Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell review – virtuosic venting

Pantomime misanthropy is tempered with bursts of sweetness in the secondhand bookseller’s latest dispatches from WigtownThere’s a moment in the first season of the short-lived but influential sitcom Black Books in which an elderly customer appears with a box of attractive old editions of classics to sell to Dylan Moran’s crosspatch bookseller Bernard. Barely looking at them, Bernard offers him £40. But they’re worth more than that, the man says. “I know, I know,” Bernard concedes. “But I don’t want them. I’ll have to price them, then, and put them up on the shelves, and store them, and people will come in and ask about them, and buy them, and read them, and come back and sell them and the whole hideous cycle will just go on and on and on ...” He gives the man £40 to take the books away.Shaun Bythell’s dispatches from the Wigtown Bookshop, which he has run for nearly 20 years, read like a knowing riff on the persona of Bernard Black. He started out grousing about his life, pillorying his eccentric staff and venting about his noisome customers on a Facebook page. Then he did the same in his hit Diary of a Bookseller, continued with Confessions of a Bookseller, and here he is – an actual franchise – with a slim little listicle-titled till-point follow-up for the Christmas market. His inner Bernard Black will be heaving a world-weary sigh. The more he parades his contemptus mundi, the more the world loves him.Much steam is enjoyably vented over customers who whistle... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2020-11-11 09:00:33 UTC ]
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December’s Top Reviews of Self-Published Books from BlueInk Review

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Banning bad reviews undermines the very purpose of reviews

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[ Betanews | 2013-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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November’s Top Reviews of Self-Published Books from BlueInk Review

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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October’s Top Reviews of Self-Published Books from BlueInk Review

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-10-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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September’s Top Reviews of Self-Published Books from BlueInk Review

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-09-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-08-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-07-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-06-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-05-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A New Kind of Conference for a New Kind of Author

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Big Green Bookshop owners to open children’s bookshop

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The Language of Survival and Resistance: A Review of Shereen Malherbe’s Yassini Girls, by Zeynep Alp

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[ Engadget | 2024-11-11 13:00:11 UTC ]
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