The Mr B’s Team – where are they now?
To celebrate twenty years of Mr B’s, we’re taking a trip down memory lane – and popping in to say hi to some familiar faces along the way! Some of our former booksellers reflect on life at B’s, from funny memories and favourite experiences, to bizarre questions and brilliant encounters.
This time, we’re hearing from Rhian, who worked here from 2019 to 2024!
A funny memory from your time at Mr B’s?
Just one? I can think of a couple of very silly ones straight away!
When we first started doing TikToks, Sam was running his rambling book group, so we tried to get him to promote the event on TikTok and he decided the best way to do that was to do the worm. On the floor in the kids’ side. He was weirdly good at it, actually! There was also the time we broke open an ancient locked safe in the vaults hoping for something… well, novel-worthy, I suppose! Sadly it was empty.
What have you been doing since leaving Mr B’s?
Well I’m partway through my MA at Cardiff University so I’m still doing a lot of reading, but a lot of it is about medieval manuscripts nowadays! I’m very lucky that I get to visit lots of museums and castles and go to fascinating conferences and call it work. Here’s a picture of myself and two of Cardiff University’s School of Welsh PhD students attending the Gorwelion conference at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth last year!
Otherwise I’m doing lots of things that I’m sure won’t suprise anyone at Mr B’s in the slightest. I’m spending lots of time writing, learning Welsh, playing DnD, and I work in a bookshop at the weekends. We have a little courtyard garden in Cardiff and I’ve built a vegetable patch and a wildlife pond. I also got diagnosed with ADHD which I suspect will also not be a surprise to anyone who worked with me!
What book did you love recommending the most to Mr B’s customers?
So many! I think the book that I probably recommended the most over the years and never left my rotation was Diane Setterfield’s Once Upon a River. It’s a really beautiful story that blends elements of folklore into a masterful, character-led historical mystery that I just adore.
If not that, then maybe Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession, which I think was on my favourites shelf from the day after I read it until the day I left. I was particularly fond of that one because I would never have discovered it if not for being a bookseller with Mr B’s, and it’s such a quiet, gentle, understated character study that finds such joy in the minutiae of of the everyday.
They were some of my favourites to recommend because I loved them so much, but also because customers would come back and talk to me about what they enjoyed about them, and what the books meant to them, and that was something I appreciated above all else.
What 3 books are currently on your TBR pile?
I’m going to skip the essay collections here (I doubt Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Apocrypha is quite what you meant) and say The Bloody Branch by Brigid Lowe, Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers, and Pagans by James Alistair Henry.
I’m currently partway through Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang which is intense but brilliant. And (you didn’t ask for this, but I can’t turn the bookseller in my brain off so you’re getting it anyway!) my favourite books in the last year have been Hungerstone by Kat Dunn and The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow.
What was the most bizarre question you were ever asked by a customer?
Oh dear, this is testing my memory. We definitely had some really specific book requests, those were always a fun challenge. The strangest ones were usually people asking for directions, honestly! I think the weirdest one was when someone asked me if I was a Saturday person and if I had ever considered going full-time. I was twenty-four and a full timer at that point, and not very impressed!
Unfortunately now I work somewhere much weirder so any gentle Mr B’s oddities have been overshadowed by people asking whether I saw which direction the Mari Lwyd and the Morris Men went, if I’d be willing to sell them the plastic sword out of the window display (no), where the best coffee shop without taxidermy is, if I knew how to catch a pigeon, if I’d ever considered how Jesus felt about the state of my soul, and if I like olives (the last one came from a four year old).
What was your favourite part about working at Mr B’s?
The people. Customers and colleagues alike.