Читать книгу Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell - Страница 68

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At 9.30 a.m. a vast man in red cords marched into the shop and asked, ‘Tell me, is Whithorn open today?’ Whithorn is a town of similar size and appearance to Wigtown. It’s about 12 miles further down the peninsula. I’m still slightly confused about whether or not a town can be considered open or closed, unless it’s under quarantine.

After lunch a couple with two young children came in. The children went straight for a book that came in last year, and which I recently put on a display stand on a table. The book is called Fausto, impresiones del gaucho Anastasio el Pollo en la representación de esta ópera, and was published in Buenos Aires in 1951. The fascination for children, though, is that it is an unusually tactile book. It is bound in leather which has been cured, but the hair from the cowhide hasn’t been scraped off, making it look like an animal skin, which of course it is. This technique produces what is colloquially known in the trade as a ‘hairy binding.’

Today was a warm, sunny day, and shortly before lunchtime a butterfly started to fly around the shop.

Till Total £163.50

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