, like his memoir, which is entertaining and dryly humorous, despite Bythell's apparent loathing of most humans. In particular, he loathes his customers: those who want to chat; those who hang around for hours but don't buy anything; those who try to bargain down prices, and — understandably — those who check their phones to see if they can get the books cheaper on Amazon.
The ideal customer, he tells us, is the steadfast Mr. Deacon, who "never browses and only ever comes in when he knows exactly what he wants." Even better, Mr. Deacon never chats.
Bythell's misanthropic memoir, "The Diary of a Bookseller," covers one year in the life of the Bookshop, his used-bookstore in a drafty, leaky stone house in Wigtown, Scotland.
Over the course of that year, not much happens. He sells some books. The computer goes down. The front window leaks during a driving rain. Bythell's girlfriend (as perky as he is grumpy) visits from London. He drives out into the countryside to buy books from people who are downsizing. His cat goes missing. His cat returns.
And yet, the book is fascinating.
At the end of each entry, Bythell notes how many customers visited that day and how much money was in the till at closing. The amounts are so shockingly low that you wonder how the shop can survive.
Despite Bythell's taciturn ways, I found myself liking him, if only for his eloquent, measured seething about things he cannot control — his messy customers; his quirky staff (assistant Nicky — who calls Bythell "the ginger conundrum" — is constantly shelving books where he cannot find them); and, above all, the "relentless march of Amazon," which, he notes, threatens not only his store, but all bookstores, as well as distributors, publishers and authors.
