Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights

Proud winner of the title of 2008 Independent Bookshop of the Year, Mr B’s Bookshop is a Bath institution. Here. Mr B himself give a flavour of his shop, along with his Book Club recommendation.

“I’m Nic Bottomley, the owner, the joint owner with my wife Juliette, and we’ve come up with a few unusual ways of selling books that are very popular. We do a thing called the Mr B’s reading spa, which is effectively the ultimate personal shopping service for a book lover – tea, cake and lots of chat about books. We’ve got a bath that’s used as a book display, we’ve got something called the reading booth, which I think is the only reading booth in Britain, which is a little sort of hideaway that people can rent by the half hour to take their mug of tea in while they’re choosing their books, so we’re really all about personalising the services, talking to the customers, having fun and enjoying the process of book selling here in Bath.”

“My recommendation for a great Book Club read is The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna. He’s a Finnish author and came out about two years ago and it’s a wonderful fable, a story of small town life but set in Finland just after the Second World War and it features a miller called Gunner and everything the miller does is normal, he restores a dilapidated mill on the edge of town and he’s very nice, he’s very warm, except he likes to howl sometimes very loudly to let off steam, and that ostracises him from the rest of the village and the story is really, although it’s sort of a historical novel, I suppose, with this sort of post World War II setting, and although it’s got that Finnish landscape and all the sort of snowy hamlet scenery and it evokes that sort of really interesting world that most of us know nothing about, what it’s really about is small town prejudice and that could apply anywhere in Britain, anywhere in the world, I suppose, and that’s what I think was the main discussion point when our book group discussed it. They really enjoyed it, most people really had a great time talking about the character, they really warmed to the howling miller himself and really found themselves very anti a lot of the other villagers, but there’s still plenty to discuss. It’s not where which everyone has a universally identical view and especially because it’s got a very sort of quirky kind of last third, which I won’t say any more about in case you read it. But, yes, I really, really loved it and I think if you’ve not sort of dabbled much in translated fiction, which is something we really love here, then it’s a great place to start, it’s one you might not pick up but when you do, you won’t be sorry. “

The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna
Gunnar Huttunen arrives in North Finland after the war and buys a dilapidated mill. Despite being a decent and hard-working Finn, he is also an outsider and an eccentric: prone to mood swings, black depression, high elation, and a general lack of decorum. He puts on performances at the mill for local children at which he specialises in imitating animals and making fun of the village notables. Already prejudiced against him by his jibes, the villagers reserve most ire for the howling which Huttunen indulges in at night, which the local dogs join in delirious chorus. Passionate and outraged by his treatment at the hands of the villagers, it is not long before the accident-prone miller finds that his situation soon spirals out of control...Paasilinna's riotous book revels in a black, rebellious, deadpan humour. It is also a fable about the eternal struggle between freedom and repressive authority.