Book Synopsis
BOOK BASTARD
Confessions of a Small-Town Book Bastard
Thirty-plus years behind the counter of a secondhand bookshop will either break a man or turn him into a legend. Doyce Whisanant became both.
Part memoir, part rant, part love letter to the printed page, Book Bastard drags readers through the wreckage of a life spent selling used books to a public that increasingly can't be bothered to read them. From a childhood soundtracked by Southern gospel and progressive rock, through a combustible stint in law enforcement, to decades running an independent bookstore against a tide of internet lowballers, entitled browsers, and bureaucratic nonsense — this is the unfiltered account of a man who loved books more than he ever learned to tolerate people.
Whisanant doesn't flatter his customers, his hometown, his industry, or himself. He skewers thrift-store scanners, oblivious millennials, meddling city officials, and the slow death of the American bookshop with equal, unsparing relish — while never losing his genuine devotion to the physical book as an object worth fighting for.
Furious, funny, politically incorrect, and packed with the kind of only-in-a-small-town anecdotes you can't invent, Book Bastard is for anyone who's ever worked retail, loved a dying institution, or wondered what really goes on behind an independent bookseller's counter.
Not for the easily offended. Essential for anyone who still believes a bookstore is worth saving.