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Christmas preparation means something different to everyone. It might be hanging tinsel on a tree that smells of pine needles, or sitting through a school concert until your kid finally troops on stage. And it almost certainly means a harried hunt for gifts, for everyone from “my ten-year-old niece I see once a year, who likes dogs” to “my father-in-law who’s really into politics”.
I’ve worked in bookshops on and off for the past 30 years. Many of my most vivid Christmas memories involve unpacking boxes at speed, gift-wrapping as muscle memory … and helping people match books to their hazy descriptions of family members (and then enabling their urge to throw in a Boxing Day recovery read).
I’ve never felt more alive – albeit exhausted – at Christmas than when spending the festive season working in a bookshop, sneakers on my feet and tinsel in my hair.
In this week’s Friday essay, Rose Michael reflects on her past life as a bookseller and her dreams of opening her own bookshop, while taking us through a selection of translated books set in that world, from the international bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul to the Tokyo-set Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. She also muses on the romance and reality of bookshop work.
Like me, Rose loved “handselling” – the “storytelling exchange” of matching books to customers. “Reader, I had been training for this my whole life,” she writes. And she recalls the physical labour. Books about bookshops – now a genre of their own – describe the day-to-day work as sustaining and life-changing. They’re a kind of romance of a more authentic life.
The reality, Rose writes, is a little different. She cites former bookseller Freya Howarth on the emotional labour involved – smiling, listening, suggesting. It’s working with books, but it’s still retail. Every bookseller has stories of smiling while being insulted. My favourite is a celebrity who was banned from one bookshop for his habit of mocking staff for “wasting” their arts degrees while they paper-bagged his purchases. And it’s true the pay is … well, retail wages.
While books are idealised as escape and reading romanticised as transformative, Rose reflects, bookshops are ultimately there to sell. This is especially true at Christmas: more than 20% of most bookshops’ annual sales happen in November and December.
The fantasy might be fanciful – but nevertheless my future lottery riches are still earmarked for my own neighbourhood bookshop. And reading about them is still a satisfying escape for booklovers.
A speaking of books (and specifically ones that make the perfect Christmas gift), our 2023 yearbook, A Year of Consequence, edited by our International Affairs Editor Justin Bergman, is available now from Thames & Hudson and all good bookshops. Happy reading!
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