Summer Stars runs from Tues 4 June to Sat 31 August. Get Reading! Now that school is over you can still spark your imagination, join in activities and take part in our exciting Summer Stars challenge.
A traditional Irish cold weather treat, (all year round basically in Ireland), Dublin Coddle is considered food for the working class. Dubliners will tell you coddle is best enjoyed with a pint of Guinness and plenty of soda bread to soak up the juices. It was reputedly a favourite dish of the writers Seán O'Casey and Jonathan Swift, and it appears in several references to Dublin, including the works of James Joyce.A hearty coddle is made from leftovers and therefore is without a specific recipe (this leads to heated debate from purists and the new fusion brigade) and typically consists of roughly cut spuds, sliced onions, rashers and sausages. A traditional coddle did not use carrots. The word “Coddle” derives from the French term “Caudle” which means to boil gently, parboil or stew.Apparently, coddle dates back to the first Irish famine in the late 1700s where anything to hand got thrown into the pot. The famine of 1740–41 was due to extremely cold and then dry weather in successive years, resulting in food losses in three categories: a series of poor grain harvests, a shortage of milk, and frost damage to potatoes. At this time, grains, particularly oats, were more important than potatoes as staples in the diet of most workers.Families would use up any leftover meat on a Thursday, as Catholics couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Country people who moved into Dublin to find better work opportunities brought hens and pigs with them to raise for food. After a pig was slaughtered and sold the remains were used to make sausages. The sausages and streaky rashers were boiled up with root vegetables to make a cheap and nutritious meal.Indeed, before takeaways existed, it was a typical Dublin thing to cook up a pot of coddle early in the day and let it cool down for later. The dish could be reheated for supper after work, or a night out at the pictures, or the pub. Derek O'Connor from the Sunday Tribune wrote, "the fact that Dubliners have rejected it in favour of kebabs and takeaway pizza is a searing indictment of their moral and spiritual decay."I am inclined to agree.Why not check out our eResource RBdigital for Food & Cooking magazines. Register for RB Digital magazines or via the Rbdigital app: Google Play - Android | iTunes - iOS | Kindle Fire. Watch our how to video for more information. Or reserve one of our many books of Irish Cookery via our catalogue.Or download the library app on your smartphone, check out the new Self-Service function in the app to borrow and return books in Borrow and Browse branches.
Twentieth anniversary of the passing of Éamonn Mac Thomáis
His videos have hundreds of thousands of views across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, though he had never heard of any of them. He has inspired a whole new generation of social historians that were born after he died.
Most popular reads this summer in Dublin City Libraries
We’ve had a look at some of the most popular titles borrowed this summer by you, our wonderful Dublin city library members. Check out the top 10 most borrowed fiction and non-fiction in 2022!
Buying a new book at the airport on your way to a beach holiday? Maybe not this year. The library is your next best port of call if you can’t make it to the beach. Organise a trip to the park for a lazy afternoon on a picnic blanket.
Dubliners is Joyce at his most direct and his most accessible. Any reader may pick it up and enjoy these fifteen stories about the lives, loves, small triumphs and great failures of its ordinary citizens without the trepidation that might be felt on opening, say, Ulysses, famed for its impenetrability and stream-of-consciousness hyperbole. At the same time, although simply written, there is great depth and many levels to the stories, in which the characters – young, middle-aged and old – are revealed, to themselves, or sometimes only to the reader, in all their frail humanity.Access Dubliners | James Joyce in the library catalogue.Dubliners, The Stories:The Sisters - An Encounter - Araby - Eveline - After the Race - Two Gallants - The Boarding House - A Little Cloud - Counterparts - Clay - A Painful Case - Ivy Day in the Committee Room - A Mother - Grace - The Dead'[Dubliners is] filled with humour and love, pain and loss. Above all, it rings out with a love of these streets, of the voices of the people who inhabit them, their wit, their style, their optimism even as the world collapses around them.'John Boyne, award-winning author of the international bestseller, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.James JoyceJames Joyce (1882–1941) is one of the most internationally known and influential Irish writers, whose books, particularly the landmark Ulysses (1921), have become the subject of worldwide scholarly study. His other works include the short story collection, Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). He also wrote two books of poetry and a play, Exiles.Dubliners was first submitted to a publisher in 1905, but because of disputes over the contents of some of the stories, it was not published until 1914. The final story, ‘The Dead’, was made into a film by John Huston in 1987.Right: James Joyce. Image of Joyce reproduced from the original glass negative held in UCD Library Special Collections by kind permission of Helen SoltererJoyce was born at 41 Brighton Square to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray, and spent his earliest years there and in Castlewood Avenue. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and at Belvedere College before going on to University College Dublin (on St Stephen’s Green), where he studied modern languages.Joyce left Ireland with Nora Barnacle in 1904, and was to spend the rest of his life in Italy and France, paying his last visit to Ireland in 1912. Joyce died in Zurich on the 13th January, 1941, and is buried in Zurich's Fluntern Cemetery.Although he spent most of his adult life abroad, Joyce's writing is centred on Dublin. By way of explanation, he said: 'For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.'This article first appeared on dublinonecityonebook.ie. 'Dubliners' was the Dublin: One City, One Book choice for 2012. Dublin: One City, One Book is an award-winning Dublin City Council initiative, led by Dublin City Public Libraries, which encourages everyone to read a book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year.
Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses with Dublin City Libraries
2022 marks the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Considered to be one of the most important and influential novels ever written, this masterpiece of fiction follows Leopold Bloom as he makes his way around Dublin on 16th June 1904.
Research suggests that reading literary fiction is an effective way to enhance the brain's ability to keep an open mind while processing information, a necessary skill for effective decision-making.
Last weekend I visited the beautiful Spanish city of Seville to attend my first La Liga football match, a clash between local side Real Betis and the visiting Atletico Madrid.
On International Women's Day, we recommend three books written from a female perspective, that look at the particular barriers women face in their careers. #BreaktheBias
This isn't the most traditional Valentine's Day reading list: a collection of intimate reads, ranging from traditional swooning romances to innovative novels.