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lookingforagoodread

@lookingforagoodread

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Just books I’m reading,words I’m listening to and bookstores I visit…an eclectic mix so hope you enjoy🕊️📚📕📖📗🇮🇪

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Thanks to @gillbooks @gilleducation for sending me a copy of Philly McMahon’s (@phillymcmahon)The Choice(written with @itsniallkelly )

🇮🇪A fictionalised account of McMahon’s upbringing in Ballymun in Dublin.Irish readers will know Philly McMahon for his exploits as a Gaelic footballer with the hugely successful Dublin team.

🇮🇪Whilst the authors beloved older brother John struggles with addiction Philly finds a way out of the heroin ravaging the Ballymun flats out on the sports field.

🇮🇪The toll and pain addiction causes within families is tenderly told as is the sense of community in an often maligned part of Dublin.The camaraderie and friendships offer huge hope in this inspirational read.The voice of the young Philly is authentically captured.

🇮🇪I chose the U2 song Running to Stand Still for this post as it too is set in the now demolished seven towers of Ballymun at the height of the heroin epidemic that took so many lives.There is an excellent documentary on RTE,Bad;the Song That Saved My Life about a childhood neighbour of Bono’s,Andy Rowen (aka Guck Pants Delaney)about this period in Ballymun.

🇮🇪The area has experienced much regeneration in recent times.The flats looked like the future once upon a time but poor planning and amenities turned the flats into a nightmare for many.Many too made it through and this novel is a reminder of hope in adversity.

#irishwriters #irishwriting #ballymun #irishfiction #gaelicfootball 🇮🇪💚🕊️ taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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9 hours ago

Love a trip to @chaptersbookstore 🙌💚🇮🇪📖 taken in Chapters Bookstore Parnell Street by @lookingforagoodread

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4 days ago

A world I knew in London in the late 80s..squats,the Irish centre in Camden,seeing the queues for work with Murphys on the sites each morning at Camden tube,the lost Irish souls stranded forever in the city.

💚So Louise Kennedy’s novel Stations should have been right up my street and in some ways it was.The author covers so many areas as she moves from the 80s to 2007.Abuse,the Troubles,religion,abuse,addiction,divorce,Aids and emigration are all explored through the story of Róisín McCaffrey.

💚A troubled teen,living with her mother Una,Róisín meets another lost soul in Red.Red carries a dark secret and Ro is dealing with the father’s leaving for London and a new family.1980s Kildare is repressive and the grip of the Catholic church has still not been loosened.

💚Like so many of us in the 80s,Ro ends up in a squat in London with Red and Barry Doyle.She begins to reconnect albeit it awkwardly with her father,his new partner Lynne and baby Mary.It is a messy,fraught and at times bleak world.

💚I thought the author took on too much..the marriage to Guy is swept over,the loss of a child too not really explored.The 2007 reconnection with Barry(Finbarr)too is hard to fathom in many ways.Which brings me to the characters..I just could’nt care enough about the fate of Red.I found him pretentious and totally self serving even before addiction took hold.Himself and Octavia were never fully plausible to me.Such a damaged soul could have been far easier to empathise with.

💚Ro too I found selfish and never content with herself or the goodness in others.She seems to be trapped in a teenage infatuation that has inhibited her adult life.Guy,Barry,Una,Sinead,Mary and Lynne are all so accommodating of her but I found her hard to like or care too much about.There was some ‘stage’ Irish elements too that irked me..the “God bless”,snatches of Irish spoken,potatoes being cooked in Barry’s,the Irish tunes on the jukeboxes..hard to take.

💚I did feel the author captured the Irish experience in 1980s London well and as I said I could relate to many elements here.

💚A mixed reading experience for me.

#bookstagram #bookreviewer #booksbooksbooks #bookworm #fiction 🕊️🇮🇪💚 taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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8 days ago

Have you ever felt a real sense of having read something important?Well that’s how I felt reading Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie.

🇮🇳The first book can be confusing with such a carnival of characters so much so that I kept a note of most of major players(see slides 2 and 3).

🇮🇳Saleem Salai(the Nose and many other nicknames)is our utterly unreliably narrator.His fiancee is the “dung goddess” Padma…she is the grounded audience.

🇮🇳Our narrator is born at midnight on August 15th,1947 (the start of Independence in India)…so his story is linked to the start of the nation.Two babies are swapped and our antagonist lives the life of his ‘midnight twin’ Shiva(Knees).The first 31 years of the new nation takes us to Indira Gandhi’s (the Widow)Emergency years.

🇮🇳A ten page summary could not scratch the surface of this mesmerising novel..it is a riot of crazy characters,magical realism,dreams and nightmares,happen chance,magicians,generals and paupers..the senses start to explode.After a slow start,book 2 and 3 really start to reel and spiral and I found myself flying along.

🇮🇳As I’ve said before here I expected Rushdie to be rather dull and academic but this novel is hilarious at times.The nicknames are brilliant!Our narrator is given to flights of fancy and is full of contradictions…fantasy and history are a mishmash in his notions.There is sadness,violence and poverty here too so it is by no means a comedy.

🇮🇳Midnight’s Children is impossible to categorise but I felt the ghost of James Joyce in the writing.A Booker winner in 1981.

A challenging read initially and book 3 can be confusing at the start but I am so glad I read this novel.

Secondhand section @chaptersbookstore

#booker #magicalrealism #fiction #bookreview #booksbooksbooks taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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13 days ago

Ireland’s largest public library @dlr.lexicon ..what a beautiful space and use of light…the views are’nt bad either #library #publiclibraries #read #literacy #librarian 💚🇮🇪❤️ taken in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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15 days ago

@lookingforagoodread has its own merchandise😂🙌 such a thoughtful gift..love it❤️💚 taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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19 days ago

50th birthday party @u2 @bewleysgraftonst Dublin 25/9/2026🇮🇪💚🕊️❤️ #u2 #u250 #u2.com #dublin #music taken in Bewley's Cafe by @lookingforagoodread

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20 days ago

Beautiful,beautiful,beautiful.

I loved Days Without End and A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry.The Newer World focuses now on the the story of the wonderfully named Tennyson Bouguereau in Tennesse in the 1840s.

🇺🇸Our old friends Thomas McNulty,John Cole,Winona,the lawyer Briscoe are still with us but now Tennyson and his sister Rosalee move to centre stage.

🇺🇸As children their mother is shot dead by Miss Belle Littlefair due to an unfortunate perceived slight.Tennyson is there when the Petrie mob rape Rosalee..siblings are bonded in suffering…”we had seen whippings and hurt and creatures killed for the pot and plate.”

🇺🇸Released from slavery by old Magan the novel shows the continued discrimination and danger for the black community.Change came dropping very slowly for Tennyson and Rosalee.

🇺🇸We follow Tennysons’ adventures in Nashville,England and later in the army fighting the ‘Indians’.We meet new characters like Minnie,George and the Reverend.

🇺🇸The narrator’s voice is beautifully rich and we see the newer world with Tennyson.Deeply bonded to his sister and their shared ache he returns to Paris,Tennessee to find all changed but his stoic sister still surviving this harsh world.

🇺🇸The novel finishes with Tennyson on the railroad again..will Alaska with his old friends offer a totally new world?Will we get a further novel?

🇺🇸The author is a master storyteller..beautiful!

#irishfiction #bookreviewer #booksbooksbooks #bookstagrammer #bookworm @kennysbookshop 💚🇺🇸 taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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23 days ago

I saw a review of Tony Birch’s work ShadowBoxing(2006) here quite some time ago and added it to my TBR list.Tracking down a copy was not as easy as I thought so thanks to @billandbenbooks for my copy.

🇦🇺A collection of linked stories this read more like a novella.Set in 1960s working class Fitzroy,Melbourne at a time of change.Old housing was being torn down for new social housing,families were being moved out of these tight knit communities and sent to new estates far from family and friends.The stories capture the final days of this world for good and bad.

🇦🇺Told from the perspective of young Michael Byrne as he grows from boy to man.Things are not easy,money is tight and a violent,hard drinking father brings added complications to the family.As so often is the case these vignettes show us a heroic mother figure,making ends meet and trying to protect her children in a hard world.

🇦🇺I loved the direct style of writing and even in the harshest stories(The Butcher’s Wife in particular)we are offered hope and belief in the human spirit.

🇦🇺Michael was a very likeable narrator and the latter scenes with his older father are very moving and poignant.

🇦🇺I am sure this work is heavily autobiographical in spirit at any rate.Has anybody else read this?

🇦🇺A little gem..so glad I found it. @tony_birch_writer

#bookreviewer #australianwriters #bookstagram #booksbooksbooks #independentbookstore 🇦🇺❤️ taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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a month ago

I so wanted to love All Them Dogs by Djamel White…an Irish author,a Dubliner on the shortlist for the Booker,a debut novel but…

Unfortunately I just found the novel cliched and it never rang true for me.Tony Ward did’nt feel like a working class lad.Everything about him screamed middle class to me.Yes the checklist of the designer runners and Canada Goose jackets,designer watches were all there but it all felt very Love/Hate or Kin to me.

The sexual dynamic between Tony and Flute just seemed an add on..I was unsure what it brought to the novel.Similarly I found characters like Angus Lavelle,Finto and Flute’s ma to be stereotypes.

I need to feel some sort of empathy for a main character…Tony Soprano was evil and a killer but he was strangely likeable in a warped sort of way.Nidgey too kept us intrigued.But Ward was totally self absorbed..the family scenes with his ma and Angus really showed his petty nastiness.

The ending was highly melodramatic.

So sorry to say this was’nt for me but if we all had the same tastes in music,books,clothes and art it would be a very bland old world!

#honestbookreview #bookreviewers #booksbooksbooks #irishfiction #bookerprize 💚🕊️🇮🇪 taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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a month ago

Loved Days Without End and A Thousand Moons so looking forward to Sebastian Barry’s The Newer World.
What a beautiful signed @kennysbookshop edition🙌🇮🇪💚 #supportirishbookshops #supportirishbooksellers #irishfiction #booksbooksbooks #bookstagram 💚 taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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a month ago

Finally!!!I got to read Barbara Kingsolver’s masterpiece Demon Copperhead at last.

💊As I read I kept thinking of Dickens and indeed later saw the author’s notes in the acknowledgements.There is also a nod to Holden Caulfield in here too.

💊Set in the Appalachians in Virginia(like my last read Ron Rash’s The Cove),Demon is born into the underbelly of the American Dream.He is a fighter from the day he is born and what an utterly lovable character he is.Having seen the many documentaries/films about OxiContin(such as the excellent Dopesick)and read Paul Thoreaux’s Deep South this was a world that is so sadly real.The author does not shy away from the realities of addiction and poverty but this is not a depressing read.

💊Demon is funny,empathetic and self aware.He is fortunate too in the good souls he mets on his journey-the beautiful Peggot family,Angus,Tommy,Betsy Woodall,Mr.Dick,Ms.Annie,Mr.Armstrong and even Coach Winfield.These characters are by no means perfect but they want to see Demon make a life for himself.Of course there are other characters who provide challenges for Demon..the tragic Dori,Stoner,Rose,the McCobbs,Mouse and the destructive Fast Forward..and of course his mom,Mom Fields(I could’nt help thinking about Agnes in Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain).The cast is positively Dickensian in scope and each was wonderfully portrayed.

💊Demon is talented and resilient but he too almost goes under..he sees so much tragedy in his young life..but he wants life and a different path.

💊I absolutely loved this novel and I absolutely loved the title and the titular character.A must read in my view.Stunning!

#booksbooksbooks #bookreviewer #bookreview #bookstagram #fiction 🇺🇸🏈💵 taken in Dublin, Ireland by @lookingforagoodread

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a month ago