Staff Picks: Adult Nonfiction 2023

We’ve drawn together a selection of books enjoyed by our colleagues in Dublin City Libraries this year. 

You can reserve books online, and collect from a library of your choosing. 

If you don’t have a library card, contact your local library and they will help you to join; see here for more information on library membership. 

Or contact us at [email protected]. We’re happy to help. 

Happy Christmas and happy reading to all of you from all of us here in Dublin City Libraries.

Adult Non-Fiction 

Stanley Tucci: Taste 

Filled with anecdotes about growing up, shooting foodie films like Julie & Julia, falling in love across the table, and making dinner for his family, Taste is a reflection on the joys of food and life itself. Through five-star meals and burnt dishes, and from the good times to the bad, each morsel of this gastronomic journey is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Adam Kay: This Is Going To Hurt 

Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward.

Jan Ullrich: The Best There Never Was by Daniel Friebe

In 1997, Jan Ullrich announced himself to the world by obliterating his rivals at the Tour de France and becoming Germany’s first ever winner. Everyone agreed: Jan Ullrich would dominate the future of cycling. But he never quite managed it. This is a gripping account of how unbearable expectation, mental and physical fragility, the effects of a complicated childhood, a morally corrupt sport and one individual – Lance Armstrong – can conspire to reroute destiny.

Mark O'Connell - A Thread of Violence

In 1982 Malcolm MacArthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history.

Donal Fallon: Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park 

Historian Donal Fallon speaks to brothers Frank and James Flanagan, lamplighters of the park, to give us a snapshot of a fading tradition, and a unique history of one of Ireland's most beloved places. 

Thurston Moore: Sonic Life: A Memoir 

Simply put, Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists to new possibilities within the form. This is essential reading.