AMAZING. Every second book in the shop is described as a world bestseller. And in your public library your fishing fingers always seem to find an author labelled as a literary genius.

Not since the papyrus crop failed the pharaohs has there been such a big dilemma. It’s personal, it’s a plague, it’s a downright shame. The world is losing readers.

Because the hype brings disappointment, and that discourages further trust in authors one has not read before.

The writers who can shoot your mind into swift escape from the woes of work, family and world have become rarer than rubies. They do exist, yet can’t be found, and therefore many a lifetime reader quits, and just turns on the telly.

Bookstores and my local library stock books by the ton, not by content. They’ve no choice, because world publishing is now a commodity market.

Fast sellers dominate, pushed by big publicity. And that means the value of a book, for them, lies with marketeers.

The Marketing Manager outranks an Editor, because the Chief Accountant (who outranks everybody) is hungry for profit.

When it is too late, those giants who grip the book trade will find that readers, consistently disappointed, have gone.

Personally, I’m hanging on, desperate yet still hopeful. After all, the human species has never been without great stories and wondrous wordsmiths.

In the bleak bookshelf jungles, I’ve sometimes stumbled on a hidden gem. They’re hard to find, and only luck prevails.

They lurk unheralded at the rear of the shop or squeezed among translations, quirks and doorstops in my local library.

They’re getting scarcer, because even dedicated publishers, the torchbearers of reading, have to survive nowadays by reprinting classics or churning out genre dross. Or, yes, urgh, risking one of those low-cost translations of a book that wowed the tent dwellers of Outer Darkest Mongolia.

To explore the jungle there’s always the Amazon, and I probe its upper reaches exhaustively. Despite the postage cost, it has allowed me to keep faith in good reads.

“A literary gem”, said Bookpress online about “Wee Charlie’s World”, and it’s only at www.amazon.co.uk where the humour and nostalgia of Bryce McBryce gusts fresh. It’s delightful adult fiction from one of those small publishers who lighten the globe’s reading gloom, danpress@optusnet.com.au

Maybe you’ve discovered a goodie too. Please tell me about it. Happy reading from cathy.macleod@optusnet.com.au

Readers can find more good stories and recommended reads at Cathy’s website, http://www.booktaste.com

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