first of all I just want to apologise to all the people whose blogs I follow whose posts I have ignored and whose replies to my comments I haven’t read. Real life got on top of me (I’m not going to share information on here as it’s so public, but please don’t be worried; we’re all OK) and I’ve had to go to Blog Zero. I think I’ve replied to all the comments on here, but I’ve started saving posts to read and comment on from today and missed a load. If there’s something on your blog you think I simply MUST see, drop me a line using whatever means you have, or my contact form. I’ve also reviewed my reading commitments and will NOT be doing 20 books of summer, but will just see how I do there. Running bloggers, if you’re read this far, I will pick up your posts from today.

Right, I had to get back to picking off some NetGalley reads as I realised my review rate was at exactly 80%, which is what they recommend you have – or above. Eeps. But this was the perfect light read, made up of short sections, so ideal in a tiring time.

If you’ve read Bythell’s “Diary of a Bookseller” then you’ll have the idea (my review here). We get tallies of customers and takings, numbers of online orders received and located, trips to buy books and philosophising thereon, and day-to-day tales of the Bookshop, Wigtown and the inhabitants.

There are a few plot points and I won’t give them away, but we do lose two regular characters from Bythell’s life alongside the usual losses and arrivals of small town life. The bookshop cat still prevails. I still wouldn’t dare to go in there, in case I enraged Bythell, but I was very cheered to read in the epilogue that things are going better for the shop now as people realise they need to support “real” bookshops.

A nice comfortable read, even when he’s railing against modern life, methods and Kindles. As with that one about the man who eschewed technology, I feel a bit ironic and uneasy having read this ON my Kindle …

Thank you to Serpent’s Tail for approving me for this book: I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.