 And you're very welcome back, and that was Mary Black with her version of Mary Shiffen Carpenters, the Moon and St Christopher. And as promised, joining me on the phone line I've got Dawn Behan, and she is the chair of Bookselling Ireland. Dawn, you're very welcome, and many thanks for taking time out on your Sunday evening to talk to me tonight. Oh no, thanks for inviting me on, lovely to talk to you. So the search is officially underway to find on past Bookshop of the year for 2023. Now I'm familiar with the on post book awards, but this is new to me. So how long has that been going on, Dawn? Yeah, so this is one of the awards in the overall on post book awards that have been going on for years, but this is only the third year that they've had the Bookshop of the Year award. So it started in 2021. And the winners of the first, the first year it was won by Kenny's and Galway. And last year it was British Rebooks in Wichita town. So it's open to all Bookshops in Ireland, whether they're a branch of a chain or whether they're an independent Bookshop and anybody can vote the first round is an online vote. So you just go on select your Bookshop that you want to vote for and you can type in the reason if you want to. There is a space for that. You don't have to. You can just select it, put in your name, your email address, and then your vote is in. And you do that on the on post website. It's on post.com slash Bookshop of the Year. You can submit your vote there. Fantastic. And I suppose that you must have thought there was a niche for this whenever you set up the awards for the Bookshop, Dawn? Yeah, well, people has always been asking why wasn't there a Bookshop award, you know, because there was awards for all the different categories of books and for writers, you know, best newcomer, best Irish published books, children's books. And the booksellers, they're kind of in the heart of us, but they weren't being recognized. So on post very kindly added us to their awards roster. And they just said that they wanted to recognize the significant role and the important contributions that's played by Bookshops in the community as not just as kind of a retail outlet, but as a social and cultural hub. And that, you know, you know yourself if you go into Bookshops, every Bookshop has its own personality and space on the customers that come in, it's based on the location of your Bookshop. And it's just to recognize the efforts put in by local booksellers to serve their own communities. And I suppose a few years ago, there was a fear that maybe Kendall might take over from the from the hard copy of the book. But I have to say. I personally just like the hard copy. It's like downloading something, a tune from iTunes or something like that. I like to have the CD in my hand and I can see, you know, who the musicians were. It's the same kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, CDs, you can take out the cover and you can read, you know, who worked and lost and the acknowledgments. And with the book, you see the cover. You know, you don't, when you get a, I know kindles are great. They have their, they serve their purpose. And if you travel a lot or whatever, they're very handy. But nothing beats picking up the book and feeling the weight of it and having to look at the cover and just even to know how far through the book you are, you can't really do that with a kindle the same way as you can with your bookmark in your book. And you don't get to talk to anybody when you go into the bookshop. If you're downloading your book, going to the bookshop, you can have a chat and you can ask for a recommendation. You never know what you're going to get then. You know, you could get something that you'd never heard of or something you never considered reading based on the bookseller's recommendation or not recommendation. Sometimes you maybe you'd be steered clear of something that you thought you'd like. And I, as we're very lucky here in Letra Kenney, we have two bookmark bookshops and I have to say David and Val, we are very, very helpful. And as I mentioned to you, I mentioned to Amy that we do the book club here every month. And it's always lovely to go down and ask David for his recommendations of what he would think was a good seller or what book clubs generally were reading at the time. And yeah, if you say it's the personal interaction that you have with people in the bookshop that you don't get with the Kindle. Yeah, the thing with the book clubs as well is that maybe it's not the best sellers maybe they aren't the books that will give you the more talking points or the more discussion. Sometimes it's nice to find something that's a little bit more under the radar or a little bit older or just maybe that would, you know, introduce people to maybe something that they wouldn't really read normally. So yeah, we have, I have a bookshop in Covair and yeah, we have three different book clubs for adults and three for children. And the discussions are brilliant and they go off in all kinds of directions and you learn so much that you wouldn't have learned otherwise and you get to know people in your area. So that's great. The lovely social thing. And you were saying that one of the categories is for children and I think it's important that I try to encourage young children to develop a love of reading. Yeah, I think three, there's a junior, a senior and a young adult because the books, you know, it's hard to judge them against each other if it was just for children. So yeah, there's three different categories. But yeah, it is one because if children read, they'll keep the habit up into adulthood and it affects so many different areas, you know, in school that really helps them, you know, it's not just the reading or their spelling or whatever, but it helps them in lots of different ways and it helps. If you read to your children, it helps create that bond between you. It's really special. And I think I just read a quote by George Martin who wrote the the epic fantasy novels a song of ice and fire that was in the game of thrones and he said, a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once. So you can get lost in your books and the characters and all the experiences that you can have and the places you can travel without ever leaving your house. And there's so many wonderful Irish authors at the moment. I know on our book club, we've done Neath Voices, The Herbalist. I think that was the very first one we did. And then we did Louise Kennedy's Trespasses that won one of the awards with you last. That was our last book club book. Yeah. Yeah. And we did. We didn't do The Herbalist. We did her other one, Herkind, the one that said in Kenney about the last witch trial. Yeah. And Joseph O'Connor and Claire Allen and Maggie O'Farr. You've just such a wonderful talent among Irish authors. Yeah, you really do. And the four booker prize long listed this year. So this Paul Lynch, Paul Murray, Elaine Feeney and Sebastian Barry. Yeah. I've read, I've only read the Paul Murray one so far, but I loved my favorite book this year, The Beasting. It's a great one for a book club. Very good. I haven't heard that and that'll be on my list then. And going back to the competition, it closes on the 17th of September. And there'll be 12 bookshops and writing saying that will be long listed for the competition for the awards. Yeah. So yeah. The first round is the public vote. So that finishes on the 17th of September and then 12 bookshops are long listed. Then a mystery shopper is sent around to the 12 bookshops and they are invited to submit and to send in a submission as why they should win. So then their submission down the mystery shopper feedback is taken and there's a short list of six. So that's, so the long list is announced on the 19th of October and then the short list, sorry, the longest is announced after the public vote start finishes. The short list is announced on the 19th of October. The short listed shops get to go to the on post Irish book awards and the overall winners announced there on the 22nd of November. And there's a big prize for the overall winner, I believe. Yeah, on post sponsor the prize it's worth 15,000 euros and you get a trophy and to be honest the publicity that you get and the recognition is nearly more important than the prize. Although the prize is absolutely brilliant too for any bookshop, 15,000 euros, it's great. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, well worth winning. But I know having spoken to Tamal from Kenny's and Hilary from Bridge Street Books, they said just the recognition you get from winning the award is just, you couldn't put a price on it. And there's an incentive too for the voters. There's a little money prize for them too. Yeah, there is. There's three prizes of 100 euro book factor and there's a draw for that after the voting ends. So yeah, so it's well worth your while putting in your vote for your bookshop. Very good. Well, I didn't get safe people in the Northwest here. We'll get their votes in and you never know one of our local bookshops might be among the six short listed. So Don, thank you so much for taking time out on your Sunday evening. And as I say, best of luck with your unpost book awards and with the bookshop 2023 award as well. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. With the increased cost of living, you might be worried about