Turning the page on the most challenging time of the year

This is the period of the year, cold, wet, still dark, besieging and unforgiving — and that’s before the Christmas credit card bill arrives — that, according to suicide prevention group Pieta House is the most challenging time of the year for those struggling with mental health issues.

This is the period of the year, cold, wet, still dark, besieging and unforgiving — and that’s before the Christmas credit card bill arrives — that, according to suicide prevention group Pieta House is the most challenging time of the year for those struggling with mental health issues.

But even at this low point in the year’s turning, even as US president Donald Trump splutters another ignorant, racist Twitter tirade, there are always reasons to be cheerful and even hopeful.

One of those lifelines may be that booksellers Waterstones has reported an 80% jump in profits for the year just gone.

The upturn has encouraged the retailer to predict even better things, a spectacular turnaround just six years after the rise of the ebook threatened booksellers’ existence. Reports of the death of hard copy books were indeed exaggerated.

Such a spectacular growth in profits to just over €20m is a wonderful achievement but it is even more reassuring in other ways.

The more people who read, the more books that are sold the greater chance there is that civilisation yet might prevail — despite Twitter.