Patricia’s Blog
Back in January I committed with great enthusiasm to the post a week challenge. But it became a tyrant. Then, about a month ago, without really planning it, I stopped blogging. I took a blogger holiday. It seems to have worked for this morning the urge was back – inspired by the magic of the plum-tree in my back…
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I love this image of Writer’s Block.
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Recently I took a notion that I would like to re-read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I searched high up and low down but couldn’t find it on my shelves, so I dropped into Easons where I was able to buy it for three euros, all 800 pages of it. And off I set again, starting with that…
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It looks like good weather for the holiday weekend in Ireland. Time for breaks and trips. I like to link text and place when travelling. As I’m heading off to County Mayo, I thought I would pull together – in a fairly random way – some of my favourite texts linked to some wonderful Mayo…
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Controversy has a way of revolving around words in Ireland in a strange way. Even when Barak Obama, President of the United States, visits we get caught up in a national debate about Enda Kenny’s welcoming speech in College Green, Dublin, and his use of Barak Obama’s very own words. But, An Taoiseach’s gift of words to…
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I caught a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip this week on O’Connell Bridge. Like many others I was a captive in Dublin’s south side, unable to cross the Liffey and pestering the Gardai about when the bridge would be reopening. Then Their Majesties just passed by in an armoured car, waving through the dark glass at the…
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I haven’t yet read Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz – only the first chapter that you can read on BBB 4 web site and where you can also hear an interview with the author herself. It was my Kindle e-book reader that first got me into reading first chapters. Reading first chapters for free became my favourite Kindle…
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Mae Leonard’s new book of poetry makes me think of a patchwork quilt – places, family, history, tragedies and quirky events all woven into a wonderful and seamless whole. I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This has just been published by Doghouse Books and was launched at Limerick’s On the Nail Readings event where Mae read with…
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‘A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.’ This is how Graham Greene started his novel The End of the Affair – a book that was published sixty years ago, in 1951. The event was marked in…
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In a nice piece of symmetry Kathleen MacMahon’s novel, So This Is How It Ends, recently signed by Little Brown (UK) and Grand Central (US), will be published in 2012, the centenary of the birth of Mary Lavin, the author’s grandmother. ‘My memory of grandmother as a writer,’ Kathleen MacMahon said, ‘is of her in bed with…
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