Scotland’s largest second-hand book shop, imaginatively named “The Book Shop”, sits in the little town of Wigtown, and is owned by Shaun Bythell, who demonstrated not much of a head for business in buying the establishment in 2001.
The shop has forged a stubborn path through economic depression, the threat of annihilation by the rise of online book stores and a cast list of staff who hijack its social media accounts and confuse its customers.
Bythell’s diary is one of the funniest and most honest books you’ll read this year. It’s a real treat for book nerds, with stories of obnoxious customers, occasional discoveries of rare literary gems and the extermination of a Kindle by shooting, and proudly mounting it as a trophy in the shop.
Bythell also helps to host the annual Wigtown literature festival which runs on buckets of good will, enthusiasm and a bit of dumb luck, and sounds like precisely the place George Orwell would have eulogised in his Bookshop Memories.
