The Dublin Book Festival is bigger than ever this year, running from Thursday 2nd March until Sunday 6th. There are three things I really like about this year’s programme. The first is that there is, quite literally, something for everyone. Whether your thing is prose or poetry, crime or literary fiction, history or comedy, the
This is a bit of a shameless plug but I think it’s an event some of you might be interested in. Dubray Bookshops and Seapoint restaurant in Monkstown – home of amazing seafood and their legendary rosemary and parmesan fries – have started a literary supper evening on the first Thursday of every month. The
I went to a funeral last Thursday, a funeral of someone I’d never met, someone I didn’t know. Only now, sitting down to write about it, I feel like I knew her very well. She was the mother of a friend of mine. The kind of friend who you can have a great laugh with
What is it about re-starting something, that makes it so hard? I think the answer is somewhere in that little ‘re.’ Re-starting is just like starting, but without that energy and excitement you had the first time around. There’s usually a reason that you’ve stopped doing whatever you were doing and you know the effort
There’s a moment right before you fall, when you know you’re going to fall. For me, that moment happened today, on a slanty bit of path outside Blackrock Shopping centre. I knew as I stepped onto the ice that it was a mistake, could feel my trusty hiking boots unable to get a grip and
For anyone who is torn this Christmas between putting their money towards a charity gift or a “real one,” the Jack and Jill Foundation’s short story collection There’s No Place Like Home at Christmas might just tick both boxes, at least for the under tens in your life. This lovely hardback book has 29 stories
I’ve always been a little obsessed by the moon. My mother recalls how as a baby I’d stare at it, craning my neck to see around the pram’s hood when it went out of sight. When I learned how to work my arms the staring was joined by pointing and ‘moon’ was one of my
As readers of this blog will know, I don’t typically use it as a platform for politics or to tackle the big issues of the day. For one thing, I usually blog to take a break from more serious topics, it’s a chance to be a little more reflective. For another, there are enough information
The last time I updated this blog I was in Brooklyn and I said I wasn’t good at endings. Today, I’m in Dublin, it’s a week since I’ve come home and I’m wondering if maybe I’m not so hot on transitions either? The thing about this week is that even though my body has been
