I was in Barnes & Noble in Ulster on Tuesday, looking for a book to bring on vacation next week, and I wandered over to the biography/autobiography section. (I enjoy non-fiction; call it an occupational hazard.)

With 2008 being a quadrennial election year, I wasn’t surprised to find an area of that section devoted to books by or about the current presidential candidates. What did surprise me was that no less than eight of the candidates had books on the shelves – allegedly self-penned, though I’m sure some of them were scribed by ghost writers.

I knew Hillary Clinton had two books (“Living History” and “It Takes a Village…”). And I knew there was a Barack Obama book (it turns out there are three). But I had no idea there also were books by Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Bill Richardson and John Edwards – all, of course, sharing their “vision for America,” or some such cliché.

The cover price for each? About 25 bucks.

No thanks. I’ll wait for the TV commercials.