Christmas is still a good few months down the track, but for Elsa Moretti, the slow, careful accumulating of presents begins early. She is at the mall today, pushing a trolley. It is not, as is customary, laden with groceries or other food items. It contains at least 45 books — novels, non-fiction, cookbooks, children’s picture books.

“Anyone would think I’m about to open my own business,” she says, pausing in her browsing to deliver a chuckle, adding: “I need five more of these and I’m done.”

Ironically, Elsa is not alone. The shop is filled with book buyers, most carrying smaller shopping baskets.

For the past ten days, the books in the shop had been priced at A$5 (Dh16.6) each. Some good titles, too. Not many buyers were attracted. Today, however, in its final day, the bookshop has dropped its price to a ridiculous A$1 — for any book — a price so throw-away that even non-book-readers find they cannot walk past without stepping in to pick up a copy they may never read.

One wonders how many lonely hours were spent by each of these authors while their plots and schemes were brought to fruition, along with the maddening search for an agent or publisher. And here they are, being tossed out the window for a song. One dollar! It is a sad commentary on the state of reading, but that is another story for another time.

Today, it is Elsa who’s helping some of the books take wing, fly off the shelves. She’s going to give each of her relatives — hers is a vast extended family — a book for Christmas. A$50 and her present-buying is nearly done. What if some members are not into reading?

“Ah, it’s only a gift. Some of them won’t go out and buy a book, but maybe if it was given they might take up reading. After that, who knows, they may discover a joy.”

Speaking of which, she reveals an anecdote from her distant past — over 30 years — when she herself was turning 30 and raising a young family.

“My uncle Dominic, he was a clergyman, you see. He didn’t earn much money to buy expensive gifts like clothes and perfumes.”

In her 30th year, Elsa had just survived a complex pregnancy (“Sonia was born and I thought I was being murdered! It was five hours of agony.”)

A week later, her husband — a concierge at a big hotel — lost his job and at the relatively early age of 35 suffered a heart attack.

“Carlo didn’t die, but he was never the same. For two years we went through the worst times in our married life.”

Carlo went on to become a talented recruiter, in demand by many of the top companies, but that, too is another story.

“But when life was at its worst, when we needed some real assistance. Can you imagine that Christmas, Uncle Dominic arriving and handing me a book and saying, ‘Happy Christmas, darling Elsa. Things will work out, I’m confident.’”

Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy, it was. “Such a rather big book, too! And where’s the time to read with two children and a husband without a job?” asks Elsa, suppressing a chortle as she relives the memory of it all. What did she do?

“Oh, I just put the book aside, naturally. It sat on the mantelpiece for a year then got packed into a cardboard box. I was never a reader in any case.”

Two years ago, Sonia who is now a mother herself and doing her own private study online, was cleaning out some old rubbish from these boxes.

“She found the book. Inside it, on page 100, Uncle Dominic, bless him, had put two crisp notes. Imagine that! Finding it 30 years later. How much it would have helped at that time, eh? Carlo was actually borrowing money from a lender to keep us going.”

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.