Wednesday, 17 December 2014

December's Read: Bailieborough Library

The Lives of Stella Baine


When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in.

A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.

December's Read: Cavan Library Reading Group

This month, our group will read from the body of work by William Somerset Maugham. Why not read along with us and tell us what you think by commenting here on our "Great Reads Blog"...


Click here to browse our Catalogue for all items by William Somerset Maugham
Reading Group favourites were: Of Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge.
 

Saturday, 22 November 2014

November's Read: Bailieborough Reading Group

Vernon God Little : A 21st century comedy in the presence of death

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Fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little is in trouble, and it has something to do with the recent massacre of 16 students at his high school. Soon, the quirky backwater of Martirio, barbecue capital of Texas, is flooded with wannabe CNN hacks, eager for a scapegoat.


November's Read: Cavan Library Reading Group

This month the group are reading a selection from Colm Toíbín's body of work, including his latest "Nora Webster". 

Browse and reserve any of Colm Toibin's material on our Catalogue now!



Monday, 6 October 2014

October's Read - Cootehill Reading Group

Faithful Place by Tana French


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Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.


Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.

October's Read - Bailieborough Reading Group

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

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In the aftermath of Ireland's financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the character face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds.

October's Read - Cavan Reading Group

The Mill for Grinding Old People Young by Glenn Patterson


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In the cold dawn of Christmas Day 1897, Gilbert Rice, 85-years-old and in failing health, recounts his journey into manhood in a city on the cusp of great change. Belfast in the 1830s was a city in flux. Industrialisation had led to an increase in population as workers flocked to the newly created jobs. Gilbert, a young man with prospects, begins work with the Ballast Office, supervising Belfast Port. But in the course of his days - and nights - abroad in the town, Gilbert becomes aware of tensions old and new. When he meets Maria, a Polish exile from Russian persecution, he is drawn into a love affair that will drive him to an act that could change his life, and the town's, forever. "The Mill for Grinding Old People Young" is a brilliantly imaginative and moving historical novel. It evokes a vanished city that resonates powerfully with our contemporary anxieties.

Monday, 22 September 2014

September's Read - Cavan Reading Group

The Bend for Home by Dermot Healy



One day, years after he's moved away from his childhood home in rural Ireland, Dermot Healy returns to care for his ailing mother. Out of the blue she hands him the forgotten diary he had kept as a fifteen-year-old. He is amazed to find the makings of the writer he has become, as well as taken aback at the changes his memory has wrought upon the events of the past. Here is the seed of his story-the vision of the boy meets the memory of the man-which creates a stunning, illusory effect. The strange silhouettes who have haunted his past come back to inhabit these pages: his father, a kind policeman who guides him back to bed when he stumbles down the stairs sleepwalking; his mother, whose stories young Dermot has heard so often that he believes they are his own; or Aunt Masie, whose early disappointment in love has left her both dreamy and cynical.

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

September's Read - Cootehill Reading Group

Wonder by R.J. Pallacio 

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August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?

September's Read - Bailieborough Reading Group

If You Were Me by Sheila O'Flanagan 


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Carlotta O'Keefe is happily engaged, and the wedding plans are coming together. She's clear about her future path, both personally and in her busy career. Maybe Chris doesn't make her heart race every time she sees him, but you can't have that feeling for ever. Can you? Then, on a trip to Seville, Carlotta runs into Luke Evans. Luke broke her heart so long ago she'd almost convinced herself she'd forgotten him. Now, he's not that boy any more, but an attractive and intriguing man. And he can explain everything that happened way back when. Suddenly Carlotta's not so sure of anything any more.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014

Two Irish Authors make this year's Man Booker Longlist

Congratulations to Niall Williams & Joseph O'Neill who have been long listed for this year's prize. Read more here...



Monday, 14 July 2014

July's Read: Cootehill Library Reading Group

This month, the Cootehill crew are reading "This Is How It Ends” by Kathleen MacMahon.......



A transatlantic love story beginning at the start of the current recession by Mary Lavin's grand daughter.Bruno is a middle-aged American banker who has come to Ireland to escape the financial meltdown in his own country. Addie is an out-of-work Irish architect. Childless and isolated when she meets Bruno, her life seems to be on a downward spiral. 

Cootehill Reading Group's "Surprise Surprise" picks in June

In June, members of Cootehill Library's Reading Group were given surprise reads. The choices went down a treat! All books were rated by the group at 4 stars. Why not reserve some of these titles on our Catalogue now by clicking on the Book Images below??




The May Bride by Suzannah Dunn
I didn't stand a chance: looking back over thirteen years, that's what I see. In the very first instant, I was won over, and of course I was: I was fifteen and had been nowhere and done nothing, whereas Katherine was twenty-one and yellow-silk-clad and just married to the golden boy. Only a few years later, I'd be blaming myself for not having somehow seen ... but seen what, really? What - really, honestly - was there to see, when she walked into Hall? She was just a girl, a lovely, light-stepping girl, smiling that smile of hers, and, back then, as giddy with goodwill as the rest of us. When Katherine Filliol arrives at Wolf Hall as the new young bride of Jane Seymour's older brother, Edward, Jane is irresistibly drawn to the confident older girl and they develop a close and trusting friendship, forged during a long, hot country summer. However, only two years later, the family is destroyed by Edward's allegations of Katherine's infidelity with his father. When Jane is also sent away, to serve Katharine of Aragon, she watches another wife being put aside, with terrible consequences.

Someone to watch over me by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
 A young man with Down's Syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent. If he didn't do it, who did? And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?


The Dinner by Herman Koch
A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. Each couple has a fifteen year old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrates, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

The Free by Willy Vlautin 
Leroy, a young, wounded, Iraq veteran, waking to a rare moment of clarity, his senses flooded with the beauty of remembering who he is but the pain of realising it won't last. When his attempt to end his half-life fails, he is taken to the local hospital where he is looked after by a nurse called Pauline, and visited by Freddie, the night-watchman from his group home for disabled men. As the stories of these three wounded characters circle and cross each other, we come to learn more of their lives. The father who caused her mother to abandon them both, and who Pauline loves and loathes in equal measure, the daughters Freddie yearns to be re-united with and, in a mysterious and frightening adventure story, the girlfriend Leroy dreams of protecting.


Monday, 7 July 2014

Fancy reading something new???

Falling by Emma Kavanagh
A plane falls out of the sky. A woman is murdered. Four people all have something to hide. Jim is a retired police officer, and worried father. His beloved daughter has disappeared and he knows something is wrong. Tom has woken up to discover that his wife was on the plane and must break the news to their only son. Cecilia had packed up and left her family. Now she has survived a tragedy, and sees no way out. Freya is struggling to cope with the loss of her father. But as she delves into his past, she may not like what she finds.

Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas There is gentle teenage daughter Violet, whose experiments with fasting and drugs land her in a psychiatric ward; eight-year-old Will who is smart, funny and caring but has already been labelled autistic and is being home-schooled; and mother Josephine, whose subtly controlling and seemingly innocent manoeuvres may just be the source of everyone else's despair. And then there's Rose, the sister who got away. Tired of Josephine's interferences, Rose ran away from home years earlier and hasn't been heard from since. But as her mother's intentions become more terrifyingly clear, Violet begins to wonder whether something far, far worse happened to her older sister.

Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Woods
This is the story of the most famous writer of his generation and the four extraordinary women who married him. In the dazzling summer of 1926, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley travel from their home in Paris to a villa in the south of France. They swim, play bridge and drink gin. But wherever they go they are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley's best friend. She is also Ernest's lover. Hadley is the first Mrs. Hemingway, but neither she nor Fife will be the last. Over the ensuing decades, Ernest's literary career will blaze a trail, but his marriages will be ignited by passion and deceit. Four extraordinary women will learn what it means to love the most famous writer of his generation, and each will be forced to ask herself how far she will go to remain his wife...Luminous and intoxicating, Mrs. Hemingway portrays real lives with rare intimacy and plumbs the depths of the human heart.

On such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor class—descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China—find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement. In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan’s journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.

Remedy is none by William McIlvanneyCharlie Grant, an intense young student at Glasgow University, watches his father die. Overwhelmed by the memory of this humble yet dignified death, Charlie is left to face his own fierce resentment for his adulterous mother. With shades of Hamlet and Camus, William McIlvanney's first novel is a revelatory portrait of youth, of society, and of family.

Tuesday, 3 June 2014

May's Read: Bailieborough Library Reading Group

The Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams





Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore were made for each other -- but fate doesn't always take the easiest or the most obvious route to true love. For a start, Nicholas and Isabel have never met and nor are they likely to, without some kind of divine intervention. But as God, ghosts, a series of coincidences and seemingly chance events and encounters conspire to bring the couple together, other -- often more human -- forces attempt to keep them apart. 'What will be, will be, ' of course, but that doesn't guarantee a happy-ever-after ending, nor answer the question 'Will they, won't they?'

Wednesday, 28 May 2014

May's Read: Cootehill Library Reading Group

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter 



The story begins in 1962. Somewhere on a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and views an apparition: a beautiful woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an American starlet, he soon learns, and she is dying. 
And the story begins again today, half a world away in Hollywood, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot searching for the woman he last saw at his hotel fifty years before. Gloriously inventive, funny, tender and constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a novel full of fabulous and yet very flawed people, all of them striving towards another sort of life, a future that is both delightful and yet, tantalizingly, seems just out of reach.

May's Read: Cavan Library Reading Group

Flight by Oona Frawley



The story of four travellers whose journeys intersect one winter in Dublin. Sandrine, a Zimbabwean woman who works as a carer for Tom and Clare. 
Meanwhile Elizabeth, their daughter, carries the weight of her own body’s secret. Set in Ireland in 2004 as a referendum on citizenship approaches, this is a magically observed story of a family and belonging. Flight is among a new breed of Irish novel – one that recognizes the global nature of Ireland in the aftermath of the failed Celtic Tiger. An astonishing and atmospheric debut.

Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Fall In Love with our Choice Summer Reads!


Our Summer Reading List is the best choice of “Great Reads” which Cavan librarians, who are passionate about literature and reading, have handpicked for you! 

Thank you to our Library Reading Group members who also suggested some great titles. Guiding people to great reads is our daily task and one we take very seriously. 

We want you to enjoy our 2014 list - 43 titles with something for everyone. Tell us what you think by commenting on our posts. Bad or good, we want to know. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Summer Reading List


Reserve any of these titles on our Catalogue by clicking on the Book Covers below! Let us know what you think by commenting to this post