Dublin City Libraries will be closed from Saturday 3 to Monday 5 May 2025 (inclusive). Our online services will continue as usual. We will reopen on Tuesday, 6 May.
Several acquaintances have confided in me that one of their New Year’s resolutions is to start reading again. When asked for any tips my advice is always the same: start with something short. In that vein, one of the books I have read since the beginning of the year is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables, a novel supposedly considered “too intimate” to be published during the author’s life.
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.
Guerrilla poetry involves publishing poetry in unexpected and unconventional ways in unexpected and unconventional places. Guerrilla poets like to choose unusual media or materials for their poems. They avoid publishing their poems using black text on a white page.
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
Utter Disloyalist: Tadhg Barry and the Irish Revolution
Tadhg Barry was born in Cork in 1880 and educated locally before obtaining work as an asylum attendant. After a spell in England, he returned to Cork and worked with the newly established Old Age Pensions Board. By this time, Barry had Gaelicised his name and immersed himself in Cork’s Irish-Ireland movement and separatist organisations such as Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Recently a friend recommended this book, and I am grateful to her. The story is told by Robert and is set mainly in 1946, when he is sixteen years of age and sets out from his home in a coal mining village in Durham.
Humans have a thing called a learning bias. No matter how wise a saying is, we are much more apt to accept it as true if we trust the source. Not only that, but we're fascinated by ultimate truths that spur us into action.
