Remainders of the Day

Remainders of the Day: More diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown by Shaun Bythell continues the story of the life of a bookshop owner and his day to day routine. This volume covers the year from February 2016 to the beginning of February 2017 in which the author notes the day to day activities in running a bookshop and the people he encounters in the shop and online, buying or enquiring about books. Problems with Amazon also feature throughout the book.

Much of this volume describes the work involved in reviewing collections that people want to sell to the shop - unfortunately many books in these collections are books that people no longer want to read and consequently he does not need in the bookshop.

Wigtown in Scotland has many other bookshops as well as The Bookshop owned by Shaun. Books are an important part of the town including regular book festivals and book talks during the year. How the bookshop owners work together to promote this special feature of their community is described in the book.

Remainders of the Day is an amusing account of the life of a bookshop owner and his cat plus the people who visit The Bookshop.

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops

Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, one of many independent bookshops in the town which is known as Scotland's National Book Town. Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops is the third book in a series describing the customers and recounting the events and challenges encountered when trying to run a second hand bookshop. The challenges were even greater during 2020 with the arrival of COVID-19 and susequent restrictions.

In this short book, Shaun lists some of the characteristics of people who visit the shop or bring books that he might want to purchase, providing examples of incidents that may occur. Types of people mentioned include experts, loiterers, occultists, people with young children, travellers, craft enthusiasts, whistlers, hummers, sniffers ...

The book did answer a question that had puzzled me.On my Facebook page I receive posts from The Bookshop and one had described a visit to the shop by Phillip Serrell filming a segment for The Antiques Road Trip. No more information was provided. A few weeks ago I saw the episode where Phil had purchased an Arts and Crafts chair from the shop for £20 and it sold at auction for £200 (profits from the show go to charity). 

Question: why did Phil purchase a chair from a bookshop? The answer is revealed on pages 56-58 of the book.The chair had been donated to Shaun by a craft enthusiast so he stored it in a corner of the shop which was where Phil found it. Apparently the original owner of the chair was not concerned when she saw her chair on TV. She later told Shaun that she hoped it had found a good home.

 Other books by Shaun Bythell include The Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller.

Confessions of a bookseller

This is the second volume about Shaun Bythell's life as a second-hand bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland. It is therefore the sequel to The diary of a bookseller. Shaun Bythell also has a Facebook page, The Booshop, in which he regularly publishes updates of his experiences with customers.

Each chapter covers a month from January 2015 until the end of December. At the commencement of each chapter is a quote from Augustus Muir's book, The intimate thoughts of John Baxter, bookseller (1942) followed by the author's comments on the passage. He then includes daily sections from his diary of sales, the weather, comments made by customers, life in Wigtown plus the activities of his cat, Captain. An important part of a second-hand book shop is the need to access collections of books as possible stock for sale and this takes up much of his time. Increasingly he also (much to his disgust) has to rely on sales of books via online sellers such as Amazon.

The two volumes provide a commentary not only on the state of the book trade but also on life in a small town in Scotland. Wigtown has a variety of bookshops and book festivals and author events are featured during the year. The bookshop is a central part of the community with a number of groups regularly meeting in the building, especially in the room upstairs. This is not, therefore, just an amusing account of the experiences of someone trying to make a living selling second-hand books. It is also a record of living in a small Scottish community in 2015.

The Diary of a Bookseller

Shaun Bythell purchased The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, in November 2001. From February 2014 the author decided to keep a diary for the year about life working in a second-hand bookshop. At the beginning of each month Shaun Bythell includes a line or paragraph from Bookshop Memories written by George Orwell in 1936. He then elaborates on Orwell's comments relating them to experiences in The Bookshop.

Shaun Bythell comments (makes observations) about his staff, customers, people wanting to get rid of book collections and Kindle which he dislikes intensely. Throughout the book there are interesting observations about the current state of publishing, viability of bookshops such as his and the inroads being made via the digitisation of books. He is definitely not impressed with people who spend time in the shop examining his stock then leave without purchasing any items. He is well aware that they are going to look for a similar item online. On one occasion he also make an 'observation' about librarians.

Wigtown is renowned for its bookshops. Currently there are 14 bookshops in this small town and the owners work together as the Association of Wigtown Booksellers.  The Wigtown Book Festival is held in September each year and Shaun Bythell describes his involvement in this annual event.The Wigtown Spring Festival is also held in May. Having just read the novel, The Red Coast, where many of the characters are involved in organising the Broom Literary Festival, it was interesting to read about the work involved in organising an actual book festival.

The author is not always polite about some of the characters who enter the shop but he defends himself by saying that he is just 'making observations'. Many of the observations are amusing and this work does provide a description of the state of the book trade today. For those interested in physical books, this work is well worth reading.

Bookshop Memories in Collected Essays volume 3 by George Orwell (Adelaide University ebooks).
[Librarians will recognise and sympathise with some of Orwell's observations.]

Wigtown Book Town

The Bookshop also has a page on Facebook