Blogs

Dublin City Council will unveil a commemorative plaque for the writer Maeve Brennan at her childhood home (48 Cherryfield Avenue) in Ranelagh on 6 January 2024 at 11am.

Dublin City Libraries launched a Children’s Literacy Project in Croke Park in cooperation with the Dublin GAA County Board for 6th class children from schools in the Dublin City Council area.

Peadar from our IT team reviews Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino.

All of these titles are available in Dublin City Libraries.

Author Andrew Hughes and State Pathologist Dr Heidi Okkers and Deputy State Pathologist Dr Jill Roman in conversation with novelist and journalist Conor Brady.

In this insightful, thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful book, Italian sociologist and political theorist Paulo Gerbaudo argues that the devastating recession which followed the 2008 financial crash and the more recent Coronavirus pandemic have led to The Great Recoil.

Children who are encouraged to read, are most likely to enjoy reading later in life, but also develop several skills that will help them improve their personality and build a healthier brain. The key to encouraging reading habits in kids is reading with them at home from a young age.By reading together often, your child will learn first hand the joys reading can bring, helping him or her develop a motivation to read. There are several ways to inculcate reading habits, which includes going to a local library. The library plays an important role in the community and offers equal access to information and education.Make reading a daily habit.Read in front of your child.Create a reading space.Take trips to the library.Let your child pick what to read.Find reading moments in everyday life.Re-read favorite books.Learn more about how kids read.Making reading funTeach your child that reading is more than just for books. Practice reading menus, movie names, road signs, game instructions, and more—show your child reading is everywhere. Make connections between reading and real life. Act as a role model and read in front of your child. Watching you reading magazines, newspapers, and books shows your child that reading is important. Encourage your child to join you with his or her own book while you are reading.Keep reading materials in the house.  Make an area for your child to read in with his or her help. Grab a bean bag chair, fun accessories, a variety of books, and your child will have his or her own cozy reading corner.Join your local library. Making reading fun can be easy with a library card. Take advantage of the selection at your local public library by letting your child pick out a book that catches his or her attention. Talk about what your child is reading. Give your child easy access to books and other reading materials at home. This helps him or her understand that reading doesn’t only happen at school—it can happen anywhere.After your child has finished a book, talk about what happened and ask what his or her favourite part was. This will enhance your child’s comprehension skills, and make reading a family activity. Find a book that interests your child. Explore different genres like mystery, science-fiction, comic books, and more. The more interested your child is in a subject, the more he or she will be excited to read!Make reading part of your child’s night-time routine. This habit helps your child learn to associate reading with relaxation. Read each night.

On 7 April 1926 an Irish woman stepped out from a crowd in Rome and fired a shot at one of the 20th century's most infamous dictators. One bullet grazed the nose of Benito Mussolini, but the Italian leader survived the assassination attempt.

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.

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.