Previous Day
Serious about symmetry, to a point
THE CECIL King retrospective at Imma, augmented by a really
outstanding selection of his work at Hillsboro Fine Art,
makes for fascinating viewing. King, who was born in Co Wicklow in
1921 and died in 1986, was a significant figure in the Irish
cultural landscape for a long time, writes
Aidan Dunne . p
A strong, deep voice for change from the 'New York of Africa'
ASA, A Paris-born Nigerian songwriter, sees her music as a force
for good and doesn't shy away from dark themes as wide-ranging as
blood diamonds, war and paedophilia, writes
Siobhan Long . p
Six years that changed the movies
THE MOST important years in film history are those in which Metropolis, It's a Wonderful Life, Shadows, The Graduate, Jaws and Pulp Fiction were released. p
Arts
Poetry soon: Dún Laoghaire gears up
ARTSCAPE: AN AFTERNOON Without . . . , one of the key events at the DLR Poetry Now Festival next month in Dún Laoghaire, is a gesture towards poets whose voices have been silenced or oppressed in the recent past, writes Deirdre Falvey . pWhy aren't men interested in the arts?
CULTURE SHOCK: HAVING A womb is an even bigger predictor of an interest in the arts than having a university degree, writes Fintan O'Toole . p
High-fliers on the wings of success
THE IRISH have blazed a trail through aviation history. The Ulster Aviation Society's new exhibition highlights the extraordinary lives of some of these pioneers of flight, writes Claire O'Connell . pHow to get your house in order
FROM SWITCHING off appliances fully to installing solar panels, there are plenty of steps you can take to increase the energy-efficiency of your home - and reduce bills, writes Sylvia Thompson . pHELP AT HAND - ENERGY LEAFLETS
Sustainable Energy Ireland, the national energy agency, has an excellent series of leaflets on how to improve the energy-efficiency of your home. pCould we get by with a little help from our kelp?
ANOTHER LIFE: GALES DELIVERED fresh sea-rods to the tide-line, the long, toffee-coloured furls of Laminaria torn up from mini-forests offshore, writes Michael Viney .
pEYE ON NATURE
BRENT GEESE flying over Dublin has become quite a common sight, as the population has increased to a whopping 40,000 after an exceptional breeding season in the Canadian Arctic in 2007, writes Michael Viney . pHORIZONS
Potato Day in a potato year "IT IS vital for food security in Ireland and worldwide that more people become involved in growing their own food." So says Trevor Sargent, Minister of State with special responsibility for food and horticulture. p
Keeping in with the Black Kings
SOCIOLOGY: Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Crosses the Line, By Sudhír Venkatesh Allen Lane, 302pp, £18.99 A RESEARCHER'S unusual study offers first-hand insight into the violent life - and complex economy - of a Chicago gang, writes Carlo Gebler . pDrawing from a deep well
GRAPHIC MEMOIR: Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story, By Frederik Peeters, translated from the French by Anjali Singh, Jonathan Cape, 192pp. £12.99 BLUE PILLS begins with a series of unsettling images: jagged circles and triangles, tentacled monstrosities, unidentifiable swirls of black, writes Katherine Farmar .
pForgive us, John, for we have prospered
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Lapsed Agnostic, By John Waters, Continuum, 193pp. £16.99 There's something that happens to you in your 30s or 40s. YOU'RE ONE-THIRD of the way along the path of life and have accumulated enough experience to have some insight into the nature of existence; it is only now that you can embark on being an amateur philosopher/sociologist/political scientist, writes Yvonne Nolan . pVery musical chairs
ESSAYS: The Poet's Chair: The First Nine Years of the Ireland Chair of Poetry, By Paul Durcan, John Montague & Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, The Lilliput Press, 264pp. €20 THE POET'S chair, the jacket illustration suggests, is an unassuming stool that would sit neatly in any farmhouse, or retro, kitchen, writes Vona Groarke . pAnalyse this, that and everything
FICTION: Something to Tell You, By Hanif Kureishi, Faber, 345pp. £16.99 LONG BEFORE even reaching the midway point of this entertaining, often horrifically funny, burlesque saga of emotional truth and serial pain, Jamal, the narrator, successful psychoanalyst, struggling father and failed husband, considers a post-gig Mick Jagger, writes Eileen Battersby . pThere's no need to panic - despite what the media might tell you
MEDIA: Panicology, By Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Penguin Viking, 284pp. £20 IT IS somewhat unnerving reviewing a book that opens with the excoriation of a book review, writes Joe Humphreys . pVirtual reality and the novel
LITERARY CRITICISM: How Fiction Works, By James Wood Jonathan Cape, 194pp, £12.99 AS AN institutional discipline, the modern study of literature has increasingly developed Stockholm syndrome, writes John Kenny . pHappy endings start here
POPULAR FICTION: It Must Be Love, By Sharon Owens, Poolbeg, 324pp. €17.99 and The Matchmaker, By Marita Conlon-McKenna, Bantam, 380pp. £10.99 The storyline of Sharon Owens's fifth novel, It Must Be Love, has a runaway bride-to-be as its starting point. The reader is then taken on a romp through London, the west of Ireland, New York and back again to the village in the west, writes Rose Doyle . pJoin the club
POPULAR FICTION: The Book Club, By Kate McCabe, Poolbeg, 390pp. €5.99 'Looking for a way to pass the cold winter nights . . . Marian Hunt decides to start a book club," says the back cover of Kate McCabe's novel, and this could just as well have been the writer's intention with this third outing, writes Catherine Daly . pLooking for a new equality
POLITICS: The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming America from the Right, By Paul Krugman, Penguin/Allen Lane, 296pp. £20 ACCLAIMED ECONOMIST and Princeton professor Paul Krugman has emerged in recent years as a trenchant critic of the Bush administration and its war on Iraq, via his bi-weekly column in the New York Times, writes Anthony Glavin . pThe poet's eye in fine frenzy
POETRY: Dulse, By Frank McGuinness, Gallery, 70pp. €11.95 READING FRANK McGuinness's new book of poetry, Dulse, I was reminded of something Robert Lowell once wrote about his mentor, the Agrarian poet Allen Tate, in many ways McGuinness's opposite, writes Richard Tillinghast . pLOOSE LEAVES
Vote for your favourite books of the year THE SHORTLISTS for the third Irish Book Awards were announced this week, writes Shane Hegarty .
pPAPERBACKS
A SELECTION of the latest paperbacks reviewed p
It's a mad, bad ad world
TV REVIEW: 'LOVE WAS invented by guys like me to make you buy nylons." For three days after JFK's assassination in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, there were, apparently, no commercials shown on American TV, writes Hilary Fannin .
pA seasoned star is reborn
RADIO REVIEW: GAY BYRNE was halfway through his weekly radio show when a listener called in to say he was glad Gay was back on the radio. Gay thanked the listener, but said his two-hour Sunday Serenade (Lyric FM, Sun) was ending in one week. (That's tomorrow in today's time.), writes Quentin Fottrell . p'I found my eyes misting over. This time I was crying for all of us. How long have we been rotting beneath our own hedgerow? '
O DEATH, where is thy sting? Waiting for my long narrative poem to be published, I am 'falling slowly' into morbid thoughts, prompted by a corpse at the bottom of the garden and further inspired by the Bardic stylings of Glen Hansard, writes Ultan Quigley . p
