I found out recently that, in the UK, libraries and schools are starting to bring in policies that demand people like me – who go in to do storytelling, talks and drawings – have public liability cover of £5 million. I’m not sure what I could do to a person or property during one of my sessions that would…
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…
Caroline Horn has an article in ‘The Bookseller’ that tells a sobering story about the current state of the children’s publishing industry in the UK – one that can obviously be applied to Ireland as well. Many well established children’s authors and illustrators are really struggling to make a living, partly due to a reduction in sales, partly due…
The language and subject matter in this post may not be suitable for younger readers. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide. I’m thoroughly sick of the callous and arrogant way the Catholic Church has dealt with the overwhelming number of cases of child abuse by their people. Not only have they permitted it to happen, created…
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…
It might be going a bit overboard to call it ‘a revolution’, but here’s an interesting idea, as featured on the Mail Online site. Hodder have imported a new publishing format from the Netherlands. Basically, it’s a paperback novel you read with the spine turned horizontally, with the pages in landscape position. The paper is extremely thin – based…