Life in the Church of Ireland 1600-1800 by Robert Wyse Jackson (Ballinakella Press, €17.50) Robert
 Marshall   Published initially in 1941 under the title Scenes from Irish Clerical Life in the 17th and 18th Centuries, this book was written by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland who had read law at Trinity College Dublin and been called…

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier (Bodley Head, £9.99) Peter
 Hegarty   Author Lanier is a disenchanted idealist, a digital pioneer who once believed that technology would improve our lives. He now associates social media with “nastiness”. People come together in a setting “in which the main – or often the…

Smile of Joy: Mary of Nazareth by Thomas Casey SJ (Messenger Publications, €7.95) Fr Casey is currently Dean of Philosophy at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. But this book is a very personal and very human one. Using some of the familiar incidents in the Gospels that feature Mary of Nazareth he hopes he says to ‘reintroduce’…

The World of Books by the Books Editor   Back in 2013, the Bishop of Northampton Dr Peter Doyle appointed Canon John Udris to inquire into the suitability of Gilbert Keith Chesterton for canonisation. Canon Udris’s report will be given to the bishop later this month. He has been quoted in the press as saying…

Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven (Studies in Violence, Mimesis and Culture series / Michigan State University Press, US$29.95 pb) Frank
 Litton   René Girard, who died in 2015, was one of the leading thinkers of our era – a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies to offer a bold, sweeping vision of…

Discovering the Boyne Valley by Noel French (Mercier Press., €14.99) Christopher 
Moriarty   A small river, in quite a small country, yet a portion of the Boyne Valley contains an amazing wealth of solid remnants which incorporate a huge spectrum of human civilisation. A day trip can include them all and a good guidebook can outline the…

The Notebook Fr Bernard Healy   Recently Bishop Ray Browne of Kerry launched a book that was banned by one of his predecessors. The book – Fr. Ferris’s Parish Histories: BallymacElligott, Ballyseedy, O’Brennan and Nohoval – was ready for printing in 1932, but Bishop Michael O’Brien put a stop to its publication. The eponymous Fr…

Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith by Emma Mason (Oxford University Press, €30.00; available also as an ebook) John 
F.
 Deane   The ever popular Christmas carol In the Bleak Mid-Winter was written by Christina Rossetti but holds its fame more from the musical setting by Gustav Holst than by the strength of the poem. Rossetti wrote a great…

The Faith Journey of the Déise People by Michael G. Olden (Diocese of Waterford & Lismore, €40.00 + €11.00 p&p; available from The Book Centre, 25 John Roberts Square, 
Waterford, tel: 051-873823, website@thebookcentre.ie) In the introduction to his new book Msgr Olden states that his aim is to provide a history of the diocese of Waterford…

Am I a Feminist? Are You? by Mary Kenny (New Island Books, €13.95) Those who can recall earlier manifestations of Mary Kenny might be daunted by a title so redolent of the #metoo generation and the fierce quarrels of the present day gender wars. But the present-day Mary is a person of great experience as well…