Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops

Great fun, this snippet into the life of a frustrated bookseller was clearly going to be a third diary, much like the previous two, but generously our author was allowed to fill out this stop in his contract with something else, what with coronasniffles and one thing and another. Here, he berates everyone he doesn't want through his doors – which, if you believe his shtick, is everyone who fails to buy his entire stock, property, every ounce of earthly belongings and his soul. The self-aggrandizing expert, who is the only specialist in acorn callouses, or something, and finds it galling (pun unintentional) that there's not a shelf devoted to books about them; the couple in search of free parking for their offspring while they naff off elsewhere; the person who spent too many evenings ogling Gillian Anderson and her sceptical, motherly ways – oi, stop talking about me dammit. We get callbacks to his staff of old which are almost quaint if we've got to know their ways from volumes prior to this; we get the usual sense of the shop as a place that almost acts as repository for the unwanted, selling things almost by accident; and we see the usual acerbic approach from its head – which is actually quite understandable, and relatable, and entertaining. It's definitely on the slight side – an audio version could be two hours, max – but it is worth a browse when you want something light-hearted and suitably bookish.