Reading Matters

A visit to Marsh's Library, Dublin

 

Behind this impressive stone gate (left) near St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin there lies a small, understated sign (right) attached to a wall. You then take a hard turn left, to be greeted by...

...a set of stone stairs leading to an imposing portico, the stonework blackened by years of city pollution. Step inside and there's a flight of stairs leading to Ireland's oldest public library, which is hidden behind possibly the world's biggest door.

You have to press a visitor's bell, which chimes surprisingly loudly, and wait for an attendant to let you in.

And that, I'm afraid is where the photographs end. Sadly, photography is not permitted once you step through that big black door into the library proper. I was told that the books, some of which are hundreds of years old, were too precious to be exposed to camera flashes. Even though I promised not to use a flash, I was told rules were rules and they were very sorry.

But, here's one I found on the internet, courtesy of the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog. (I can only hope I haven't breached copyright by using it here.)

The library

The library is one massive long room filled from floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes. I gasped when I saw it. I loved the beautiful dark oak bookcases and the elegant design of the carved and lettered gables, and I can't even begin to describe the mesmerising, musty aroma of old books that filled the air.

Imagine my surprise when the attendant told me there was a second room, exactly the same, running parallel to this one. All I had to do was walk through the door at the end and turn right.

There are more than 25,000 volumes in storage here, most of which date back to the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. The books are mainly non-fiction and cover everything from medicine to travel, law to science.

The collection was set up by an English clergy man, Archbishop Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713), in 1701 as Ireland's first public library, and the building was designed by Sir William Robinson, the surveyor general of Ireland at the time.

It remains a working library, and the full library catalogue is available to search online. It also has a conservation department which offers expert advice on the conservation and repair of books, manuscripts and other archival material.

The wired alcoves

One of the highlights of the library is the "scholar's cages" in the second long room. (The image is taken from the Go Ireland travel website, and I assume they won't mind me using it here, given I'm trying to help promote the library as a tourist attraction.) There are three wired alcoves, and they were designed to allow library users to access rare books without risk of the books going walkabout. In other words, the scholars were locked inside while they read the books. Imagine doing that today!

According to a leaflet I picked up in the library, many of the books were originally chained to rods running along each shelf to prevent theft. I suppose it must have taken people awhile to understand the concept of a "borrowing" library.

The Exhibition

When I visited on June 17, I was fortunate to see an exhibition of medical books called Hippocrates Revived.

Glass display cabinets lined the central aisle in both rooms, and each was dedicated to a particular medical subject or period of history -- for instance, the Black Plague, obstetrics and surgery.

Despite my lack of interest in medicine, I found it completely fascinating. As I walked along, inspecting each cabinet, it was like witnessing the development of medicine through the ages. It was a bit hard to believe that I was looking at original documents, some of which were 500 or 600 years old!

I was particularly taken with the section on maternity, which featured a book, published in 1609, by the French midwife Louyse Bourgeois (that's her, pictured, right; the image is presumed copyright-free and taken from wikipedia). It was the first book on pregnancy and childbirth written by a woman. The title -- Diverse Observations on Sterility; Loss of the Ovum after Fecundation, Fecundity and Childbirth; Diseases of Women and of Newborn Infants (sometimes also known as Various Observations on the Sterility, fruit loss, fertility, childbirth and diseases of women and newborn infants) -- simply trips off the tongue, doesn't it?

Visitor information

I really enjoyed my visit to the library and am so glad I made the trek in the rain. It was one of the highlights of my recent trip to Dublin.

If you fancy visiting Marsh's Library you will find it at St Patrick's Close (behind St Patrick's Cathedral), Dublin 8. Tel: +353 1 454 3511. Opening hours vary. Check the official website for details. Tickets cost €2.50 per adult and €2 per concession. Children and scholars using the library for research are admitted free.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Richard Hine

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today's guest is author Richard Hine, whose debut novel Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch — a corporate satire set in the New York media industry — was one of the first original manuscripts to be acquired and published by AmazonEncore. I reviewed it last month and found it a fast-paced, hugely comic read.

Richard's fiction has previously appeared in numerous literary publications, including London Magazine and Brooklyn Review. He is also a winner of and two-time finalist in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, and an interview of him appears in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Book.

Richard was born in London, but has lived in New York City for more than 20 years. Do visit his official website, which is a wonderful spoof on a traditional newspaper, for further information.

Without further ado, here's Richard's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

A favorite book: Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding

As a teenager in England I read mainly contemporary fiction. I devoured horror stories by Stephen King, James Herbert and others. I couldn’t get enough comic fiction like The World According to Garp and Catch-22. But nothing quite prepared me for Henry Fielding.

I read Joseph Andrews when I was 20. I was blown away. Not least by the thought that the book was nearly 250 years old. I loved everything about it – from the detailed descriptions in the Table of Contents to the bawdiness of the plot, to all the authorial tangents and social commentary Fielding packed in. Not having read many 18th or 19th century novels at the time, I was amazed at how contemporary it felt—which is probably the same as saying that I, like Joseph Andrews, had grown up a bit too oblivious to the hypocrisy, manipulation and mendaciousness of the world.

The book is filled with memorable characters, not just Joseph and Parson Adams, but also Lady Booby, Madam Slipslop and Joseph’s true love, Fannie. It’s fantastic, picaresque, thought-provoking, and everyone should read it! I enjoyed Fielding’s Tom Jones, too, but it couldn’t quite live up to Joseph Andrews for me.


A book that changed my world: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

By the time I read The Remains of the Day I had lived in New York for a couple of years, so I was still suffering from residual culture shock—and becoming more and more immersed in American media. This was a novel that shook me up on many levels. I just thought it was brilliantly written and incredibly psychologically perceptive. I could really relate to the whole notion of clinging to a delusion of Englishness. Most of all, though, I think I was ready to receive the message that it’s really possible for people to live an entire life believing in something, investing all their hopes and dreams, all their sense of purpose and self-worth, into something that’s just a made-up fantasy. Of course, we now know from scientific studies that people who are more realistic about the world are more inclined to depression, so perhaps there’s something to be said for some forms of delusion.


A book that deserves a wider audience: The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark

I only started reading Muriel Spark after reading her New York Times obituary in 2006, which made her sound like a very interesting person as well as a writer worth reading. Also, my girlfriend Amanda Filipacchi’s novels are often compared to Muriel Spark’s, and because she doesn’t write them fast enough, I had to find something else to read. I read of few of Spark’s novels before The Ballad of Peckham Rye. It became my favorite of hers not just because of the way it satirizes the British class system (which I always enjoy), but because the character of Dougal Douglas (a.k.a Douglas Dougal) is more than just devilishly immoral. He’s quite possibly the devil himself.

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Thanks, Richard, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Richard's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've not read any of them, although The Remains of the Day is in my To Be Read pile, where it's been sitting for about five years! I've read a handful of Spark's novels and really enjoyed them, but I do feel the need to ration them out. I don't want to be in the position where I have no more Spark novels left to read! Mind you, perhaps it's now time I dust off my Penguin Modern Classics edition of The Ballad of Peckham Rye that's been sitting on my bookshelf for a year or two.

'Falling Slowly' by Robert Fannin

Fiction - paperback; Hachette Books Ireland; 307 pages; 2010.

Desmond Doyle makes ends meet by working in a vegetarian shop. His girlfriend, Daphne, is a struggling actress slowly sinking into depression.

One day Doyle -- he is known by his last name, not his first -- returns home, accompanied by his boss, Geoff, to find Daphne lying dead in the bath, her wrists slashed. It looks like a straightforward suicide, but the police have other ideas, and both Doyle and Geoff are arrested on suspicion of murder.

Did either of them do it? Detective Inspector Harry Kneebone seems to think at least one of them is the killer, but has his intuition let him down on this one?

And what of the artist, Gina Harding, whom Doyle later meets, whose paintings depict Daphne in the bath? Gina swears she doesn't know the girl in the picture, but is she telling the truth? Or is Doyle's grief getting the better of him? Is he losing his marbles?

Falling Slowly is billed as a psychological thriller, but the early chapters have the look and feel of a police procedural. The arrest and subsequent release of Doyle (and Geoff) without charge leaves the investigation on shaky ground.

Kneebone, as the jaded, burnt-out cop, feels like a walking, talking cliché. But his presence in the story does serve a purpose: he shakes up Doyle's world to such an extent that you're not sure whether Doyle is as weak and ineffectual as he comes across. Maybe he is capable of carrying out a horrendous crime. Maybe he is insane and just putting on a good act.

In that respect the characterisation is very good. Doyle is likable if annoyingly lame, the kind of chap who lacks self-confidence and lets things happen to him rather than fighting his corner. You can quite clearly see that he is out of his comfort zone and his grip on reality is slowly disintegrating.

Even Daphne, while dead before the novel takes off, is strangely alluring.

But the narrative seems slightly unsure of itself, wavering between crime and drama, and not knowing which to settle on.

And while the Bristol-based, Irish-born author is a deft hand at delivering unexpected bombshells -- and red herrings -- not all of them are believable.

There's plenty of momentum though, which builds up to an exciting climax. I guessed the ending long before I reached it, and I felt that some of the loose ends were tied up too well and too quickly, lending it the raffish kind of air you would normally expect from a TV drama. But if you ignore some of the more outlandish elements, Falling Slowly is an entertaining story, perfect if you're looking for a holiday or beach read.

'Five Bells' by Gail Jones

Fiction - hardcover; Harvill Secker; 224 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Gail Jones is an acclaimed Australian writer with four novels to her name. Five Bells, her fifth, is set in Sydney on one day shortly after the new Labor Government has come to power, some time in 2008. It tells the stories of four individual characters as they criss-cross the city on a fine summer's day.

There is Ellie, a tourist from rural NSW, who has ventured into the city to meet her old boyfriend, James, whom she has not seen for several years. Ellie's home-life has been troubled, and James, now a school teacher, is recovering from a tragedy that has scarred him emotionally.

Then there is Catherine, from Dublin, who is embarking on a new life in Australia after the death of her beloved brother in a car accident. And, finally, there is Pei Xing, born in China, who is still trying to come to terms with the loss of her parents, who were killed in Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Apart from Ellie and James, these characters do not know each other but there are fleeting moments when their lives intersect. Eventually they meet, but under unexpected and tragic circumstances, right at the end of the novel.

The book is not particularly plot-driven, but it is very much a story about characters, and, in particular, their inner lives. There's a quote about three-quarters of the way through that sums up the premise of Five Bells perfectly. In it Ellie stands at a bus-stop processing the thoughts in her head: her dad's untimely death; her mother's quick and unexpected re-marriage; of having sex with Jamie in her teenage years.

A bus-stop wait could cover all this, all this complicated history. A woman standing still in a main street on a Saturday afternoon could carry all this: death, time, recollected acts of love-making -- all together, simultaneous, ringing in her head.

In many ways that's exactly what reading this book feels like. You become totally immersed in the interior monologues of the four different characters, holding their thoughts in your own head, like a simultaneous refrain, and waiting for the moments of shared experience, whether physical or mental, between them.

Jones' great achievement is that she gives each character an authentic backstory and fleshes it out without being too obvious about it. In doing this she shows how memory works, but she's also able to demonstrate what it is to be human, and how, despite our varied backgrounds and upbringings, we are all much alike beneath the surface. In many ways this is a book about the deep personal secrets we all keep.

Pei Xing is a prime example. Her self-reliance, friendliness and kindness belies her tortured past. Every week she makes a long trek by public transport to visit an elderly woman in hospital recovering from a stroke. The woman was once her prison guard in China, but it is not something she has ever told anyone. Who, for instance, would understand their complicated relationship? Pei simply sits with the woman and reads Doctor Zhivago, which her father translated, to her.

She did not speak of Mao. She did not mention their large-scale history, the three-year famine, or the anti-rightist campaigns; just as she did not tell the most private of her family memories, the red-coat day, her mother's music, the times she had spent learning English and Russian from her father. And so it went by, the cosy lassitude of a hospital afternoon, washed in reminiscence and a snowy story from Russia.

The city of Sydney is also a central character in this book. There are recurring motifs throughout: Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House; an Aboriginal busker playing a didgeridoo; Circular Quay and the ferries plying the water; the Museum of Contemporary Art; the sunshine and the glittering harbour waters.

And in this there are echoes of James Joyce's Dubliners, especially in the last paragraph which is reminiscent of Joyce's great short story The Dead, substituting the snow over Dublin for rain over Sydney.

There is a lot of music in this novel, too, a soundtrack that mirrors the cacophony of city noises. Catherine has Elvis Costello's I Want You trailing "mournfully through her head", listens to Sinead O'Connor singing Raglan Road, and has a crush on U2's Bono stemming from her teenage years; James has Coldplay's Clocks in his mind ("it is the curse of his generation, to have a soundtrack enlisted for everything") and is haunted by the disturbing images in the video for Nirvana's Heart-shaped Box which he'd seen as a 19-year-old. Even Pei remembers her father telling her that everyone possesses an "inward music".

Five Bells is an ambitious, beautifully written novel, full of the lovely rich language I've come to expect from Gail Jones (I've reviewed Sorry and Sixty Lights on this blog). It's a moving, rather gentle, story about coming to grips with the past in order to move into the future, of the ties that bind us to our families, and of the things we never tell each other. And I'd like to think it might earn Jones a place on this year's Booker long-list...

Triple Choice Tuesday: Tony's Reading List

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Tony Malone from Tony's Reading List.

Tony was born and raised in England, but escaped Old Blighty shortly after completing his university studies in French and German. He spent a couple of years in Germany and a few in Japan, before moving to Melbourne, Australia with his wife. He now devours, and reviews, classic literature on his blog – in the spare moments not spent reading Charlie and Lola books to his young daughters.

Without further ado, here's Tony's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

A favourite book: The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

I love the classics, and I could have chosen any one of a plethora of Victorian novels, but Hardy’s story of unfortunate love triangles set against the backdrop of the Wessex countryside is one that I come back to again and again. The writer sketches out the doomed relationship of Clym Yeobright and Eustacia Vye (one of my favourite tragic heroines) with great skill, contrasting the higher-status characters with the local farmers and labourers and describing both groups to perfection. The inspired character of Diggory Venn, the reddleman, a wandering worker with a heart of gold, adds a touch of fairy tale to the story. And as for Egdon Heath itself, forget the moors of Wuthering Heights. The Return of the Native’s magnificent natural setting, the vast, untamed open land of the south of England, puts man’s petty squabbles into perspective.

A book that changed my world: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Although I lived in Japan for a few years, it wasn’t until I was living in Australia that I first read any J-Lit. My wife borrowed After the Quake from the library, and on the strength of that I bought Norwegian Wood from Borders (simpler times) – the rest, as you can tell from my blog, is history. I was blown away by the power of the narrative and the simple, elegant language, while the sense of nostalgia and longing for a life long since buried somewhere in the dusty corners of our memory was almost tangible. A part of its magic, of course, is the link between the title and the Beatles song, and I find it hard to think of the book without the familiar tune instantly popping into my head! This book persuaded me to sample works by more Japanese writers, and I’ve (almost) never regretted following this path.

A book that deserves a wider audience: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll

It’s a sad fact that books first published in languages other than English simply don’t enjoy the exposure they should (with a few obvious exceptions). I could have chosen dozens of examples – and was tempted to choose one of Erich Maria Remarque’s post-All Quiet on the Western Front works, but Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, a biting novel about the effect so-called freedom of the press can have on an innocent person (and the shocking consequences that can arise), was one I instantly thought of. Told in a sardonic, detached manner, and with a sarcastic foreword I’ve yet to see bettered in any book, the novel starts with the shocking facts before returning to the start of events to sketch out, impassionately, coolly, how things turned out that way. Yes, Böll, as a Nobel laureate, is fairly well known, but I’ve rarely heard his name mentioned in blog or Twitter discussions, and that’s something that needs to be rectified – this is a good place to start.

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Thanks, Tony, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Tony's choices? Have you read any of these books? I'm a Hardy fan and bought an Everyman Library edition of Return of the Native on the strength of a recommendation by Tony, on Twitter, earlier this year. I have yet to read it though. I have Norwegian Wood in the TBR, along with a couple of other Murikami's, so I really need to give him a shot. And I have promptly added The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, to my wishlist, because novels about journalism and the press are a pet interest of mine.

'A Revelation of Cormorants' by Mark Valentine

Fiction - paperback; Nightjar Press; 15 pages; 2010. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

In a previous life, as the editor of an avian magazine, I was very much immersed in the symbolism and mythology associated with birds. In all kinds of cultures, both East and West, particular bird species are feared or venerated, despised or admired. Some are linked to witchcraft and medicine, the weather and the seasons, birth and death.

I find the subject endlessly fascinating, because there are just so many superstitions and legends, some of which are contradictory, in the bird world. Which probably explains why I very much enjoyed Mark Valentine's short story A Revelation of Cormorants.

In this story, the central character, William Utter, is working on a book entitled A Flock of Myths: the Legends, Lore and Literature of the Birds of Britain. He has rented a small cottage on the coast of Galloway, Scotland, and is busy compiling all the facts he has gleaned and researched into alphabetical order. He is only up to the letter 'C' but is already feeling bored by his work and longs "for the time when he would have reached whatever bird it was that began with 'Z'. Zanzibar finch?"

To get "away from the study lamp" he decides to go for a walk to learn about the local bird-life, and it is while watching a flight of cormorants (that is the correct collective term, according to this wonderful resource) that Utter finds himself in a spot of difficulty, with the tide coming in and nothing but a tall cliff to aid his escape.

There is drama in the story, heart-thumpingly so, I might say, but there is beauty too, especially in the evocative descriptions of the coastline and seabirds Utter watches. But what I most loved was the rich use of language, full of bird metaphors and similes -- Utter describes the monotony of his work "as if he were a tame bird being fed by hand"; he clutches his raincoat close to him "so that the flaps did not rise in the wind like fawn wings and carry him soaring off the cliff-top"; he describes his position on a cliff-top as an "exposed perch".

That Utter is watching cormorants when his predicament occurs is particularly telling. Folklore ascribes these birds all kinds of evil qualities, including gluttony and satanism.

A Revelation of Cormorants is the perfect example of how a short story can deliver a powerful message in a beautiful way, in this case using birds as a metaphor for finding freedom and escaping our mundane lives.

Note that the book's format is similar to a pamphlet, but it is presented on high-quality paper, stapled down the middle, with an attractive gloss cover. A limited edition of just 200 numbered copies has been produced. You can find out more via the publisher's official website.

A visit to Books Upstairs, Dublin

How is it possible for someone like me, who has a book-sniffing nose that can hunt out a book store at 50 paces, completely miss Books Upstairs on my previous visits to Dublin? I mean, I have walked past it countless times and not paid it a blind bit of notice.

Then someone says to me, "Have you been to that book shop right next door to the Tourism Office, opposite Trinity College?"

And I'm, like, "Um, where?"

So, of course, I had to go and investigate. I now understand why I've never noticed it before.

It's quite unobtrusive and set back off the street. It even has its own mock street sign, stating "Book shop", to draw attention to itself. And it needs to do that, because it is located on such a busy thoroughfare that most pedestrians are too preoccupied trying to navigate the footpath without tripping over other people that the last thing on their minds is admiring the shops lining the street. Which probably explains why I've never seen it before.

So, anyway, stepping inside was quite a revelation. It's very small and narrow, but the shop makes the most of the space by including a mezzanine floor, thereby giving you two floors of books rather than one. (This photograph on BookstoreGuide.com shows it perfectly.)

Much of the stock is heavily discounted, including its bulging fiction shelves, which gives the store a bit of a competitive edge against its (much bigger) rivals, such as Hodges Figgis and Eason's. But what I liked about it was its esoteric range of Irish literary fiction, literary criticism and Irish interest books, many titles of which I had never seen or, indeed, heard of before.

My only quibble was that some of the stock looked a bit shop worn, to the extent that I wondered if they were second-hand titles.

But on the whole Books Upstairs is a terrific shop, the kind of place you never want to leave. The service is also friendly, helpful and efficient. What more could you want? (Thanks, dovegrey, for the tip-off, although I'm not sure my bank manager would say the same.)

 If you fancy visiting Books Upstairs you will find it at 36 College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel: +353 1679 6687. (The official website is not worth visiting.)

A very Bloomsday pub quiz, plus a little competition of my own

So you think you know Ulysses... but how well do you know Dublin, and, more specifically, the Dublin of 1904?

Me? I know zilch, zippo, nada.

Oh, okay, I knew the answer to one question.

Q. In what moral pub did Bloom have his vegetarian snack?

But pretty much everything else went right over the top of my head.

Where was the main train terminus in Dublin in 1904? What is the connection between Ground Hog Day and James Joyce? What is the motto of the city of Dublin, and what does it mean? Night-time centred on what famous street? And so on and so forth.

Fortunately, I didn't lumber any particular team with my complete lack of knowledge. When I arrived at the Mint Bar at the Westin Hotel for the first annual Great Hibernian Metropolis Pub Quiz I opted to sit on the sidelines and watch the action.

This basically meant I perched on a bar stool, drank (expensive) pints of Guinness, and nibbled on (free) bar snacks. Well, someone had to do it.

To celebrate my inability to properly participate in the quiz, I thought I'd give you the chance to show-off your own knowledge. The first person to answer the question in bold above correctly will win a little something: I promise to send you a suitably Joycean souvenir from Dublin. But no cheating!

A Bloomsday stroll through northside Dublin, courtesy of the James Joyce Centre

Breakfast over and done with, and it was time to walk in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom.

I arrived at the James Joyce Centre just in time to join a group of (mainly elderly) Americans for a one-hour wander around the northside locations that feature in Ulysses.

Perhaps it was me, but I found the walk a bit under-whelming. We saw Eccles Street, which is where Leopold and Molly Bloom lived in the novel, but their house at No. 7 has long since been demolished, so we kind of had to imagine what it might have looked like. This picture (right) shows our guide standing at 78 Eccles Street, which has been named "Bloom House" (although it has no actual connection with Ulysses) reading an extract from the novel. She pointed out that the Bloom residence would have looked quite similar. Do note the black railings, which Leopold clambers over when he forgets his key to the front door.

Speaking of which, our guide tells us that Joyce wrote a letter to his Sandymount-based aunt, when he was researching his novel, to ask whether she thought it possible for a grown man to climb over the railings without doing himself serious damage. She said yes, although our guide suggested that she probably only said it to keep him happy; it would have been too strenuous a journey, in those days, to travel from Sandymount, a suburb in the south, to Eccles Street, in the north, just to check the validity of her claim.

Our walk also took in Belvedere College, which Joyce attended; the birth-place of Oliver St. John Gogarty, whom the character of Buck Mulligan is based on; and the Charles Stewart Parnell monument on O'Connell Street, whose presence looms large in the novel (the person, not the statue).

When the walk concluded, near the General Post Office, I headed back to the James Joyce Centre for a look around.

The centre's very tiny courtyard garden houses the original door from No 7. Eccles Street, but, somewhat alarmingly, the small gold plaque alongside it reveals that it is owned by the UK retail giant Marks & Spencer! Talk about selling your Irish heritage to the English "enemy".

Inside, I quite enjoyed watching three short documentaries about the reception of Ulysses upon publication in 1922, Joyce's relationship with the National Library of Ireland and Joyce's influence on literature in the 20th century.

I think writer Frank McGuinness summed it up perfectly when he said there's an industry around Joyce that means nothing in comparison to the joy that the novel brings to the reader, and it is the novel we should remember and revere and celebrate rather than the fact we bought a t-shirt or took part in Bloomsday. Wise words, indeed.

The James Joyce Centre is located at 35 North Great George's Street, Dublin. It organises walks all year round. You can find out more by visiting the official website.

A very Bloomsday breakfast

So, I know I was joking about the kidneys for breakfast thing in my last post, but never a truer word was spoken in jest. I turn up for the 9.30am Bloomsday Breakfast in The Gresham Ballroom only to find that they have laid on a very literal interpretation of Ulyssean fare. I'm talking sausages, kidneys, white pudding and black pudding.

I'm a fussy carnivore at the best of times (I don't eat red meat or pig products), so I was kicking myself I hadn't taken advantage of the free continental breakfast at my hotel. Still, I made do with some cooked mushrooms, half a tomato and a boiled egg, all washed down with very strong coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice.

I'm not sure I would have been able to survive Dublin in 1904 if the only thing available for breakfast was meat and offal!

 

Still, I can't complain. Mid-way through our meal, the mayor arrived and then we were treated to a cameo appearance by Buck Mulligan (that's him in the canary-yellow dressing gown above left), followed by Leopold Bloom himself.

It was about this time that my camera decided to have a malfunction -- and the three camera batteries I had with me didn't want to work! Never mind. It meant I could enjoy the performances for what they were, instead of filtering it all through a camera lense.

It was quite a hilarious experience all up. Hearing Joyce read aloud by actors who really inhabited their parts, both in accent and mannerisms, made the book truly come alive. And because Ulysses is fresh in my mind, it felt wonderful to identify and remember all the extracts, which covered the entire novel, from Buck Mulligan having his shave in the opening chapter, to Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end.

It was a terrific start to the day, even if I felt decidedly under-dressed in combat trousers and a summer top. Most of the guests were outfitted in Edwardian attire, with straw boaters aplenty. Even the five-month old baby at our table was donned up in period costume! Mental note for next time: hire an outfit!

I travelled to Dublin and attended this event as a guest of Tourism Ireland.

Happy Bloomsday from Dublin, Ireland

Yes, your intrepid blogger is in Dublin again! Some of you will be wondering why I don't just up sticks and move here. This is the third time in three months that I have visited this fair city, and it's the second time I've been invited as a guest of Tourism Ireland. The city is beginning to look -- and feel -- very familiar.

This time I am here to celebrate that quintessential Joycean experience known as Bloomsday, something I've always wanted to do, but something I didn't feel I ought to do until I had read Ulysses first.

I arrived in Dublin late yesterday afternoon feeling a little out of sorts. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to attend an 'Operas and Arias' concert (featuring music from Joyce's era) in St Stephen's Green, but I managed to go for a little walk in and around the area where I am staying just to get some fresh air. The city seemed to be buzzing. It felt quite summery, quite upbeat, with loads of tourists dawdling along, buskers doing their thing up Grafton Street, and others eating and drinking outdoors in the sunshine.

I was soon feeling my old self again thanks to the curative power of a browse in Hodges Figgis, followed by a delicious chicken curry. A good, restful sleep, in a super comfortable hotel bed has hopefully set me up for the day ahead.

Today's agenda looks suitably Joycean -- and busy. There's a VIP Bloomsday breakfast at the Gresham Hotel, followed by a visit to the James Joyce Centre and a walking tour of James Joyce's Dublin, taking in key northside locations from Ulysses such as Leopold and Molly Bloom's residence on Eccles Street.

In the evening, we'll be squaring off and putting our knowledge -- or in my case total lack of knowledge -- to the test in a charity pub quiz specialising in "1904 Dublin". God help the poor sods who end up with me in their team!

Of course, I know many of you would dearly love to be here joining in the festivities, so rest assured I'll publish a full report as soon as I am able.

You might also want to keep tabs on dovegreyreader's blog, because I believe Lynne is attending too, although we are yet to bump into each other. That will probably happen over the grilled mutton kidneys with their "fine tang of faintly scented urine" which they offer us at breakfast a little later! Hehehe.

A rap tribute to James Joyce by Frank Delaney

Yesterday I finished reading Ulysses by James Joyce, just in time for Bloomsday, which is tomorrow (June 16). I loved the book. It was challenging, and I'm sure much of it went over my head, but I enjoyed the humour, the playful use of language and the parody of different literary styles. I'll update my reading notes in due course.

In the meantime, here's a little tribute to James Joyce by Irish author Frank Delaney that sums up the man's genius better than I ever could. Enjoy!

Triple Choice Tuesday: Random Jottings

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Elaine Simpson-Long from Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover.

Elaine, who has been blogging for five years, spent most of her adult working life as a Legal PA in the City of London. "This was interspersed by breaks when I had my two children, I stayed at home, ran my own business and an early music festival, all of which contrived to keep me busy," she tells me.

Elaine has always been a voracious reader and now that she is retired and no longer makes the daily commute into London, she has more time to read. The bookish love is also being spread to her new granddaughter, Florence. "I am building up a library of classic children’s books for her, which I hope she will enjoy when she is older," says Elaine.

Without further ado, here's Elaine's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

A favourite book: The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield

I Plant the indoor bulbs. Just as I am in the middle of them, Lady Boxe calls...do I know she asks how very late it is for indoor bulbs? September really, or even October is the time. Do I know that the only really reliable firm for hyacinths is Somebody of Haarlem?...yes I do, but think it my duty to buy Empire products. Feel at the time, and still think, that this is an excellent reply. Unfortunately, Vicky comes into the drawing room later and says ‘Oh Mummy, are those the bulbs we got at Woolworths?’

This is the opening paragraph of one of my all time favourite books, the one I turn to when I am feeling a bit fed up and need cheering up, or when I have overdosed on new books and need something familiar and comforting. 

The Provincial Lady of the title who, one assumes, is based on E.M. Delafield herself, is married to Robert, a Land Agent for the insufferable Lady Boxe. She has two children, Robin and Vicky, and she spends her life in a way that modern day housewives would find impossible to understand. Dealing with the butcher, the baker, recalcitrant servants, boilers that don’t work and a husband who seems to spend most of his time slumped in a chair reading the Times. Not a promising premise you might think for a book, but the Diary is witty, wise and full of a gentle, subtle humour which is impossible to define. It is not laugh out loud funny, but rather raises a smile and a feeling of understanding of recognisable situations. It is a book about ‘ordinariness’ and because of this we can all identify with the trials and tribulations which may seem trivial but loom large in our everyday life. It is a book I never tire of reading and always makes me feel better.

A book that changed my world: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I have posted about this ad nauseam on my blog, so anybody who knows me will not be surprised to see I have chosen Jane Eyre. First read when I was ten, I did not understand most of it and only enjoyed the first part of the book dealing with Jane’s childhood, schooldays and her friendship with Helen Burns, which reduced me to tears. I did not look at it again until I was in my teens and then was totally gripped by it; the windswept moors, the desolate Thornfield Hall, the mystery of who was in the attic and, of course, the enigmatic and wildly romantic Mr Rochester.

But the part of the book that resonated with me was the scene in which Jane claims equality with Mr Rochester:

‘Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong. I have as much soul as you and as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth I would have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you......it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if we both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal – as we are!’

This still gives me goose bumps every time I read it. It made me realise, a teenager in the Sixties, that yes, women were equal to men and this realisation had a profound effect on me and has coloured my thinking and my parenting and upbringing of my two daughters. No wonder this book was regarded as dangerous when it was published and Victorian mothers would not allow their daughters to read it.

A book that deserves a wider audience: The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I am a huge fan of this writer and have recently read all her journals and a biography about her life which, despite the fact she created Anne of Green Gables and such happy joyous books, was a difficult one, marred by poverty and depression and then an unhappy marriage.

In The Blue Castle we meet Valancy. She is 29 years old and regarded as an old maid and despised within her family circle. She is timid and insecure and yet possesses a wonderful inward life in which her imagination is allowed to roam free. She lives with her mother and aunt, and is depressed and oppressed. Troubled with chest pains, she secretly goes to see a doctor who tells her she has a heart condition and only a year or so to live. Valancy realises she has never lived, never loved and has never been happy, and with a limited amount of time available to her, she decides to burst out of her narrow miserable existence and do what she wants to do while she can.

Of course, her family think she has gone mad and the delight in which she kicks over the traces, answers back, mocks her relatives and shocks them is simply wonderful – you find yourself cheering her on. She marries somebody who is regarded as a scoundrel and a scapegrace and finds happiness with him living in the Canadian wilderness, all the time knowing that this joy is doomed to be short-lived.

This book has been reviewed by me and by other bloggers in the last year, and I do so wish that an enterprising publisher would reprint it. As a fan of Persephone books I feel this would fit into their list beautifully and I would so love this book to be available to a wider readership. It is enchanting and I don’t use that word lightly. Oh, and it also has a happy ending...

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Thanks, Elaine, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Elaine's choices? Have you read any of these books? I read Jane Eyre earlier this year, and remember wishing I'd read it as a teenager because it had such a wonderful message of being true to oneself. I've not read Elaine's other selections, but am particularly intrigued by The Blue Castle, having loved the Anne of Green Gable series as a youngster.

'BUtterfield 8' by John O'Hara

Fiction - paperback; Vintage Classics; 240 pages; 2008.

John O'Hara's BUtterfield 8 is an evocative portrait of New York in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929. Into this altered world, where the newly rich have lost fortunes and others are knuckling down to protect their assets, comes good-time girl Gloria Wandrous.

The book opens in sensational style with Gloria waking up alone in a stranger's apartment. Her evening dress, ripped down the middle, has been cast aside. Wanting to escape, but with nothing to wear, she steals an expensive mink coat from the wardrobe. The theft of the coat becomes a catalyst for a series of events that lead, eventually, to tragedy.

Young and carefree, Gloria flouts all the rules in which women are expected to marry a nice man, settle down and start a family. Instead, she befriends men in illegal bars and usually ends up sleeping with them, with no plan to ever see them again. But then she meets Weston Liggett, a man 20 years her senior, and her life takes a different, more dramatic turn...

BUtterfield 8, which is set in 1930, was written in 1935, giving it a truly authentic period feel. There are constant references to famous people of the time -- politicians, musicians, criminals -- and contemporary events. The city is dotted with hundreds of speakeasies, and Gloria frequents many of them, because she likes a bit of a tipple ("She became one of the world's heaviest drinkers between 1927 and 1930, when the world saw some pretty heavy drinking").

While Gloria is quite a feisty character, worldly-wise beyond her years, it's hard not to see her increasingly outrageous behaviour -- "where she awed the bartenders by the amount she drank", went on 48-hour benders and slept with a succession of married men -- as a cry for help. At times I was very much reminded of Jean Rhys' work in which females are regarded as nothing more than the playthings of men.

But where Rhys' characters are often stuck in desperate circumstances with no route out, O'Hara provides Gloria with a strong support network -- a lovely platonic friendship with Ed, a small circle of female friends, a non-judgemental mother and an Uncle happy to provide her with a roof over her head and a generous allowance. And yet Gloria, for whatever reason, is set to carve her own way in life, with catastrophic consequences. She is sympathetically and realistically drawn, and one of the best females, written by a man, that I've ever come across. Her terrible treatment of a black maid (towards the end of the novel), only serves to highlight her lowly position in the pecking order.

Despite its occasionally disjointed narrative and its huge cast of characters, BUtterfield 8 is a wonderful read. It not only brings 1930s New York to life, it chronicles the ways in which the conservative facade of society was simply a front for order and morality, while so much more was going on behind the scenes...

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This book was chosen by Claire for our Riverside Readers book group.

'The Oh My God Delusion' by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Ireland; 432 pages; 2010.

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, the alter-ego of journalist Paul Howard, is Ireland's best kept secret.

I first discovered him when I attended DublinSwell earlier in the year. Howard was on the bill in the second half, and during his reading from his novel Mr S. and the Secrets of Andorra's Box, done in the posh voice of Ross, he had the crowd of 2,000 people roaring with laughter, myself included. The next day I promptly went out and bought his latest book, The Oh My God Delusion, the tenth in a series following Ross O'CK, a stuck-up lad from the south side of Dublin, who's into women, rugby and scrounging off his parents, not necessarily in that order.

But before I even got to read the book, I discovered his weekly column in the Irish Times, and then promptly bought myself a ticket to his stage play, Between Foxrock and a Hard Place, which I saw at The Gaiety Theatre on my trip to Dublin in April. A fan had been made -- and I hadn't even read the novel yet.

Fast forward to last week, and looking for some light relief in between reading Ulysses and Edward St Aubyn's Mother's Milk, I extracted The Oh My God Delusion from the pile and settled down for what amounted to one giant giggling fit. Indeed, there are many sequences in this novel which will make me want to laugh out loud when I recall them at a later date (especially the one where Ross draws a moustache on his four-year-old's face using a semi-permanent black marker, only to be accused of child abuse by agitated onlookers).

The story is essentially a preposterous one, but it couldn't be more contemporary if it tried. It's tongue-in-cheek, but Howard paints a pretty realistic picture of Dublin circa 2009: the property bubble has burst, the banks have gone bust, big name brands are going into receivership, people are losing jobs and no one has any money (read credit) to spend.

Even Ross, with his privileged background, is feeling the effects of the recession. Now that his job at the estate agents Hook, Lyon and Sinker no longer exists (the company went belly up, to be replaced by an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet), he helps his mate repossess people’s flatscreen TVs, jacuzzis and the like when they default on the payments.

Then, when his wife's upmarket fashion boutique looks to be on the brink of financial ruin, he does something radical. He buys an apartment on a ghost estate as a kind of insurance against losing the family home in any bankruptcy proceedings. He is told that the remaining vacant apartments on the Rosa Parks (yes, that Rosa Parks) Estate will be acquired by UCD (University College Dublin) as student dormitories (Ross looks forward to the parties), only to discover that social services are using it to house people on welfare.

Cue many hilarious -- and edgy -- moments between Ross and his neighbours, Terry and Larry, who turn out to be from another class entirely: they are gun-toting, drug-pushing Dublin gangsters, and Ross's 12-year-old son, Ro, has taken a shine to them.

There are loads of subsidiary storylines involving characters grappling with the sudden change in Ireland's economic climate.

Ross's mother, for instance, is holding out against pressure to accept a revised pay deal for the cookery programme she hosts on RTE -- and the scenes in which she presents her show, which has been "dumbed down" to only include ingredients that the average person can afford, are very funny.

I'm in the sack, roysh, watching the latest episode of her show since it was renamed FO'CK on a Budget and it's possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. She's showing the camera, like, an ordinary corn on the cob?

'Now,' she's going, 'when I want to eat sweetcorn -- like most people -- it simply has to be Fallon & Byrne, with their wonderful, wonderful vegetable range, all fresh, all organic and all locally produced. However, if you've ever been made redundant -- or you've been shamed by the media into accepting an arbitrary cut in your standard of living -- a cheaper alternative is now available...'

The next thing, roysh, she puts down the corn on the cob and picks up what looks very much to me like a tin of sweetcorn, except from the way she's holding it, it might as well be white dog shit.

'Now, this is what's known as processed food -- and, if certain people in this very building are to be believed, it's going to be all in for the next few years. Now, if you're anything like me, you'll be staring at this rather odd-looking, ribbed-aluminium can, thinking, "But how do I get the food -- and I use that word advisedly -- out of there?" Well, don't panic -- you do it using one of these...'

I don't actually believe it. She's about to show the nation how to use a focking tin opener.

'As recently as the 1980s,' she goes, and you can tell she's struggling to even say the words, 'you would have found one of these items in most household kitchen drawers, although they became obsolete with the advent of farmers markets and the drive towards fresh, agrichemical-free produce with fewer food miles...'

Part of the reason why the humour in this book works so well is that Ross, his mother, and pretty much the entire cast of characters in it, have no real sense of what it is like to truly suffer. There's a real disconnect in their reality with the reality of so many others who are really struggling to make ends meet. Ross, for instance, thinks his world is coming to an end when he is told to hand over a much-beloved prize possession -- a rugby medal he won when he was 18 -- while all around him his contemporaries are downsizing their homes, buying their groceries on credit or getting married on a very tight budget.

And while I suspect some of the humour -- the "in" jokes, the rhyming slang, the play on accents -- might not translate across the Irish Sea (or the Atlantic), most everyone will understand the satire on the class divide, between the haves and the have nots, between the snobs and, to use a Ross term, the skangers.

The book is a comedy, but, as the saying goes, there’s many a true word spoken in jest.

 

Finally, my edition comes with some terrific black and white illustrations by Alan Clarke, which are just as funny as the text they accompany. I really love the picture above, showing Ross being "romantically attacked" by a Rottweiler while his gangland neighbours piss themselves laughing.

Oh how I'm looking forward to reading the rest in the series!

Ulysses reading notes: chapters 9-11

When I first embarked on this reading project I had planned to write relatively detailed notes about each chapter as I went along. But, as you will see by my lack of posts, I haven't actually done that. And now, more than three-quarters of the way through the novel, I'm not about to change tack. However, here's a brief summary of what has happened so far -- and my reactions.

Chapter 9

Stephen goes to the National Library and has a rather convoluted discussion about Shakespeare with a poet, essayist, librarian and the library's director.

Admittedly, I'm not a Shakespearean scholar and most of this chapter sailed right over my head. Indeed, I wondered if it might prove my stumbling block and mark the point at which I abandoned the novel. However, in persevering, I decided that I quite liked the irony of having these characters bemoan the fact that Ireland had yet to produce anyone of Shakespeare's calibre ("Our national epic has yet to be written"), because, indeed, many would now argue that Joyce comes pretty damn close! And if Ulysses isn't Ireland's "national epic" I don't know what is!

—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare of James I or Essex. Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

But, back to the story: while all this is going on, Bloom makes a reappearance, having come to the library to source an old provincial newspaper which features the design elements he needs for Keye's new revised advertisement. He is described as a "bowing dark figure" and Stephen and his acquaintances, which now include Buck Mulligan, notice his entrance. There is much joking of him being Jewish ("What's his name? Ikey Moses?"), before they move onto other subjects.

Chapter 10

As ever, this chapter is written in a completely different style to all the ones preceding it. It is broken up into 19 elements, which are almost like scenes in a film, each of them featuring new characters and a new setting. It very much gives the impression of a hustling, bustling metropolis, with everyone going about different tasks and leading different lives. And Joyce constructs it so cleverly you get a sense of interconnectedness between some, but not all, of the people he is writing about. 

In terms of narrative, Joyce simply records what Bloom and Dedaldus are doing in the middle of the afternoon (Bloom is looking for a suitable book to buy for Molly, while Stephen meets up with an Italian music teacher who tells him not to neglect his fine singing voice), but the chapter, as a whole, is not much concerned with them other than as two characters in a cast of a thousand others.

Reading this chapter made me feel that it was worth pursuing the rest of the book, whereas chapter 9 had not!

Chapter 11

Photo credit: Richard39a via Flickr

Um, can I reconsider that last sentence? The first 63 lines of chapter 11 are pretty impenetrable. (My reading guide suggests they can be skipped on a first reading.) But then we meet two barmaids, Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy, and things begin to fall into place. The setting is the bar and dining room of the Ormond Hotel on Ormond Quay.

Like previous chapters which have had thematic overtones, this one focuses, in many ways, on music, on sound, on noise. This is also reflected in its name, "Sirens". And it ends on a terrific (low) note, with Bloom farting!

I found it slightly complicated to follow, only in that there's a lot of coming and going, of people entering the bar and leaving it, only to be replaced by more people, who come and go, but there's a virtuosity in the language, and some entertaining dialogue, that makes it a rewarding read.

Sadly, Bloom seems to be the butt of many jokes in this episode, and I wanted to throttle the barmaids who made fun of him behind his back, as they see him scuttle past the window with "his dark eyes".

In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other, high piercing notes.

Ah, panting, sighing. Sighing, ah, fordone their mirth died down.

Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and giggle-giggled. Miss Douce, bending again over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, splutterd out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, crying:

—O greasey eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that, she cried with his bit of beard!

Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation.

—Married to the greasey nose! she yelled.

A little later Bloom enters the hotel dining room, taking his friend Richie Goulding with him. He has seen Boylan in the bar, accompanied by Simon Dedalus (Stephen's father) and wants to eavesdrop on him. But then Boylan leaves (to visit Molly) and Ben Dollard and Father Crowley enter. Bloom concentrates on penning a letter to his penpal sweetheart, whom we learn of in chapter 2.

Meanwhile, things are heating up in the bar. Two more men have joined the throng, and there is much singing and joviality (and sexual innuendo) occurring, culminating with Simon breaking into a patriotic song called The Croppy Boy.

Before the song is even over, Bloom decides to leave. The chapter ends with Boylan arriving at 7 Eccles Street; a blind piano tuner tapping his way back to the Ormond Hotel to collect a tuning fork he left behind; and Bloom standing in front of a shop window passing wind. Pprrpffrrppfff.

Interpretation and analysis

Of course, I'm leaving out a million things in these brief overviews. Joyce crams so much into the narrative it's difficult enough trying to follow the story, without trying to interpret and comprehend the meaning behind each sentence and each chapter. There are times when he is clearly parodying other literary styles or traditions, when he is making political or social commentary, when he is simply being playful with language and words. Is it any wonder Joycean scholars devote their lives trying to make sense of his work? You could probably take just one chapter and spend the next 20 years analysing it! And even then, there'd be someone else who might interpret it differently. But I guess that's what makes Ulysses a masterpiece, and why so many people read it more than once.

Want to know more about me?

Then head on over to normblog, the weblog of Norman Geras, where I am profiled today.

Thanks for the opportunity, Norm. I enjoyed answering all those questions!

'Hello Dubai: Skiing, Sand and Shopping in the World's Weirdest City' by Joe Bennett

Non-fiction - paperback; Simon & Schuster; 272 pages; 2011.

The first time I went to Dubai, on a day trip from neighbouring Abu Dhabi where I was staying in 2009, I couldn't get over the scale of the place. It was like one giant construction site, with all manner of skyscrapers and shopping malls and apartment blocks being built. And when you went to any of the hotels or shops, there was a real feel of big money and glitz and glamour to the place.

But Dubai, one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has a dark underside -- or should that be underclass? -- of mainly emigrant workers, largely from India and the Phillipines, which the glossy tourist brochures, and the ruling Arab elite, would rather you didn't know about.

Joe Bennett, who is a professional travel writer, comes to grips with both sides of Dubai in this intriguing, and very witty, book based on his time living in the city. His highly readable account explains how Dubai went from being a quiet Arabian port into a hub of global trade and finance in just a matter of decades.

Bennett suggests that Dubai is essentially a British creation. That's because Dubai is a sheikdom, ruled by the "royal" Al Maktoum family, who were never elected into power, they simply "assumed" it with the backing of the British, who, for all kinds of economic reasons, did not wish the UAE to be a democracy.

Dubai's wealth initially lay in oil, but by concentrating on tourism, trade, real estate and financial services, the Al Maktoums have turned it into a Western-style economy. This has meant relaxing many of their rules to attract foreigners and foreign businesses to their shores.

For example, up until 2006, the only way a foreigner could live in Dubai was on a limited three-year visa system tied to employment. They could not buy property, because it was all owned by the ruling sheikh and Emiratis. That's now changed, and expats can purchase their own homes -- although judging by the examples Bennett quotes here, it's not exactly straightforward, nor cheap -- but they cannot obtain citizenship. This means they can be told to leave the country at any time, which is quite a convenient system for those in charge.

But Bennett doesn't just look at what makes Dubai tick, he goes out into the other emirates (except the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi) to compare them, and much of what he finds is in stark contrast to the wealth and opportunism that Dubai affords.

He meets a variety of people, from expat South Africans living in mansion-like villas equipped with swimming pools and driving expensive four-wheel drives, to hard-working Filipino maids, who are treated like second-class citizens by their employers. He hangs out with foreign businessmen, the nouvea rich, who are making big bucks and plays cricket with Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan labourers on their day off.

And while he has a perceptive eye and notices the unobtrusive underclass and the lewd, often culturally insensitive, behaviour of the richer expats, Bennett's book is far from heavy or judgmental. It features some delicious comic moments, such as when he accidentally finds himself caught in no man's land between the UAE and Oman, or when he falls over in the shower, tears the curtain from the wall and knocks himself out on the toilet seat. 

This is a terrific book, which pretty much does what it says on the tin. If you're thinking of visiting Dubai, or even if you're not, this is a fun, but intelligent, read about a city that is truly unique.

A visit to the James Joyce Museum at Sandycove, Dublin

This time next week I will be packing my suitcase (again) and heading to Dublin (again) to partake in Bloomsday celebrations. I believe straw boaters may be involved, but I'm not sure I'll go the whole hog and wear Edwardian dress. I guess it might depend on the amount of Guinness I have had to drink!

I know I am slightly behind in my Ulysses Reading Notes, but rest assured I'm past the half-way point in the book and still enjoying it. I'll try and cobble something together over the next few days.

In the meantime, I thought I'd tell you a bit about the James Joyce Museum in Sandycove, which I visited one fine sunny Sunday in April.

The tower is an actual Martello tower, one of some 26 towers built along the Dublin coastline to protect against Napoleonic invasion. It was built in 1804, and according to the brochure I picked up inside the museum, its walls are eight-feet thick.

James Joyce lived in the tower briefly, and used it as the setting for the opening chapter of his great masterpiece Ulysses. Funnily enough, the tenants he shared it with -- Oliver St. John Gogarty, a medical student, and Samuel Chenevix Trench, an Anglo-Irishman who insisted on speaking Irish in a strong Oxford accent -- might seem familiar to anyone who has read Ulysses, as they appear to be the basis of the characters Buck Mulligan and Haines.

The museum houses the usual kinds of artefacts you'd associate with a writer -- letters, manuscripts, diaries, press clippings, first editions -- along with some of Joyce's belongings, including the battered-looking cabin trunk he took on his European travels, a tie (which he gave to Samuel Beckett) and a cigar case. There are two death masks on display, one made of plaster, another cast in bronze.

I was most taken with two covers of Time magazine: the first, dated January 29, 1934, marks the lifting of the ban on Ulysses in the USA (through the wonders of the internet, you can read the article here); and the second, dated May 8, 1939, marks the publication of Finnegan's Wake (you can read the article here).

Also on display are some notable items associated with Ulysses, namely a bar of lemon soap (which the lead character, Leopold Bloom, buys at Sweney's Pharmacy and totes around in his pocket all day) and a portrait of the racehorse Throwaway, which wins the Ascot Gold Cup in the novel (and in real life).

These are all contained in the exhibition hall and on the first floor of the tower.

The second floor of the tower, known as the Round Room, has been reconstructed to look like the room in which Buck Mulligan, Stephen Dedalus and Haines eat their breakfast in the opening chapter of the book. 

You can then climb out onto the roof of the tower -- also known as the gun platform, because a large cannon once sat here -- to admire the stunning views across the water and South Dublin suburbs.

If you fancy visiting the museum you will find it at Joyce Tower, Sandycove Harbour, Sandycove, which is eight miles south of Dublin City Centre. Tel: (01) 280 9265. Opening hours vary -- check the official page on the Visit Dublin website for details. Tickets cost €6 per adult, €5 per concession and €4 per child (under 12). My ticket was complimentary.

Triple Choice Tuesday: My Porch

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Thomas from My Porch.

Thomas lives in Washington DC with his husband John and their "insanely cute" dog Lucy. In addition to his family, Thomas says he lives for books, travel, food and classical music. His blog, which began in 2006, is testament to those interests, covering all things cultural but with a special focus on literature.

Without further ado, here's Thomas' Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favorite book: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

I am glad this category is worded in such a way that implies that there is more than one favorite book. Otherwise, which of us would feel comfortable choosing just one? From my list of favorites, the one that jumps out at me is On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. Not normally a huge McEwan fan, I found this to be a spectacular book. Some complain that nothing happens in the book or that the two characters need to pull themselves together, etc. But I think it is such a sublime, tragically beautiful story. A cautionary tale of what can happen to any of our relationships if we fail to communicate meaningfully.


A book that changed my world: Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Many books have moved me or imparted wisdom and they have collectively helped turn me into who I am, but I had a really tough time finding an answer to this one. But then it struck me, there is a literary mantra that has guided my life since I was 16. In Hamlet, Polonius says to his son, Laertes: "This above all: to thine own self be true..." That answer might sound a little precious or facile but when I was struggling with all kinds of issues in high school, coming across that line was a life saver. So many people wanted me to be something I wasn't (like straight) that I would say or do just about anything to fit in. That is, until the Bard saved me from all that. Staying true to who I am has been the best advice, literary or otherwise, I have ever taken.


A book that deserves a wider audience: most anything by May Sarton

Although many of May Sarton's books are still in print, and she has been getting some attention in the blogosphere in recent months, I don't think enough readers even know about Sarton let alone have read her. Her work captures old school New England in a way that is homespun but never sweet. It is ultimately life-affirming and can be cozy, but often has a dark undercurrent of loneliness, sickness, or old age. She wrote more than 50 books, including novels, memoirs, journals and volumes of poetry.  For novels try out The Magnificent Spinster or As We Are Now. For her journals, Plant Dreaming Deep and The House By the Sea are wonderful.

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Thanks, Thomas, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Thomas's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've read On Chesil Beach, and quite liked it, but wished it was longer! I've also read Hamlet and been fortunate enough to visit Helsingor, in Denmark, where the Bard set the play (my photographs are here). But I've not heard of May Sarton before and am staggered at how prolific she was. Her page on the Fantastic Fiction website is quite astounding! I must investigate her work soonish...