Confessions of a Bookseller

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Irreverently funny ... kept me giggling all week.' - Scotland on Sunday

"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 friendsuntil the small hours. -- Philip Boakes Times
The best parts are irreverently funny and only borderline legal ... he is certainly not self-serving in terms of writing about what he sees as his own failures and weaknesses ... has kept me giggling all week. -- Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday
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
Written with caustic wit...a diverting and congenial read. -- Jackie Law Bookmunch

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.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Irreverently funny ... kept me giggling all week.' - Scotland on Sunday "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.

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