Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire

This book has a clever title that makes it difficult to search for; engines will assume you have made a typo and offer confidently incorrect results. Luckily, the author's last name is much less common, and less likely (in my searching) to be turned into something else.

Oliver Darkshire came into the august London antiquarian bookseller Sotheran's (founded 1761) as an apprentice about a decade ago. A few years later, he took over their Twitter feed - it sounds like he generally took responsibility for the company's social media and maybe website, in the way that very old and very settled companies tend to dump such things on the youngest and most junior employees - and made a notable success of it.

Because of that, he got a book deal. Some Twitter book deals were "the Twitter feed, in book form," but the Sotheran's feed was one part "here's a weird thing we have for sale in the store," one part "here's a weird interaction with a customer" and several parts sparking conversation among other bookstore people and readers - and a lot of that isn't book-able easily. So, instead, Darkshire wrote a memoir.

Once Upon a Tome is the story of his time at Sotheran's - I see from taking a quick peek at the account today that the shop recently moved locations after about eighty years in one place, and that Darkshire is leaving Sotheran's as well, so it's clearly the story of this one chapter in his life, beginning to almost end.

Darkshire is one of those bookish but not university-educated people that seem to be more common in the British Isles than on my side of the Atlantic, for reasons I always assume are class-related most of the time. (Darkshire, though, talks about his narcolepsy in this book, and blames that for his academic failures.) He's witty, and good with a turn of phrase, which is exactly what a reader is looking for in a book about working in a bookshop that sells old random books.

We have an image of such places, I mean. And of the people that work there. Darkshire doesn't make himself a caricature, but he clearly fits into this milieu, and gives us an entertaining and informative tour through the world of antiquarian bookselling, or at least how he experienced it for the past ten years or so.

Look, you probably knew if you wanted to read this book several paragraphs ago. If "witty memoir by a antiquarian bookseller in London" appeals to you, know that Darkshire hits every note of that well. If not, you've probably already moved on anyway.