A life in books | 02.11.2026 10:27
It’s the slimmest of paperback pickings for November which includes two reissues, one to coincide with the publication of its long-awaited follow up, but I’m beginning with John Tottenham’s Service which follows John, a Los Angeles bookseller who’s failed at journalism and writing fiction. Now in his late forties, he’s dismayed at working in something he considers beneath him, irritated by his privileged customers’ demands, out of step with his younger colleagues and much of the rest of the world. ‘With dry wit, John Tottenham’s debut novel reflects on a farrago of contemporary afflictions: gentrification, debt, self-medication, male vanity, professional jealousy, the perils of political correctness, and the role of literature in the digital era’ says the blurb. I can’t resist a bookselling novel.
