`The world's most trusted dictionaries." These, according to their own blurb, are published by Oxford University Press. Funny term, that, the world's most trusted dictionaries. Sounds like other lexicons are a bit suspect, like being light-fingered with the family silver, or in danger of running off with your comely spouse.
Anyway, these trustable people have just published their first Oxford Irish Mini-dictionary, for £3.99 in the UK. Ireland must have made it to the cutting edge of cool when even the OUP wants to get in on our act. Essential, it says, for "holiday makers, travellers, and business people."
No foreign stag or hen party will henceforth be complete without an Oxford Irish sticking out of every pocket. They missed out one key phrase, though: you may look, but you will not find that Celtic Tiger prowling through these pages.
God help us, but there's a misery limit in us all, and the quota in Sadbh is just about full. Ever since Angela's Ashes made pots of money and a Pulitzer Prize out of slumming it, memoirs of wretched childhoods have been eagerly whining off the presses.
You won't want to be bringing Dennis Smith's A Song for Mary ("odyssey of bewilderment, anger, and discovery - from tenement to prairie and back to the hard streets of a burning Bronx") or Jacki Lyden's forthcoming Daughter of the Queen of Sheba ("vividly captures the horror of her mother's illness and the seductive, transporting power of her insanity") to the beach with you.
Both dust-jackets carry mentions of your man, Frank McCourt, who gave Limerick a lot to live down to. Expect yet more of this feel-good stuff when the film of Angela's Ashes turns up at your local cinema.
Jacki Lydon
Dennis Smith
Given the long-established success of talking books on tape and the breakneck speed of developing technology, it's only surprising that literature on CD-ROM hasn't come to us earlier. Picador, whose poetry list is now two years old, has just released its modestly-titled The Best Poetry CD in the World . . . Ever!
There are 18 poems by 18 poets on this CD, read by Jan Carey, Billy Collins, Michael Donaghy, Don Paterson, and Christopher Venning. Among those represented are Carol Ann Duffy with her long, enthralling Mrs Midas; Wendy Cope, who has the two-line Fireworks Poem; and Irish poets Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, and Eilean Ni Chuilleanain.
The CD is doing the rounds of booksellers, sales reps, and literary hacks, as a promotion for Picador's poetry list. If the response is good enough, they'll be pressing lots more poetry CDs for the general public. Something to listen to on Sunday mornings when you're weary of those talking head mantras coming out of the radio.
Everyone's gone potty about the new Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This children's book, which was finally released last week after a strict embargo, is selling by the 46A busload-o. Forget that Hannibal creature. Harry Potter is the man of the month.
Like Tintin and Asterix, the Harry Potter books have attracted a huge adult following. For those grown-ups afeared of being seen on the DART and 46A with a lowly kiddies' book under their oxter, Bloomsbury has published "adult style" editions of both Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
These titles are one and three in the UK adult paperback fiction lists this week, and the Prisoner of Azkaban is at Number One in the hardback adult fiction list. The Prisoner of Azkaban alone sold 70,000 copies in three days. Look out for Harry Potter books on the beach: the ultimate family titles.
Irish publishers are cross. So says the most recent edition of The Bookseller. Cross about what? Cle, the Irish publishers association, is fed up with the current copyright Bill which requires that 13 copies of each book they publish must be sent to certain libraries, such as Trinity and the National Library.
Cle is arguing that 13 copies is about 11 copies too many in its, ahem, book. Thirteen copies a go each time a book is published can translate into a considerable amount of money for small publishers, particularly when it comes to expensive academic or art titles with small print runs. The case is pending.