Damien Mulley

(Eason’s Mahon Point Cork, filed under M for Major in Irish Fiction)

Figures from Nielsen BookScan have shown that Twenty Major’s first book “The Order of the Phoenix Park” have sold 536 copies up to March 15th. Given the book came out at the start of March, that’s very good going for the market in Ireland at this time of year. I believe these figures don’t include online sales either. Well done Twenty!

I read the book recently and I think it’s the first humour book I finished. I’m not a fan of humour in books, I’m not a fan of comedies at all apart from the League of Gentlemen. I don’t find many things at all funny (really) but I very much got a kick out of this book. I found it slightly hard to get into the book first as that ginger avenger albino character freaked me out a little but I must say I was laughing out loud a lot of the time while reading it and chuckling away as I turned every page. It’s a great book and deserves greater attention. My favourite character is Grace Jones Taxi Driver. You’ll see. I really like that the Jimmy the Bollix character gets more attention too. There are some great bits in the book where the author plays with the reader too. I won’t say what but I liked that technique. Fourth wall and all that. Just a warning: I’m using the word cunt a lot more now after reading this book and I had been weaning myself off it. Not everyone will like this book because that whole thing about tastes and choices comes into play, not that would ever stop a reviewer using Twenty’s book as an excuse to attack their own inabilities or insecurities or the fact that Twenty now somehow represents all forms of blogging past, present or future.

You know what’s great too about the book? The way it’s pissing off so many print “journalists” and hacks. The same ones who work for papers that steal from blogs week in week out and fail to give any kind of attribution because that might give more credibility to blogging and show them up to be self-serving lazy cunts who rarely do any legwork anymore. Oh hang on, have I just made a mass generalisation here without doing proper research? Maybe this is what some people including bloggers mean by Irish blogging “getting there”? Getting to where? Being the same as everything else we had up to now? Joy. That’s worked.

Oh wow, my review of Twenty’s book has turned into a not so veiled attack on a whole group. Like rain on a wedding day.

See Suzy’s post on Something.ie ripping her off. They also rip off Politics In Ireland and were ripping off Limerick Blogger too and I think they’re stealing content from others too. Making money off the backs of people without respecting their IP is not on.

I bring many people to O’Connaill’s if they’ve never been before. This Cork based chocolatier make the best hot chocolate around and come the good weather (July 22nd – 24th in 2008) they’ll also be doing amazing chocolate milkshakes. They only use couverture chocolate in their products which makes them really nice. So many people (inc Cork natives) don’t know about the O’Connaill’s store on French Church Street in Cork and I often feel they could advertise the place much better by just changing their cups. This is one of the cups they use:

They already have queues out the door most Saturdays but generally that’s because they don’t have enough staff perhaps. They have gorgeous chocolates, amazing hot chocolate and they do nice coffees and other bits and pieces too. But they could use the people that visit them to get word out even more. I wonder if they did something like specially coloured cup tops or even the coffee holders with their name or some design which would get attention, could they spread the word more? Not so much boutique cups and chocs, though they are luxury at a good price but something setting them apart. Or are they happy with the business they currently have?

Imagine a chocolatier where it’s not just the experience of the damned fine chocolate that makes them great but the kick of introducing new people to them too? Imagine any product being able to get customers to do that? Is this what Apple does in a way? Every iPhone buyer seems to be an evangelist, is every Vista buyer? Apart from an awesome product, how do you make it easy for a customer to be an evangelist for it?