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Start giftingA Factotum in the Book Trade
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreThe bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it's because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires.
A memoir of a life in the antiquarian book trade, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey between the shelves—and then behind the counter, into the overstuffed basement, and up the spine-stacked attic stairs of your favorite neighborhood bookshop. From his childhood in rural Ontario, where at the village jumble sale he bought poetry volumes for their pebbled-leather covers alone, to his all-but-accidental entrance into the trade in London and the career it turned into, poet and travel writer Marius Kociejowski recounts his life among the buyers, sellers, customers, and literary nobility—the characters, fictional and not—who populate these places we all love. Cataloging their passions and pleasures, oddities and obsessions, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey through their lives, and a story of the serendipities and collisions of fate, the mundane happenings and indelible encounters, the friendships, feuds, losses, and elations that characterize the business of books—and, inevitably, make up an unforgettable life.
Marius Kociejowski is a poet, essayist, and travel writer. Among the books he has written are The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey and a sequel, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus. His first collection of poetry, Coast was awarded the Cheltenham Prize. His other books include God's Zoo: Artists, Exiles, Londoners, The Pebble Chance: Feuilletons and Other Prose, Zoroaster's Children: and Other Travels, and Collected Poems. He is also author of travel book, The Serpent Coiled in Naples. He lives in London, England, where until recently, he worked as an antiquarian bookseller.
A. W. Miller was a voice actor before he even knew what he was doing. From a young age he started performing character voices for the entertainment of his friends and family. Then he forgot he could do all that until he started working as the creative services director for several radio stations. But he wouldn't find his permanent footing in voice acting until after he was halfway through a fifteen-year teaching career and his wife said to him one day: "Hey, have you thought about being an audiobook narrator?" After picking up his dropped jaw, Miller and his wife converted a closet into a professional home studio and then he never looked back. For almost a decade he's been lending his voices to audiobooks, video games, and commercials. He is a father, husband, homesteader, and a published author. He's so passionate about audiobooks that he taught his wife to edit and now they are the dynamic VO duo! Miller lives with his wife on their five-acre homestead in middle Tennessee, where they care for their two heifers, pigs, thirty-ish chickens, and a menagerie of cats and dogs.