Book Notes loves the annual stories of the millions that publishers spend on book rights every year. The mixture of greed and grubby expectation is energising enough to make us think of dusting down that half-finished novel that's turning yellow on the top shelf.
Looking at the book charts, one might infer that originality isn't too highly valued on book buyers' agendas. Want a new thriller? Try James Patterson – they're even handily numbered to help you tell them apart.
TIMOTHY or, Notes of an Abject Reptile. By Verlyn Klinkenborg. Alfred A. Knopf, €13
Globalisation, usually portrayed as a public or at least an economic good, will result in keeping poor countries poor and wasting our remaining natural resources. John Gray reviews three news publications
Ex-chief of staff of the IRA, founder of Republican Sinn Féin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh is the subject of a new biography which relies on its subject too much for its content. By Scott Millar
Wole Soyinka was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and has spent much of his life engaged in clandestine political activity in Nigeria. Norman Rush reviews his new memoir
Ava Gardner was best known for her tumultuous and passionate love-life her most famous lover was Frank Sinatra who left his wife and children for her. Lee Server's new biography traces Gardner's life with affection and manages to depict her love-life without making it salacious. By Peter Bogdanovich
Some of the bigger books we discussed last year have made their way from hardback to paperback recently, asking a few questions of the book buying public.
Although Francis Fukuyama's latest book rejects the school he came from, it does not do it sufficiently. He is too kind to former friends. Failing to reconcile their ambitious desire to combat despotism with their cautious aversion to social engineering, he falls victim of the modernisation theory. Review by Paul Berman
A stellar cast of historians, novelists, philosophers and actors prove that there is always something to be done about Samuel Beckett. Review by Edward O'Hare