Mainly About Books by the Books Editor Back in January, Steve Green, the billionaire founder with his family of the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, issued a book he had co-authored. It is called This Beautiful Book (Zondervan, £18.99), one of a series he is devoting to his main interest in life…
Coping with Coronavirus: How to stay calm and protect your mental health A psychological toolkit Dr Brendan Kelly (Merrion Press, eBook €0.99; audio book in preparation) Dr Kelly, professor of psychiatry at Trinity College, suggested this book to his publisher and within five days he had a text prepared, and a week later they had…
Vivarium (15A) Excellent ***** Like all great science fiction films, suspension of disbelief is key to the immersion in the plot that’s demanded here – and richly achieved. We enter the seventh circle of hell and accept it because, hey, that’s just the way things are. So when Tom and Gemma, a house-seeking couple,…
Anything that provides calm, relative normality or even distraction in these troubling times is welcome. Gardening surely ticks all these boxes, so I was glad to watch Gardeners’ World (BBC2) on Friday. Recently returned for a new season, presenter Monty Don exuded calm and enthusiasm and it was almost a virus-free zone – he did…
River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey Sister Helen Prejean (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) Helen Prejean is the well known author of that massive success as book, film, and even opera, Dead Man Walking (1993). She is one of the most powerful advocates for the abolition of the death penalty, not just in the US, but…
A History of Ireland in International Relations by Owen McGee (Irish Academic Press, €24.95/£21.99 In this book the author takes up the challenge of the late Garret FitzGerald to future historians that “the international economic context behind Irish political history” should be “fully integrated into the narrative of both the Irish state and its international relations”.…
I had intended writing about Irish National Opera’s new production of Bizet’s Carmen due at Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre this week but, alas, Covid-19 stepped in and brought the curtain down. It promised to be an interesting staging with Kerry’s Paula Murrihy as the sultry gypsy temptress of the title role and Kildare’s Celine…
Mainly About Books by the Books Editor In times of crisis it’s natural that people should look to their Faith for reassurance. During the days of the ‘mad cow disease’ (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) the prayer in time of plague associated with St Roch was much sought. Now, with a new kind of plague striking fear into…
Well, who would have thought that RTÉ would move to broadcasting Mass on a daily basis, and yet, in these strange times, that’s what happened last week. With the most unusual St Patrick’s Day in living memory I’m sure Catholics were very grateful to RTÉ for broadcasting the St Patrick’s Day Mass – slimmed down…
A selection of books for Easter by the Books Editor This year, as Eastertide approaches, our society is faced with the uncertain outcome of what would once have been seen as a plague. These days we try in a way to tame it by calling it a “pandemic”: giving it a scientific name is…
Peter Costello
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan