A heart-warming love letter to books and bookshops, by an amenable fellow turned antisocial old misanthrope“I was in here two years ago and you had a book by Roger Penrose. Do you know what happened to it?” Shaun Bythell – owner of the Book Shop in Wigtown, Galloway – has 100,000 books in stock, sells 20,000 a year, and has handled nearly 1m second-hand books since he bought the shop in 2001. Unsurprisingly, the Roger Penrose volume had not stuck in his mind.Before he entered the book trade at the tender age of 31, he was “amenable and friendly”. Now, after many years of fielding bizarre questions, constant haggling over prices (why is it “acceptable to try to screw the profit out of struggling small businesses” but not supermarkets?), and struggling to survive despite Amazon’s “icy grip” on bookselling, he has been forced to embrace the stereotype of the “impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor”. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-24 10:58:38 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#book shop
#shaun bythell
#tender age
#book trade
#bookseller
The Web magazine will publish an expanded look at books on the first Saturday of each month, as stand-alone book review sections in newspapers have dwindled. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2012-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
With care and craft, the novelist and essayist seeks to summarize Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 art film 'Stalker,' finding elements that will keep the non- cinéaste onboard.Zona Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#geoff dyer
A creepy professor eavesdrops on a woman's therapy sessions and becomes obsessed with her.By Blood Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The death of language is explored via plague-carrying children and their horror-struck parents in a wildly inventive tale by Ben Marcus.Spend too much time with 24-hour news networks and it's easy to feel that exposure to that much talk can make you sick. Taking the idea a few steps further,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#flame alphabet
#ben marcus
In 'Enemies: A History of the FBI,' Tim Weiner ('Legacy of Ashes') offers a scathing indictment of the FBI, before J. Edgar Hoover and since.Each week, the FBI sends reporters an email of "top ten news stories" that it hopes will hit the headlines. The press releases usually highlight crooks... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#press releases
Tracie McMillan takes us to agricultural fields, Wal-Mart and Applebee's, where she works short stints and tries to eat healthfully on meager pay.The American Way of Eating Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
Thomas Mallon's novel deftly paints a picture of 1970s America and adds an imaginative back story to the characters.Watergate Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The author's short stories paint vivid pictures of growing up Filipino American.In a smoke-stained San Francisco hotel room, Felix Starro is making fake blood. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey and a family's violent rise to prominence is given gripping life.On a morning in August 2007, a slender masked man ran up to Chauncey Bailey on an Oakland sidewalk and fired two shotgun blasts at the journalist. The first slug tore through Bailey... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The starting gun has been fired in the race to find Britain's best publishers, retailers... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#starting gun
Independent Booksellers Week is to take place over the first week of July, with the Booksellers... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Aperture, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting photography, is gearing up for a big year in 2012. In addition to celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, it has teamed with Paris Photo, the annual French photography fair, to launch The PhotoBook Review, a new biannual publication on... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#60th anniversary
#photography book
The Tip Sheet called up Sarah Bagby, owner of Watermark Books in Wichita, Kan., to find out what’s being exchanged during the annual post-holiday gift-correction season. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#watermark books
An MP has joined the Bookseller Association's calls for the government to respond to the Mary... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#bookseller association
Booksellers are discounting books and ebooks by up to 80% in post-Christmas promotions. Amazon... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Printed book sales soared by 10% (£6.9m) week-on-week during the week before Christmas Day... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#christmas day
The Friday Project's Confessions of a GP has been crowned the top-selling UK ebook of the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#friday project
The Bookseller is launching its annual survey of how independent bookshops have fared with... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#annual survey
#independent bookshops
Indie crime specialist No Exit Press has acquired the sequel to US author James Sallis' Drive... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#exit press
The Booksellers Association has welcomed Mary Portas report into the future of the high... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#booksellers association