20 great things to do in Dublin

I quite like this page on the Time Out website www.timeout.com/dublin/features/47/20-great-things-to-do-in-dublin
It is not too touristy in its outlook and makes some good suggestions.

Dublin Castle

Orange Prize 2012

The Orange prize is nearly upon us, winner to be announced on 30th May.
The longlist was;(shortlisted also noted)

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg
On the Floor by Aifric Campbell
The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan~shortlist
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright~shortlist
The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding~shortlist
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay
The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller~shortlist
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick ~shortlist
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett ~shortlist
There but for the by Ali Smith
The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard
Tides of War by Stella Tillyard
The Submission by Amy Waldman

Those highlighted are the ones I enjoyed most (some I could not get past the first few pages!)

Jane Lovering wins Romantic Novel of the Year

Announced Friday 18th May 2012.

Jane Lovering’s Please Don’t Stop the Music has won the overall prize of Romantic Novel of the Year award.
She beat off Katie Fforde’s Summer of Love who won the Contemporary Romantic Novel award and   Rosie Thomas's The Kashmir Shawl who won Epic Romantic Novel award. Winner of the Historical Romantic Novel award was Christina Courtenay with Highland Storms.  Romantic Comedy category was won by Jane Lovering for her novel Please Don’t Stop the Music.
http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/

GENERAL PRACTICE-Photographs by Fionn McCann

Gallery of Photography,Meeting House Square,Temple Bar,Dublin 2

General Practice highlights the vital role of GPs in contemporary Irish society, providing a glimpse into the usually private interactions between GP and patient. In colour and black-and-white photographs, the photographer Fionn McCann captures the trials, tribulations and sometimes humour of these encounters.
16 – 27 May 2012

New Chester Beatty Library exhibition

"The tale of the Bamboo Cutter" 11 May - 5 August 2012


The tale of the Bamboo Cutter is the oldest Japanese work of prose fiction, written in the early Heian period (794-1185).  It is one of the most important stories in Japanese classical courtly literature and is well known for its influence on later Japanese literary works.
The Chester Beatty Bamboo Cutter scrolls, dating to the early seventeenth century, are believed to be the earliest surviving illustrated version of the tale.  They are representative of the long tradition in Japanese narrative handscrolls (emakimono) of alternating paintings with exquisite cursive text.  This pair of scrolls, recognized as a masterpiece from a Kano School artist of the early Edo period (1600-1867), merges elements of Chinese painting with the decorativeness, colour and pattern of Japanese painting.

  

http://www.cbl.ie/

Samuel Johnson Prize 2010

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in Korea by Barbara Demick wins the 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize.

http://www.thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk/

U.S. Poet Laureate

W.S. Merwin appointed 17th Poet Laureate of the United States.
Merwin has won the 2005 U.S. National Book Award for Migration: New and Selected Poems and a Pulitzer Awards in 2009 for 'The Shadow of Sirius' .