The Diary of a Bookseller

"Among the most irascible and amusing bookseller memoirs I've read." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Warm, witty and laugh-out-loud funny..." --The Daily Mail

The Diary of a Bookseller is Shaun Bythell's funny and fascinating memoir of a year in the life at the helm of The Bookshop, in the small village of Wigtown, Scotland--and of the delightfully odd locals, unusual staff, eccentric customers, and surreal buying trips that make up his life there as he struggles to build his business . . . and be polite . . .

In this wry and hilarious diary, he tells us the trials and tribulations of being a small businessman; of learning that customers can be, um, eccentric; and of wrangling with his own staff of oddballs. And perhaps none are quirkier than the charmingly cantankerous bookseller Bythell himself turns out to be.

Slowly, with a mordant wit and keen eye, Bythell is seduced by the growing charm of small-town life, despite--or maybe because of--all the peculiar characters there.