Seven of top 10 books sold for Christmas week by Irish authors

HUNGER for a 30-minute meal, a nostalgia for Leaving Cert poetry, and the life and times of one of Ireland’s best known footballers.

These were just some of the topics capturing the imagination of last minute book shoppers in the run up to the festive period.

According to Irish Publishing News, it was a remarkable week with sales of the top 10 titles reaching in excess of 60,000.

Seven of the top 10 books sold during Christmas week were written by Irish authors and 15 of the top 20 titles were Irish authored projects.

This is despite the fact that between 75% and 85% of the books sold on our shelves are published by foreign-based publishers.

Reflecting the popularity of celebrity chefs, it was however Britain’s Jamie Oliver who took the top ranking with Jamie’s 30-minute Meals, selling 11,271 copies in one week.

John Giles’s memoir scored a massive 8,718 while US 2 — a snapshot of Ireland on October 2 from Ray D’Arcy sold 7,263 with a portion of each book sold going to children’s charity Barnardos.

Emma Donoghue finishes a fine year with a strong fourth and early favourite for Christmas number one, Ryan Tubridy will be more than happy with his final week’s sales of 4,696.

Gill & Macmillan will no doubt be happy they decided to reprint Leaving Cert poetry book Soundings.

First published in 1969, Soundings was intended as an ‘interim’ anthology of poetry for the Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised — 26 years later.

A decade after its demise, second hand copies of Soundings were fetching surprising prices.

Last week’s figures show nostalgia pays with Soundings ranking fifth in the top 10, selling 5,289 copies in one week.