This first book of Shaun Bythell - The Diary of a Bookseller - has three things that I love dearly:
⁃ Bookshops (it's hard for me to resist books about books and bookshops)
⁃ Wigtown (which is my favourite book town and a place I want to visit besides Hay on Wye)
⁃ Scotland (I heard so many things about this country since my partner's maternal side is Scottish and I love its ancient beauty back when I was a teenager.)

The author’s wryly humour, extensive knowledge and careful observations are the charm of this book. I love the fact that I can learn along with every page about the book trade which I had no ideas about. It was a delightful read but when I came to read the Epilogue, it was bittersweet: Every entry of this book is a fleeting yet beautiful moment of someone’s real life and it could never be the same again.

Thanks to Shaun, I am reminded of how important it can be for us to support small bookshops and also felt utterly motivated to pick up my diary after a few months.

If you like this book by Shaun Bythell, I also recommend you to listen to an episode of Got Books? podcast with Shaun Bythell as its first guest and a blog post on Wigtown Book Festival in which he shared some diary entries during the lockdown.