I found this wickely witty field guide to bookstore customers - from the Person Who Doesn't Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover) to the harried Parents Secretly After Free Childcare - in one of my favourite op-shops. It was still in mint condition meaning it had never been read or the previous owner treasured it so much that he took extra care with it. I like to think that it was the latter as it is a real gem.
The author, Shaun Bythell, also wrote "The Diary of a Bookseller" and "Confessions of a Bookseller", and, yes, you guessed it, I've already ordered them. I've been lucky to have found this one in an op-shop; to find the others there would be too much of a lucky streak even for me.
P.S. Shaun Bythell is the owner of "The Bookshop" in Wigtown, which, as a nice lady on facebook pointed out to me, "is known as Scotland’s ‘Book Town’ and as well as all those bookshops (most of them second-hand), there is (in normal years) an annual international book festival and regular other literary events. There is also a bed and breakfast place where you don’t just have a holiday, you also get to run the attached bookshop as part of the package. I now live a 40-minute drive from the wonder that is Wigtown and met Shaun Bythell last year when we were house-hunting. His is one of about a dozen bookshops in that very small town and it is not even my favourite one. The road between our home and Wigtown will be a well travelled one." Thanks, Helen Gage! And here it is: https://www.wigtown-booktown.co.uk/. Amazing! A town after my own heart (if it weren't for the appalling weather!)
But wait, there's more:
