I am forever talking about the bargains to be found in the main bookstores, and they're very much in evidence at the moment. Hodges Figgis, for instance, currently have prices slashed all over the shop, and the same will be true of Eason when its summer sale starts next Monday.
In the latter, to take just a few examples, you'll be able to buy the hardback first edition of Colm Toibin's most recent novel, The Story of the Night, reduced from Pounds 15.99 to Pounds 4.99, with William Trevor's latest collection of stories, After Rain, being given the same drastic mark- down. And many of the elegantly produced and authoritatively edited hardback Everyman Classics are being sold off at an amazing, if somewhat worrying, Pounds 1 each.
I say worrying because these bargains, though good news for booklovers in the short run, are obviously not really good news for publishers or retailers - why would commercial operations sell off their product (for that's what it is) at rock-bottom prices if they could get more for it? In other words, this suggests a crisis in the industry, and that's good news for nobody in the long run.
However, I can't say I'm surprised, given that far too many books are being produced. I don't know why this should be so, though it seems to me that publishers, many of whom know very little but are terrified of missing out on the next Irvine Welsh, Nick Hornby or Roddy Doyle, are accepting anything that comes their way in the hope (the generally forlorn hope) that they will hit pay-dirt with one of these new authors, whether it be Peter Piffle from Portsmouth or Seamus Shovelit from Skerries.
Last year in Britain a total of 101,504 books were published, including 9,209 new works of fiction and 2,311 volumes of poetry. Who reads these books? If a particular author and publisher are very lucky, large numbers do, but the vast majority of these 101,504 books probably had an audience that didn't extend far beyond the author's family and friends and that thus lost oodles of money for their publishers.
And thus you have bargains galore in the bookshops. I'll continue bringing you news of the most interesting of these, and I think you should snap them up while they're available, because the golden age currently being lived in by the book-buyer probably isn't going to last much longer - not if mark-downs of between 300 and 1,000 per cent are anything to go by.
SPEAKING of which, perhaps our new Arts and Culture Minister might persuade the Arts Council to do something many of us have been proposing for a long time: offer grants and bursaries to certain writers on the undertaking that they agree to desist from writing anything - Pounds 10,000 if they stop for a year, Pounds 100,000 if they give it a rest permanently.
The initial cost might seem daunting (there are lots of candidates to be considered), but think of the long-term benefit to the well-being of the nation and you'll know it makes sense.
STILL, there's one form of writing that perhaps should be encouraged in this over-active literary country of ours. I'm thinking of the political memoir, of which there are very few Irish examples - off the top of my head, I can only recall two such efforts in recent years, both intriguingly by Fine Gaelers: Gemma Hussey and Garret FitzGerald.
In Britain, on the other hand, every second politician of note (or notoriety) comes out with at least one volume of political memoirs, and very entertaining they often are, dishing the dirt on their rivals and colleagues with a candour that's frequently breathtaking.
You don't get that here. Perhaps Ireland is too small a country to tolerate an Alan Clark taking delight in savaging all around him, but must our only attempts at the genre be quite as cautious, if thoughtful and decent, as those by Gemma and Garret?
You can, of course, read The Collected Speeches of Charles J. Haughey (yes, there is such a book), but that's not quite what I mean, either, and sadly the private thoughts of CJH are likely to remain just that.
A pity, because if dull old John Major can expect, as reported, to gain up to Pounds 2 million for writing his memoirs, CJH could easily make, let's say, Pounds 1.3 million if he ever decided to put pen to paper and tell it like it was.
IS nothing sacred? Well, commercially, the Bible isn't, not any more anyway. Last week blockbuster king Sidney Sheldon out-stripped the good book in translation achievement - he enters the Guinness Book of Records as the most translated author of all time, with 275 million books sold in 180 countries in 56 languages. Just thought you'd like to know.