Booksellers in the U.K. and Ireland are reporting strong sales in the lead up to Christmas, with many on track for a much better holiday season than last year despite concerns that new Covid-19 measures could affect last-minute shopping, the Bookseller reported.
"I'm unsure as to how the next few weeks will pan out," said Chrissy Ryan of BookBar, adding that the month has been really busy thus far. "We are planning to be open until 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve, and here's hoping that London continues to be full of the festive cheer we've seen so far. The supply chain issues haven't hit us too hard yet--we stocked up with all the titles in our gift guide and I'm so pleased I made that decision as we have been selling through each book brilliantly."
Emma Corfield-Walters of Book-ish in Crickhowell, Wales, said the shop is "beautifully busy" at the moment. "Footfall remains steady but we are seeing a big rise in Web sales from across the U.K."
Tomás Kenny, owner of Kennys Bookshop in Galway, Ireland, reported "strong" traffic this December, and predicts better sales than last year, adding: "As fears about Omicron increase, the numbers coming in have fallen slightly. We are unsure what to expect for the next two weeks, but we are very hopeful it will be busy."
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In Iraq, the Baghdad International Book Fair is "not even the bigger book fair of the same name that the Iraqi government has sponsored for decades. But it's a book fair nonetheless," the New York Times reported, adding that "patrons savor the chance to browse aisles of paperbacks and hardcovers stacked on tables in pavilions from different countries. To pose for selfies in front of the fake volumes glued together and arranged to spell the word 'book.' To revel in what to many Iraqis is the true, enduring character of Baghdad, far removed from political turmoil and security concerns."
"There is a big gap between the people in the street and the political elite," said Maysoon al-Demluji, a former deputy minister of culture who was visiting the fair. "People in the street are not that interested in what happens in politics.... New generations are exposed to ideas that were denied previous generations. So much is happening here."
Hisham Nazar, who works at the publishing house Cemetery of Books, said that while many people now read digital books, he and many others prefer to hold books in their hands: "When you open a paper book it is like entering into the writer's journey. A paper book has the soul of the writer."
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Introduced in July, Hungary's new legislation "banning the 'promotion and display' of homosexuality to minors" has provoked "anger in Brussels and a backlash at home, where a tight parliamentary election is slated for April," AFP (via France24) reported.
"This stupid law means certain books must be sealed in wrapping, and separated from the others," said Janos Szakacs, manager of Irok Boltja (Writers Shop) in Budapest.
As he stretched to place the children's storybook A Fairy Tale for Everyone--which contains LGBTQ content--on the top of a bookshelf, Szakacs noted that the legislation actually draws attention to the separated books. "It's self-defeating, the snake bites its own tail," he said, while placing a sticker sent by the publisher on each copy that reads "Fairy Tales are Still for Everyone Even if they are in Packaging."
"Thanks to the government's hate campaign, the LGBTQ community is under unprecedented attack," said Boldizsar Nagy, the editor of A Fairy Tale for Everyone. Nagy has received anonymous threats and told AFP that he planned to leave Hungary so he can "live a more dignified and fulfilling life."
Dorottya Redai of the Labrisz lesbian organization that published A Fairy Tale for Everyone, said the book's shredding and the legal measures had only fueled interest in it, telling AFP that an initial print run of 1,500 sold quickly and a second of 15,000 copies sold out soon after the furor began. Now it "is out or soon to be out in 10 languages for foreign markets," Redai added. --Robert Gray