Brendan O’ReganStereotyping is normally regarded as a bad thing, and that’s fair enough, but sometimes it seems that it’s acceptable to stereotype certain people, including Catholic priests. These thoughts were prompted by a few episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, currently showing on TV3, Wednesday nights. Last week’s episode wound up a story about…
Category: Reviews
Christmas books for young adults and children
Peter CostelloChristmas time is one of the great books buying season of the year. For children and young adults especially the shops are filled with a bonanza of books, of all kinds for all kinds of taste. While it is said that girls take more easily to reading, they often prefer story books about girls,…
Kirk Douglas celebrates his 100th birthday
Aubrey Malone“My children didn’t have the advantages I had growing up,” Kirk Douglas said once, “they were born rich.” What he meant was that his poverty-stricken youth made him more aware of the value of a dollar. How many pampered sons and daughters of the rich and famous would learn to appreciate the wisdom of his…
Grim reality of rating lives as not quite human
One thing that makes me proud of Ireland is our largely pro-life culture, but sadly this ethos is under constant threat. Last Friday’s interview with Ann Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) on Newstalk Drive was disturbing listening. She was particularly frank in seeing abortion as a fall back option when contraception failed.…
Books of special interest to get through the festive time
At this time of the year the bookshops are filled with books of all kinds, a great many simply produced for immediate seasonal sale, with little hope that they will be of any lasting value to anyone in the months, let alone the years to come. However, among these daunting piles of printed paper for…
A mixed grill of pre-Christmas treats on the big screen
How can one explain the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the recent American election by a man with so many disgraceful characteristics as Donald Trump unless, as has been suggested, she herself was so passionately disliked by large sectors of the population? One wit suggested Donald Duck could even have beaten her. In the aftermath…
Reasoned debate suffers amid shifting narratives
It’s all about The Narrative – you know, the version of a story carefully spun to suit somebody’s agenda, gleefully swallowed by the unthinking and enhanced by a trip to Outrage Factory. And so it was with the symphysiotomy controversy. For the last few years this child birth intervention was seen as ‘barbaric’, ‘torture’ and…
What we really gain from life
It is As it Is: a True Story of Hope Loss and Friendship by Malina Stahre-Godycka (Veritas, €14.99)
In the heart of rural Cork
“Ancient Sweet Donoughmore”: Life in an Irish rural parish to 1900 by Gerard O’Rourke (Redmond Grove Publications, €35.00 including p+p)
A book that spans the ages
A True Symbol of the City of Dublin – The Ha’penny Bridge Dublin by Michael English and others (Dublin City Council, €24.95pb / €34.95hb)