Confessions of a Bookseller

A very funny year in the life of a curmudgeonly bookshop owner in Wigtown, Scotland.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
 

"Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?"

Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms.

Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices.

The second volume of memoirs by the Wigtown bookseller Shaun Bythell is as absorbing as the first -- Alan Bennett * London Review of Books *

Bythell has a good ear for the absurd and a mundane telemarketing call becomes comedy gold ... For all Bythell's self-flagellation, he comes across as a generous, largely genial figure. It is hard to go for more than a few pages without finding him cooking for staying guests or drinking with friends until the small hours. -- Philip Boakes * Times *

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. -- Adam Douglas * Literary Review *

Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, and also one of the organisers of the Wigtown Festival. He is the author of two bestselling volumes of diaries: The Diary of a Bookseller and follow-up, Confessions of a Bookseller. His books have been translated into Russia, Italian, Icelandic and Korean, among many other languages.