Oliver DarkshireRecensioni

Funny fellow reveals all about the London rare book trade , its staff, customs, and book hunts.

A funny -- occasionally laugh-out-loud -- and sarcastic book about working in a London rare book shop. Not the best of books in this niche genre (Shaun Bythell's works had me in stitches much more than this one), but still an enjoyable read.

This is a delightful amuse-bouche of a book that unfortunately has made me examine my entire past life and regret I didn’t follow my heart and work at a bookshop, particularly a used bookshop. Oliver Darkshire has a light touch, bringing humour to the teetering near disaster of Sotheran books, the self-proclaimed Oldest Bookshop in the World. (It has been around since 1761, so they might be close to right).
He reminded me of my experiences in London, UK, with the odd light switches and the terrifying open wooden one person elevators. Cellars in London have way too much history in them, as well as dangerous wiring and century-old spiders. He also reminded me of the exotic experience that is Doull’s books in Dartmouth, NS, a place that Sotheran sounds significantly like- and a place I can never enter without being overcome by the need to buy a book on cheese or skeet-shooting or a novel by a forgotten author. Used book stores are the best places in the world.
Darkshire’s vignettes about the shop create that feeling of excitement one gets when stepping over the threshold of a used book store. Adventure awaits!
There’s magic in his description of the antiquarian bookseller’s world, but the best stories are about the people who work in it and the characters who sidle in to try to sell books or demand that they be allowed to sniff them or want one for a present but don’t know on what topic. Laughed out loud a few times, and anyone with retail experience will enjoy the various techniques used to deal with customers. Loved the names he assigned the various clientele.
My only complaint about the book is that it was too short. I wanted to linger in Sotheran’s longer, check that cupboard that hadn’t been opened in decades and see what hid there, see how many desks were concealed…find the gourds….
A fun read, and a wistful one. Many used book stores are barely clinging on these days- and what a terrible loss if we should have to live without them.

While The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller is reminiscent of Shaun Bythell's books about life in the Wigtown bookshop, Oliver Darkshire is more likely to be making fun of himself rather than the customers. There are a few with whom he spars but many of his tales focus on the internal workings of Sotheran's, reportedly the oldest bookstore in the world. Signing on as an apprentice with no experience of bookselling, Darkshire learns in fits and starts from his quirky boss and co-workers. Darkshire has a dry sense of humor, punctuating his prose with silly and sometimes outrageous descriptions, then ending with the perfect punchline.½

Didn't finish at 70%. Lord sees I tried.

This is a nice little memoir about working at a rare and antiquian bookstore. Some of the anecdotes are cute and funny. But the book dragged just a little. All I could think about was clearing out the store and organizing the shelves for them.½

Full of stories about buyers, sellers and staff of an antiquarian book shop in Britain. It might have been more interesting if it was about a general used-books shop, with people and stock more accessible and recognizable to people like me, but then it wouldn't have the quirky story about the doomed fate of a book the bookshop commissioned, a translation with a jewel-encrusted cover.

A Member of The Sotheran's staff for some time who seems to pride himself on being different thant he average British bookseller. He works hard to be a bit of an oddball. He works at his own pace, seems to want to work as little as possible, and yet has definitely helped his firm adopt itself to the internet and social media. Darksire tries sometimes to bei humorous and fails, but most of time his efforts are at least interesting, Where this memoir lacks is in a lack of specifics. He doesn't name names, or, for that matter, book names and, to me, loses a lot of its value in not doing so.

This was a very fun and charming listen full of anecdotes about weird people and the rare bookselling world.½

Oliver Darkshire writes about the wild and woolly world of antiquarian book selling at Sotherans in this humorous memoir of his time there as an apprentice bookseller.

From the odd ducks who work at the store to the memorable customers and everything in between, this is a delightful read. If you like books about books and the people who love them, I highly recommend it.½

Once Upon a Tome is a fun book to read! Witty, humorous and relatable if you work (or worked) in a bookstore. Enjoyed the memoir very much. Highly recommend.

Dryly, wryly entertaining, full of rich and unusual vocabulary (circumambulate!), a peek at the world of rare bookselling. Not, perhaps, as outrageously funny as the @Sotherans twitter account Darkshire transformed, but mildly fascinating nonetheless.

Quotes

I think in order to be a really successful book dealer you probably have to have a gambler's spirit, but I think I'd much rather be moderately successful than suffer the kind of scrutiny placed on the spectacular. (83)

There's a lot to be said about the way the shell of a bookshop influences the people and things inside it, and vice versa. (91)

She had a stare that made you want to go home, head to bed early and wake up as a gigantic beetle, never again to be burdened with the responsibilities of polite society. (144)

This was the Sotheran's hush, that strange, oppressive atmosphere generated around scholarly people who want nothing more than to be left alone with books but are doomed to interact with members of the public. (176)

I think it was at that moment when years of built-up resentment and frustration at completely unreasonable people with utterly nonsense demands broke my willingness to put up with it. (208)

Social media is one of those skills that everyone thinks they'd like to be good at, until they realize that it actually just involves managing thousands of emotional strangers for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. (225)

...expertise is just the end result of a long series of mistakes. (226)

There's a dissonance between how a certain kind of person treats retail workers, and how they treat people they perceive as experts, and in a bookshop people tend to flicker confusingly between the two as if they aren't really sure whether they should keep being rude to you, or if you should start being rude to them instead. (232)

Appendix: Bookshop: The Game (a miniature bookselling RPG)½

What if All Creatures Great and Small, but instead of a vet practice in 1930s Yorkshire, it's a rare book shop in 2010s London?

A humorous look at the world of rare books and the people who sell (and buy) them. The author has a gift for a witty turn of phrase, and there were several passages that kept me chuckling. I enjoyed the short chapters which kept the book moving along nicely from angle to angle. Recommended for fans of Shaun Bythell's bookseller diaries.

Thanks to Netgalley and W. W. Norton & Company for this advance review copy.

Once Upon a Tome is a charming account from Oliver Darkshire of his experience working at Sotheran’s Rare Books and Prints, one of the world’s oldest bookstores.

Founded in York in 1761, Sotheran’s moved to London in 1815, eventually settling into premises in Sackville Street, just off Piccadilly in the heart of London's West End. The store is laid out of three floors, crowded not only with old and rare books, but also magazines, art, maps, and antique bric-a-brac, including a cursed lectern.

Having fled an administrative job in a legal firm to avoid being fired, Oliver joined the staff, aged 20, as a bookseller apprentice. He’d no real intention of remaining in the job for long but stayed for a decade. (Oliver has now left Sotheran’s, moving to the country with his husband, though he still maintains the store’s Twitter feed @Sotherans which he popularised.)

Told through a series of roughly chronological vignettes, Oliver writes warmly about his colleagues, especially his canny late mentor, James; cheekily of his customers categorised as ‘smaugs’, ‘Dracula’s’ or one of a variety of ‘cryptids’; and earnestly of the vagaries of rare bookselling. I found his stories of cataloguing, bookrunners, home visits, ghosts and secret cellars entertaining, and his insights into the store’s trade interesting.

Comparisons to the memoirs of Edinburgh rare bookseller Shaun Bythell are inevitable, and I think Once Upon a Time comes out ahead. Darkshire writes with more evident affection for the store, its trade and its customers, though perhaps that is in part the privilege of being an employee rather than the owner.

A witty, candid, and tender book, Once Upon a Tome is sure to delight bibliophiles everywhere.