On Saturday, I was at Prince’s concert in Malahide Castle. It was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. I came out knackered and hoarse. My feet and legs ached from dancing in a confined space for nearly three hours. Actually, it was more jumping up and down – it’s hard to dance very expressively in a…
I’ve long been interested in how our relationship with text is changing as the means of producing it changes. For many people, the term ‘ebook’ means the same text you read in a book, displayed on the screen of a eReader, an iPad or a computer. For designers, illustrators and computer programmers, and even film-makers, it’s something that potentially…
I’m not to going to say too much about this, as Patrick says it so well himself. If you love books, you should listen to this; it’s his speech on winning the Carnegie medal for ‘Monsters of Men’ (an excellent conclusion to a brilliant trilogy – I’ll get to posting something on it later). He’s an excellent speaker, and…
Judging by my last write-up on Peter Falk, and on this one, I’ve really got to get my posts out quicker. On Friday, the 1st of July (yes, that’s over a week ago), Maedhbh and I were in Trim to take part in an event for the Trim Swift Festival. The festival celebrates the life, works and the legacy…
Any regular viewer of ‘Columbo’ waited for that moment, those words: ‘Just one more thing . . .’. The moment you knew the scruffy, shambling, diffident detective was about to nail his suspect to the wall with a damning piece of evidence. It normally came after a drawn-out process, as the murderer went from being dismissive of this rumpled,…
Conor Kostick is a good friend and the author of the excellent ‘Avatar Chronicles’. To celebrate the launch of ‘Edda’, the third book in the series, Conor’s doing a ‘blog tour’ – a series of pieces on different blogs, finishing up on mine. Today, I’m posting a video of the two of us having a chat about ‘Edda’ and…
I spent the 11th to the 13th of June in a place called Saint Malo, on the northern coast of Britanny, in France. I was there to take part in a fantastic book and film festival, but used it as an excuse to get a family holiday in as well. The festival is entitled ‘Etonnants Voyageurs’ – which loosely…
In its ongoing crusade to make as much of the world’s information available online (an act that is not entirely altruistic), Google have teamed up with the British Library to release 250,000 books online, from the library’s stock. ‘The Telegraph’ reports that the books will cover the years from 1700 to 1870, so the copyright issues that Google has…
It seems the French like Irish steampunk stories. The French edition of ‘Ancient Appetites’ – ‘Voraces’ – is up for a second award. This one is the Prix Imaginales 2011. The prize was created in 2002 and is the first French prize exclusively devoted to fantasy writing. ‘Voraces’ is in the ‘jeunesse’ category. Here’s the shortlist for the category:…
Found this on Irish Publishing News. I made it onto the list of Top 100 authors borrowed in Irish libraries in 2010. For anybody who thinks that children’s books are a minor part of what is overwhelmingly an adult book market, the Top 100 list is loaded with children’s authors, with over half the Top 50 consisting of our…