The Bookseller's Diary by Sean Bytell is not fiction at all, but a real diary that the owner of a bookstore in the Scottish town of Wigtown (Sean Bytell, of course) kept for a year.
In the diary, Bytell wrote down events in one way or another directly related to work: online orders, dialogues with customers, cases with employees, replenishment of the assortment, preparation for the book fair, which attracts numerous tourists from all over the world to Wigtown, repairs in the room where the bookstore is located, and so on.
Apparently for this reason, the publishing house "ABC", in which the Russian-language translation was published, put the "Diary of a bookseller" in the "ABC Business" series, they say, this is how bookselling works and here is a manual for you if you want to open a bookstore.
Needless to say, as a business literature, this book is completely useless, unless a potential buyer does not know that trading books and especially supported books is unprofitable, it will not bring much money, and there is no need to go into any trade in principle, if you are not ready to constantly communicate with people, answer their sometimes terribly stupid questions and sell them something.
Sean Bytell himself obviously associates himself with the main character of the British sitcom "Black's Bookstore" Bernard Black, he does not hide it, if you look at Bytell's photos on the Internet, it is simply impossible not to remember Dylan Moran in the image of Black. Hence the problems of the "Bookseller's Diary": Bytell is all smart and talented, trying to make fun of his customers, but it doesn't turn out to be funny at all.
The arrogant and rude main character, who sometimes clearly would not hurt to relax and start getting some pleasure from life, especially since he chose the bookselling himself, and, in principle, has skills not only in this area, and if he wanted, he could do something else, personally did not catch me at all, and sometimes also irritated me.
And it would be fine if the situations described by him were really funny, because going to the bookstore is one of the favorite entertainments of people with a joke, but they are completely everyday. It's even strange that from a set of such colorful characters (a strange worker - a Jehovah's witness, a manufacturer of hand-made canes - a pagan, a pessimist postman, a misanthrope bookstore owner, etc.), Bytell eventually did not make anything worthwhile.
Since the diary covers a year in the life of the book, the text is divided into 12 parts, each of which is preceded by an epigraph from the Memoirs of a Bookseller by George Orwell, after which Bytell devotes a couple of pages to a particular topic related to the book trade.
If such reflections, analysis of the current situation of the market, business, assortment, buyers, etc. took up more space, the book would only benefit, since the reader could not only get information about the industry he is interested in, but also, for example, recognize himself in a particular type of buyer.
And so against the background of pieces from Orwell, Bytell's text loses very much, in wit, irony and the ability to notice interesting details, including: Orwell sets the topic, Bytell translates it to the modern situation, but does not develop it in any way.
For the first half of the book, I was desperately waiting for something interesting to grow out of the description of everyday life, a plot will appear in the book, some kind of thematic line will be developed, in general, some kind of conflict will appear, but this never happened, even the autumn book festival, which could well have become the center of the narrative, passed unnoticed by the reader.
Bytell himself, as he was at the beginning of the book, remained so at the end, some wonderful discoveries did not happen during the year he described, big events did not happen. If from the very beginning it was clear that the narrator of the "Bookseller's Diary" does not like people (in general, a frequent situation in bookselling: ardent reading lovers who are willing to work 10-12 hours for a salary of 10 thousand rubles, just with books, as a rule, introverts with misanthropic or sociophobic traits.
Or these traits develop rapidly after they start serving 100+ customers a day), while active extroverts feel like fish in water in trade, not lowering their eyes after the buyer's phrase "advise me something like Dostoevsky"), then I didn't understand anything about the love of books: the feeling that my own bookstore is not a big love, but an established business that brings some income and fits perfectly into the lifestyle.
That's why I couldn't fall in love with the world of a Scottish bookstore with an eternal oak tree and my own cat.
425.159 SRY