The Uncensored Diary of a Bookseller — guerilla bookselling

“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.”

“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.”  ...

"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...

A MODEST PROPOSALFor preventing Amazon customers from being a burden on the local economy and small business by skinning, boiling and eating them.The Sheriff of Nottingham slips into the book fair through the fire exit to avoid parting with the two euro entrance fee. The fact that he had to claw up a two storey redbrick vertical wall hasn’t damaged his state of perfectly eccentric pompous dress – tweed jacket with leather arm patches, a tightly sealed gothic waistcoat complete with obviously fake pocket watch, a comically long purple scarf, shiny black riding boots, a pair of vintage spectacles defying...

On Black Friday I find myself wandering aimlessly into the second biggest store of the country’s leading bookshop franchise. Perilously wading through a humming crowd looking for some sign that books are still at the centre of the buying mobs’ heart, only to discover three quarters of this ‘bookshop’ is covered by candles, novelty cards and strange pencils. And that’s the part of the store where the mob is congregating, fighting over who gets the last of the twenty percent reduced Bibi Baskin calendars. Back out on the high street (and they’re all starting to look the same), I’m accosted...