Confessions of a Bookseller: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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Anyway, it's a cute book although it does get dull in spots. I mean no one's life is that interesting 365 days a year but his life is pretty darn close. I mean visiting places and looking through their book collections to buy, working in an actual store and reading actual books seems ideal to me. Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown Bythell is a skillful writer . . . he creates a full, appealing world populated with colorful characters. The Scottish landscape—geese flying over the salt marsh, the meandering river where he likes to fish—is gorgeous . . . an endearing and thoughtful book.” Third, the plot was kind of boring, nothing different from all other books with a similar concept. Didn't have any stand out moments. Inside a Georgian townhouse on the Wigtown highroad, jammed with more than 100,000 books and a portly cat named Captain, Shaun Bythell manages the daily ups and downs of running Scotland’s largest used bookshop with a sharp eye and even sharper wit. His account of one year behind the counter is something no book lover should miss.

Confessions of a Bookseller: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

The approach is in diary-form from 1st January to 31 December 2015 where the year starts with the shop, which is located in the Scottish town of Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway, closed for New Year's Day. The shop's place in Wigtown is well described, as we see the various life of the town interact with the people - and tourists - and see how Shaun plays his part in festivals and other's initiatives and events. For me, in the end, there was just something missing. That said, this might simply be my being the wrong reader for this novel. Overall, Fawn is a unique character that will stay with me for a while, but then I'm rather fond of eccentric older female characters. Four stars and not five because I found the ending a little too convenient and a little too happily-ever-after. Not that I begrudge Fawn a little lightness and optimism for the future, it just didn't fully ring true to me. Bythell remains an unwavering correspondent whose daily rambles reminds us of the joy in real bookshops.”Her head lived in another reality, where she corresponded as a wealthy lady of leisure, even while she was trying to survive on meager earnings in her dusty and moldy bookstore, in a building that was falling apart around her. Most novels I’ve read don’t dig quite as deeply into the past as this, and the few that do don’t in … Next comes her dynamic with Richard, a fellow librarian and her ex boyfriend. She has been very mean to her and has been practically tagging him along with a lie about his father's death. I n the coastal Scotland community of Wigtown, tourists can pay to operate a bookstore called The Open Book for a week or two and live in an upstairs apartment, fulfilling their dream to run their own bookshop. The rental attraction is typically booked years ahead, proving that running a bookstore is a popular dream for bibliophiles. There are some beautiful lines on family, lost childhood, priorities, and empathy. Made me wonder, we only know parts of the exchanges, and still form a solid image of the characters, develop love and hatred for them, how opinionated and judging we are! That is exactly what I loved about the story too, a very good read, a very critical one too on the protagonist, that doesn't show an all positive or all negative person as the head.

‘Confessions of a Bookseller’ Review: A Second-Hand Life

Something I do appreciate about any book is if it continues to evolve after I have completed it. This one did. Did anyone else wonder about her poor old tenant? Did she really exist? Was she actually alive (creepy thought of Psycho in my head)? Notice that she never opened that box of old Valentine candy. Was George really traveling with her? No one saw him but Fawn. Fawn is not an altogether likeable character but I admit I got quite fond of her as I got to know her. I am generally intolerant of unsympathetic characters unless they are strong or interesting, and thankfully Fawn is both. In the words of Little Edie of Grey Gardens, Fawn is a "staunch character". When everything around her is collapsing and going to hell in a handbasket, she does not give up and keeps coming up with increasingly absurd ideas to save her business. In the process, she grows as a person and finally develops a sense of perspective in relation to her past, her childhood, and who she is as a person. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.This just has me feeling all sorts of tingly and good throughout. Its one of those books you could curl up in front of a fire and let the hours slide by being completely engrossed in Shaun's book shop and everything his days entail. We will all miss a high street containing proudly independent bookshops when they are forced to shut their doors Fawn was not a nice person, though she thought she was. Hints are given along the way, especially in her journal, for her distorted view of the world and people around her. only toward the end, after what should have been a personal tragedy , did she begin to see her childhood and her family in a different light. It is endlessly entertaining and genuinely laugh out loud in places. Customers, those oh so wanted people, come in many shapes and sizes and we learn of their foibles, manners and interests. There are descriptions of regular customers, as well as many who drive the author to despair.