Soccer biographies, election manifestoes and Irvine Welsh's lastet book

The onslaught of soccer biographies continues, albeit to a more muted reception than their publishers might have expected while charting publication plans last spring. Like phosphorescence, World Cup fever burnt out as sharply as it had burnt brightly and past blanket media coverage has left every story seeming tired and all too familiar. Do you want to further feather these men's nests for a few hundred pages of unenlightened commentary on a competition that failed to live up to its billing?

What was expected to be a celebration of the end of 40 years of hurt has become torturous retellings of contract negotiations and lives lived in a well-spun gloss. Because men like Rooney, Gerrard and Ferdinand are still mid-career, none of these stories contain much revelation. Even Rooney's detailing of his dalliance with prostitutes is a self-excusing version of a well-examined part of his young life. Little chance of the truth behind Lampard's loss of form either.

Scenes of boys hurling in tweed suits at the start of The Wind that Shakes the Barley reminded Book Notes that he finds Irish sporting endeavour more stimulating. Seamus Cantwell's Finally Meeting Princess Maud explains how an Irish emigrant makes it from his native Charlestown to success in amateur wrestling in the working men's clubs of the UK in the 1950s. Without being paid £100,000 a week.

Presidential manifestos

A marker for the upcoming French presidential elections was played this month as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy published his philosophically tinged book (or election manifesto). Testimony has been the runaway success of the Gallic summer, selling 300,000 copies since its publication three weeks ago, and is already in its fifth reprint. Sarkozy's main rival, Segolene Royale, trails in the polls, but is due to publish her own book in a matter of weeks. Whether she hits the same personal, revealing tone as Sarkozy remains to be seen.

Sharp shooting welsh

We thought Irvine Welsh was getting lots of attention in Ireland this week but the reason became quickly clear; he has forsaken the mean streets of Edinburgh for the tax-friendlier hinterlands of Dublin. In real life at least, for we notice that his new book, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, is set in the restaurants of Scotland. We felt, while reading Trainspotting, that it was a thinly veiled version of Welsh's own history but now we're not so sure. The new book, a Jekyll and Hyde-like body swap tale, seems more concerned with alcohol than the food the book's title and publicity would have us believe. Listening to the author doing poitín shots on radio last week, Book Notes was underwhelmed by his prowess! His new play, Babylon Heights, follows the book. A story of the actors who played the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, it is currently running at Dundrum's new Mill Theatre.