Came to me to write a thank you to someone I do not actually know. Reading his books, essentially diaries of his days running a second hand bookshop, I feel like I might know him slightly and really, I do not.
Reading has always been my happy place, and sometimes my refuge. Books are beyond imagination. In them as a child, I visited places I did not yet know existed. Eternally books introduce me to new people, varying ideas, thoughts, beliefs, stories. There are different books for different times. A meaty historical fiction will take me through even the most hectic time, giving me a point of rest and escape. Non-fiction fills me with awe and inspiration for just how much I will never know, a gift of humility. Books that offer a glimpse into the life of another, these books give me invaluable perspective and almost always inspiration, usually in some indirect way.
These two books, set in a town that sounds like a made-up fairy tale of booksellers and people wholly at home in their own skin. Quirky, sarcastic, honest, grumpy, joyous, oblivious, real people having life. At times I thought it might really be a fiction book, so full of characters that cheered me with their humanity, written with candour, wit, and a total lack of pretension. Honest, funny, self-aware, and in a very powerful way kind.
In these times when polarity threatens to destroy humankind, this book was, dramatic as it may seem, a bit of a lifeline for me. I read it with such pleasure, each anecdote a chance to relax and be myself. Every ‘month’, as the book is organized by months, had me laughing out loud, guffawing really, often. Beyond Bythell’s books being delights to read; they offered tens of titles to be researched and read, acted as veritable tour guides to Wigtown and its extraordinary surrounds, and have surely inspired countless visitors to Wigtown, hoping to be one of them myself.
Whatever path may lead you to these books, enjoy them.
Thank you Shaun Bythell, your parents, Granny, Anna, Nicky, Eliot, Sandy the tattooed pagan, and every single personage who populates your books. Sharing your stories is a gift to us all.