Hunting for books

Booker longlist reading brings with it an unreasonable level of frustration.

I made the mistake of looking for a few of the books in the Eason’s in Dundrum Town Centre yesterday, and really should have known better.

For a long time now, Easons has been the bane of my life – it pretends to be a book shop, newsagent, stationery shop and school supply store in one relatively small space and in doing so succeeds in none of its intended purposes. Meanwhile DTC think they have the book shop thing sorted so they don’t get in another supplier. The news that Hughes & Hughes are due to move in soon is an apeasement of sorts but I really hope they’re getting enough space to be browse-worthy.

Anyway back to Eason(’s?) – and the near total absence of booker longlist materials.

I had my list (via iPhone), I went to the three shelves of non-bestseller fiction. I stared in vain.

Then, after much use of expletives, I thought “wait a second, two of these are Irish”. So I move to the small little ‘Irish fiction’ section (admirable if tiny).

Sebastian Barry…start of the B’s…top shelf…right between… eh… where’s Sebastian Barry?

That’s my question for today: where is Sebastian Barry?

I’m not looking for all of his work, I’m no longer even looking for the specific booker book. Just show me something that suggests that you haven’t got something against the guy. Just one little copy of one little book.

But no. No Sebastian Barry. None.

As I slumped out of the shop in a misery I spotted a copy of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, so I got a little less grumpy, but there’s no fun in buying only one of the booker longlist at a time. It seems less triumphant.

So I’m reduced to heading off to Borders at the weekend and giving my book money to a nasty multinational with a big warehouse full of books…

Whimper.