Catherine Dunne -Book Club Special Event

BOOK CLUB SPECIAL EVENT- March 2013

Our next meeting will take place the 28th of March at 6.30pm.

We have a special guest that night, we welcome the author Catherine Dunne that will read from her new novel The Things We Now Know”.

All welcome.

Other Catherine Dunne’s books in Clondalkin Library:

• Missing Julia
• Another Kind of Live
• An unconsidered people, the Irish in London

Bookclub choice for January 2013

Happy New Year to everybody! Clondalkin Library Bookclub will meet again next 31st of January at 6.30pm.

This month choice is Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marine Lewycka.

“For twenty years Doro and Marcus lived in a commune, convinced lentils and free love would change the world. They didn’t. What they did do was give their children a terror of radicalism, dirt, cooking rotas and poverty. Their daughter Clara wants nothing less conformist than her own, clean bathroom. Their son Serge hides the awkward fact that he’s a banker earning loadsamoney. So when Doro and Marcus spring a surprise on their kids – just as the world is rocked in ways they always wished for – the family is forced to confront some thorny truths about themselves . . .” (Amazon)

“On one level, Marina Lewycka’s ambitious new novel is a comic family saga about children and their resentments, and parents and their pride. It’s also a financial thriller, which tackles greed and inequality and, characteristically, casts the family as a reflection of the nation. “(The Guardian)

New members always welcome!!!

Bookclub choice for November 2012

The book for November is Umbrella by Will Self, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012.

“Recently having abandoned his RD Laing-influenced experiment in running a therapeutic community – the so-called Concept House in Willesden – maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner arrives at Friern Hospital, a vast Victorian mental asylum in North London, under a professional and a marital cloud.

He has every intention of avoiding controversy, but then he encounters Audrey Dearth, a working-class girl from Fulham born in 1890 who has been immured in Friern for decades. A socialist, a feminist and a munitions worker at the Woolwich Arsenal, Audrey fell victim to the encephalitis lethargica sleeping sickness epidemic at the end of the First World War and, like one of the subjects in Oliver Sacks’ Awakenings, has been in a coma ever since. Realising that Audrey is just one of a number of post-encephalitics scattered throughout the asylum, Busner becomes involved in an attempt to bring them back to life – with wholly unforeseen consequences.

Is Audrey’s diseased brain in its nightmarish compulsion a microcosm of the technological revolutions of the twentieth century? And if Audrey is ill at all – perhaps her illness is only modernity itself? And what of Audrey’s two brothers, Stanley and Albert: at the time she fell ill, Stanley was missing presumed dead on the Western Front, while Albert was in charge of the Arsenal itself, a coming man in the Imperial Civil Service. Now, fifty years later, when Audrey awakes from her pathological swoon, which of the two is it who remains alive? Radical in its conception, uncompromising in its style, Umbrella is Will Self’s most extravagant and imaginative exercise in speculative fiction to date.” (Amazon)

New member always welcome. Next meeting on Thursday 29th of November at 6.30pm

Recommeded Reads – Bring up the bodies (The Man Booker Prize 2012)

Clondalkin Library has available to borrow 2 copies of the new The Man Booker Prize 2012 that was announced last week: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel. New members of the library are always welcome!

“The year is 1535 and Thomas Cromwell, chief Minister to Henry VIII, must work both to please the king and keep the nation safe.

Anne Boleyn, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church, has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. As Henry develops a dangerous attraction to Wolf Hall’s Jane Seymour, Thomas must negotiate a ‘truth’ that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career.

But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.”

Crime Night -Civic Theatre Tallaght

Crime Night with your favorite Crime Writers in Civic Theatre in Tallaght.

The Red Line Book Festival 2012 brings us an evening with Crime Writers as John Connolly, Mark Billingham, Declan Hughes, Niamh O’Connor and Declan Burke.

Tickets: 10€ / 8€

More information in http://www.redlinebookfestival.com

Shauna Gilligan at Clondalkin Library Book Club

Book Clubs Together at Clondalkin Library- 13th November @7pm

All book clubs in the Clondalkin area are invited to Clondalkin Library for an evening get-together with special guest Shauna Gilligan, author of “Happiness Comes from Nowhere”.

The event will take place next 13th of November at 7pm. All welcome!

This event is part of The Red Line Book Festival.

Red Line Book Festival 2012

The Red Line Bok Festival features both Irish and international authors, celebrating books, reading, and the written word. The festival will take placed from 13th to 17th of November.

The festival provides an opportunity to engage and meet with your favorite writer in a meaningful way. A host of authors will be taking part, including President Michael D. Higgins, Anne Enright, Gerard Donovan, Sean Moncrieff, Catherine Fulvio, Lisa Fitzpatrick, Tony Bates, Declan Burke and many many more.

Running alongside the general programme is a highly regarded Children’s Programme, which will be a leading showcase for children’s writers and illustrators. Clondalkin Library will hold some of these events.

Events will take place at the Civic Theatre, The County Library, Tallaght, The Victory Centre, Firhouse and in many of South Dublin Libraries branches.

For more information, browse the programme online and to book your tickets, please, visit our website at www.redlinebookfestival.com  or  contact us at info@redlinebookfestival.com