Patricia’s Blog
Some weeks ago, before the most recent heartbreak for the Mayo football team, I reminisced on Jones’ Road, Drumcondra. As I crossed Binn’s Bridge, Brendan Behan was leaning towards me on the metal bench, seemingly watching my every movement. But it was the blackbird perched beside him on the Royal Canal seat that engaged his…
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So said Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian at the opening of the DublinSwell event in the city’s gleaming, green-lit, Convention Centre last week. This, she said, was Ireland’s largest literary event ever. It was a celebration of Dublin’s listing as a UNESCO City of Literature – one of only four cities in the world to receive this…
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I like this idea from City of a Thousand Welcomes. A simple notion asking volunteers to meet up wtih a visitor to Dublin and share their enthusiasm for the city.
You fill in a simple form and nominate one thing every visitor to Dublin should see. For me it is the National Library of Ireland, packed with archives and exhibitions and literary ghosts. And a great place to stand quietly on the building steps and watch the comings and goings at our Dail next door.
Only problem for me is that I probably don’t qualify as a Dubliner!
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I made it on the very last day. The Moderns – the major exhibition of the Arts in Ireland in the 20th century at Dublin’s Irish Museum of Modern Arts (IMMA). It covered modernity in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s through the visual arts mainly, but with photographers, film-makers, composers, architects, designers –…
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Neil Jordan’s new novel Mistaken is about two Dubliners, Kevin and Gerard, who spend their lives being mistaken for one another. A mix of thriller and gothic genres, it is Neil Jordan’s first novel in six years. You can see Neil Jordan talk about his work on TV3 here. All the Kyleglass Book Worms agree that the book…
Read MoreGoodbye, Waterstones, Dawson Street branch « The Anti-Room. Antonia Hart’s piece on The Anti-Room Blog about Waterstones of Dawson Street, which closes its doors today for the last time, expresses the feelings of many. I will miss the browsing, followed by musing in the Reader’s Cafe and then more browsing. A perfect spot for literary rejuvenation is now no…
Read MoreIn Mark O’Rowe’s feverish 2007 drama, Terminus, there is an image of a man dangling from one of the multitude of construction cranes on the Dublin skyline. The crane became an icon of construction-fuelled Celtic Tiger Ireland. The post below conjures the nostalgic image of Christmas festive lights on a construction crane smiling warmly…
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This is my half-dozen list of books from Ireland or by Irish writers that I think would make great Christmas gifts. And not a whiff of misery writing about the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger or the sorry IMF/ECB bailout. Emma Donoghue’s Room was my book of the year before it won the Hughes & Hughes…
Read MoreWorld Book Night | A million reasons to read a book. Welcome to World Book Night. The inaugural World Book Night will take place on Saturday, 5 March 2011, two days after World Book Day. With the full support of the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Reading Agency with…
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