At this time of the year the book shops are flooded with books for children and young adults, all hoping for great sales over the few weeks of the year when people go on a splurge of holiday related book buying. But like a puppy, a good book isn’t just for Christmas. On these pages…
Awakening Inner Peace: A Little Books of Hours by Sister Stan (Columba Books, €12.99 / £10.99) This little book, harking back to the pre-Reformation books of hours, though it lacks illustrations, might be called ‘the very rich hours’ of Sr Stanislaus. Certainly her intention, like those ancient books, is to enrich the daily prayer life of…
Sharing the Wisdom of Time, Pope Francis and friends (Messenger Publications, €24.95 / £27.50) This is a book inspired directly by Pope Francis. Youth, as we are all aware, knows it all, middle age has had ‘experience’, but maturity (surely to God a better term than ‘old age’), maturity has wisdom. Though it contains reflections…
The World of Books by the books editor During the Presidential election a native minority found themselves the focus of unwelcome attention. I was surprised at quite how confused many people, city dwellers for the most part, were about the social group now usually called ‘Travellers’. I find this a difficult word. The corollary…
Beautiful Thoughts for Beautiful Minds by John Scally (Currach Press, €14.99) For a long time I have valued collections of poems, short stories and essays as the best kind of bedside books. They provide just enough to allow the old brain to run down and come to rest, and to allow me to drift away into…
A Flavour of Kylemore Abbey by the Sisters of the Community (Columba Books, €24.99) When this book came to hand, I turned over the pages to see what made this cook book different from all the others that flood the market. My attention was immediately taken by a recipe for Frangipane Mince Pies, the last one in the…
Living With The Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples by Neil MacGregor (Allen Lane, £30) Patrick Claffey Neil MacGregor, the distinguished British art historian and museum director, is currently the creator of the Humboldt Forum, a new centre for world culture in Berlin. Many will have seen exhibitions or read his books, including A History of the World…
The World of Books by the books editor This weekend the world will mark, in different ways, the centenary of the armistice that brought the fighting in the Great War, otherwise ‘the war to end all wars’, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918. These commemorations of the…
The Liberties by Maurice Curtis (Currach Press, €14.99) The Back of the Hack: Growing Up in the Liberties by Kathleen Clifford (A & A Farmar, €15.00) Some years ago author Maurice Curtis brought out a history of the Liberties, that district of Dublin to the south west that once lay outside the city walls, and where over…
Who Do I Think I Am?: A Memoir by Homan Potterton (Merrion Press, €24.99) The former director of the National Gallery of Ireland, now living in retirement in the France, scored something of a literary success with Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled, his memoir of his years of growth in Anglo-Irish Meath. This was perhaps a feat…