The Uncensored Diary of a Bookseller — diaryofabookseller

“Suddenly there shot along the path before me a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued—but it was only the flames, rising in supernatural splendour to consume the mansion, and the secrets, of the man who collected Poe.”

I recently came into ownership of a first edition copy of Bookselling by Thomas Joy. This textbook for the bookseller has now fallen into obscurity, with only anoraks like me still vaguely interested. This one is of more interest however, as it carries two inscriptions of note for a bookseller like me. The first is a signature from the author made out to Doreen Enright, with the legend, ‘all good wishes for happy bookselling.’ This is dated April 23rd 1955. The second description is ‘John Jackson, from Doreen Jackson 1978.’ This would seem to be the now married and elder...

“God’s make their own importance” – Patrick Kavanagh   The Cribber Kelly has mounted a one woman protest against St Patricks Day outside the bookshop. The Cribber claims that St Patricks Day has become an excuse for the rest of the world to culturally misappropriate the very worst stereotypes of Irishness – leprechauns, drunkenness, brown paper envelopes, etc.   “I see the Cribber is at it again,” Flash says, staring out the window, making no attempt to hide his nosiness. “Last week it was the refugees she was moaning about, week before it was misogyny. Hard to keep up.”  ...

Mosley is after getting himself hired as a sensitivity reader for Puffin. It’s a freelance job, now very much in demand, as legacy publishing houses scurry to scrub out anything even remotely offensive from their back catalogue.   “I’m a very sensitive person Wally,” Mosley tells me, as he runs around the bookshop waving a permanent marker menacingly at vintage paperbacks. “I was the first person in school to have a gay pen pal you know. A big fan of Chris De Burgh he was and I didn’t hold it against him. Sure, I stopped replying to his letters for...

"It is wonderful and magnificent that the gathering of books in this country is not in the hands of college professors and great scholars. It is paradoxically but true that not a single library in the world has been formed by a great scholar.” ASW Rosenbach   There’s a mild-mannered man who comes into the bookshop every lunchtime to browse. His preferences are eclectic. He never seems to browse the same shelf twice or gravitate towards a particular section. His movements are erratic, random, maybe even doddering.   Flash told me once that the man had lost his memory while...