REMAINDERS OF THE DAY

After 20 years running The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, Shaun Bythell's life is spent roaming the bookshelves picking online orders, poetry nights by the log fire, and frequent drop-ins from friends and former colleagues with the latest gossip from the small town. Mostly. Apart from the familiar stream of antiquarian porn-hunters, die-hard trainspotters, and toddlers just looking for a nice cosy corner in which to urinate, Shaun must contend with Granny's antics, the frantic rush to organise the Wigtown Book Festival, and the town's only pub changing hands. To say nothing of Sandy the Tattooed Pagan. Customers come and go, whether they've paid or not, but there's never a quiet moment and Wigtown's Pepys gives us the lowdown, a perfect read for every bibliophile. The daily diary records online orders, books found, till total and number of customers per day. Crammed with literary nuggets and musings, for example on Walton's The Compleat Angler with its one page printed upside down so two singers can face each other while singing together! Shaun could find a copy online from a New York dealer at a price of £47,221.25. 377pp.