Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell Narrator: Peter Kenny
Published by Blackstone Audio on 11/10/2020
Genres: Humor, Memoir, Nonfiction
Format: Audiobook
Source: the library
Purchase: Amazon | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Audible | Chirp
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A cantankerously funny view of books and the people who love them. It does take all kinds and through the misanthropic eyes of a very grumpy bookseller, we see them all--from the "Person Who Doesn't Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover)" to the "Parents Secretly After Free Childcare."
From behind the counter, Shaun Bythell catalogs the customers who roam his shop in Wigtown, Scotland. There's the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), Occultists (from Conspiracy Theorist to Craft Woman).
Then there's the Loiterer (including the Erotica Browser and the Self-Published Author), the Bearded Pensioner (including the Lycra Clad), and the The Not-So-Silent Traveller (the Whistler, Sniffer, Hummer, Farter, and Tutter). Two bonus sections include Staff and, finally, Perfect Customer--all add up to one of the funniest book about books you'll ever find.
Shaun Bythell (author of Confessions of a Bookseller) and his mordantly unique observational eye make this perfect for anyone who loves books and bookshops.
Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops
A short, entertaining taxonomy of… well, as the title says, the “kinds of people you find in [secondhand and antiquarian] bookshops.” This short, often funny book is not as informative about the trade itself as Oliver Darkshire’s memoir of the antiquarian book trade, but it is nonetheless an amusing and affectionately misanthropic look at various types of customers, non-buying loiterers, hopeful sellers, and (in a bonus section at the end) staff.* I am well acquainted with secondhand bookshops, having haunted them since my teens; I also worked in a new bookstore for 5 years. Thus, I recognized more than a few of the archetypes Mr. Bythell describes. To my amusement and slight discomfiture, I saw aspects of myself in a few of them—fortunately, those were among the types that Mr. Bythell appreciates, rather than those he finds annoying!
Audiobook review: At 2 hours long, the audiobook flies by—even without increasing the speed of the narration (which I did not.) Peter Kenny does a good job with the author’s narrative voice as well as that of the occasional customer. As an East Coast American, I can say that he doesn’t quite nail a mid-Atlantic accent, but that’s a single sentence out of the entire book. Kenny’s narration is clear and pleasant to listen to, and suits both the topic and the author’s style very well.
*I swear I came up with the “misanthropic” descriptor myself, before I ever read the publisher description!
Challenges: Audiobook Challenge 2026; COYER 2026: Out to Lunch Again; Library Love Challenge 2026
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- Audiobook Challenge 2026
- COYER 2026: Out to Lunch Again
- Library Love Challenge 2026
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