Socks and ties, booze and sweets. Standard presents. This year I’ll be buying books as presents. While I appreciate that Amazon and the other big companies have revolutionised the purchase of books, I thought it might be useful to share some favourite sites and a useful tool for locating those hard to find books from the past.
So three specific small companies, all Irish and all giving excellent service, and a Bookfinding site. One small point. Some US sites only ship within the USA and thus I have asked friends abroad to accept and forward. Even allowing for shipping costs, big savings can be made.
FetchBook
Excellent for tracking down copies of both old and new.
The following 3 sites are all tried and tested.
ReadIreland has an excellent service, sends out a newsletter and has some tempting offers.Most recent acquisition: The End of Irish Catholicism by D. Vincent Twomey, reduced from 15-00 to 6-00.
Books Ulster is a Bangor based company. Again excellent prices and great service.
Last but not least, and well worth a visit if ever in Galway, the excellent Kennys Book Shop and Art Galleries. Postage and Packing outside of the ROI is a little pricey.Carries a good selection of poetry in English and Irish.
A slightly inhuman presence that bans bad comments and works late at night to remove the wrinkles in Slugger’s technical carpet. You will need to know about the comments policy to stay off the fightin’ side of me and there is a bit of background about me here. You can email me using this spam-proof link if you really need to, and Slugger is @sluggerotoole on Twitter. But above all, remember, Play the ball and not the man.