Holiday Reads - Picoult, McInerney, Bryson & Silver

As I was limited to hand luggage on my recent trip to Mallorca, I only brought two physical books but also packed my tablet to download books from the library.

Here's an outline of the books that I read.

I started with "Small Great Things" by Jodi Picoult. This is not a challenging read although it deals with the challenging subject of racism and prejudice in modern day America. I found the book to be very interesting and well written - I always enjoy reading anything by Picoult and have no hesitation in recommending this read.

The next books I read were downloaded eReads. I had brought "The Sellout" by Paul Beatty but it just didn't hook me after reading a few pages so I left it to the side.

Here's all of the books that I downloaded on my Amazon Fire:

 "Hot Pants in Hollywood" by Susan Silver was a perfectly fine holiday read. Nothing to write home about but perfectly readable. It is a biography with stories by Silver of her time as a writer in Hollywood, writing for such shows as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". I found it interesting to read about what it was a like as a "woman writer" in this era and it has echos of Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl".

Monica McInerney is an Irish Australian author who writes (in my opinion) somewhat similarly to Maeve Binchy in a sweet sentimental way about Ireland and Australia. I really enjoy reading her books since I first read "The Alphabet Sisters" on a beach in Sydney, Australia nearly 20 years ago - it had me in tears.

Bill Bryson is my "go to" for a bit of humour. I read this book before but it was good to go back to it again on this trip. This is his book about his return to the USA after 20 years in Britain so there is lots of contrasting between the two countries in Bryson's hilariously funny way.

I read "Spies in the family" on the plane home. It was lucky that I downloaded a book to read as we were delayed for a few hours with a tech issue being discovered as we went to take off. After engineers fixed the problem we had another aborted takeoff before being taken off this plane and moved to another one. Mallorca is only 2.5 hours from Ireland so all of the issues with the plane doubled our travel and then some.  
Thank goodness for free eBooks from the library!!

For info:
I read eBooks on my Amazon Fire. As it is a tablet and not an eReader it is not easy to read in the sun as it does not have a "paper screen" like an eReader. However, I was given a tip by a friend to switch the screen to black with white writing. It worked perfectly and I was able to read in the sun with no issues!

And in case you are wondering, children's eBooks are also generally available for free from your library with graphic novels and cartoons too!

Irish Whiskey Tasting - Powers Whiskey Wisdom

If you ask me do I drink whiskey I would tell you that I would generally be inclined to drink bourbon more so than Irish whiskey.

But.....

I may have been converted!

On Thursday evening, I attended an Irish Times Powers Whiskey tasting event and it was so so enjoyable. In fact it was one of the best evenings, I've had in a while!

Here's a few pics from the event and if you want to see more about it, have a look at #PowersWhiskeyWisdom on twitter.

On arrival we were greeted and handed an Old Fashioned cocktail. Delicious!

We got to taste three different Powers Whiskeys including the very smooth  12 year old John's Lane.

And then to top off an enjoyable and informative night we were given a gift of a bottle of John's Lane as we departed!

Fun times in Dublin Town

The weather is great in Ireland so it was a beautiful evening for a cycle.  

I was meeting up with Amy to go to ukulele night in the Stags Head. I cycled to my sister's house and locked up my bike.

But when I came out to unlock my bike I discovered my cup holder was gone!!  So annoying. It was a special cup to me.  I bought it years ago in Key West and this was the second bike that I had it on.

What type of horrible person steals a cup holder from someones bike?!

But I was able to put the cup holder incident behind me as I sang my little heart out at ukulele night. Fun!

2 visits to 2 amazing neighbourhood restaurants in D4 &D6

I feel incredibly blessed. I live in Dublin 6 on the perimeter of Dublin 4. Dublin 6 is home to Ranelagh town which is quite the foodie paradise and then Dublin 4 has a range of great restaurants to choose from also.

Over Thursday and Friday I visited two of my favourites.

On Thursday, we were in Forest & Marcy which is rapidly turning in to my favourite restaurant. We enjoyed the tasting menu with a nice bottle of malbec. This is a cute cosy restaurant which leads you to cosy up to your dinner partner while seated in close proximity at the bar. 

I've blogged about Forest & Marcy before - click here & here.

Friday brought us to Dillingers. We go so regularly to this place that I honestly think they might send out a search party for us if we didn't visit at least once over the weekend!

I had the lobster special......and what can I say it was really special tasting! So special that I will probably order it again next week if it is still on the board..... :-) 

As I said I feel truly lucky to live in this neighbourhood!

"Bow and Pearl" in the Swan Centre

A few weeks ago I noticed that the Popcorn shop in the Swan Centre had closed down. I blogged about the popcorn shop here and when I saw it was closed I wondered what would go in to the location.

I wonder no more! This morning I was dropping shirts over to get ironed in the Swan Centre and I saw that Bow and Pearl has opened  in the old popcorn store.

 

Bow and Pearl used to be on the main street in Ranelagh. It was a cute shop with great stock and a lovely old fashioned bike parked up outside.

It's a corner unit and looks very nicely decked out. I look forward to having a browse here.

Here's a pic of the popcorn shop that used to be here.

With Bow and Pearl here, this part of the Swan Centre is now a very nice area to do a spot of clothes shopping - it's a great addition to the mall.

Delivering and Storing Art the easy way!

Yesterday was busy. We visited Storage World to see about renting a unit for Ciaran to store his work in. He paints big pieces so it was difficult to know which size would work best. We also need to consider what price we want to pay to store his art. 

Further conversation is needed.

Although he didn't commit to a storage unit, Ciaran did sign up for GoCar. It's a car sharing website that gives you access to cars and vans at an hourly rate. There are many car bases local to us but it is the GoVans that we are most interested in. Ciaran regularly needs access to a van for a short while to either buy canvas in Evans or to deliver paintings to new owners. GoCar is perfect for his needs.

While in storage world I snapped a pic of some of the supplies they sell. While they sell boxes, tape, locks it was the large roll of bubble roll that caught my eye. Ciaran uses a LOT of bubble roll when wrapping paintings.  We know where to buy it in bulk when we run out.

Saturday was fun!

After a lazy start to Saturday and while chilling out over coffee in Ranelagh I suddenly remembered that I had made arrangements to go see a lunchtime play with my mother and twin sister.

With little time to spare I got home, had a very quick (practically outdoors) shower and then cycled to the city to see Brendan Behan's "The Confirmation Suit" with actor Gary Cooke.

The play was in the teeny tiny Bewleys Cafe Venue in the Powerscourt Centre.

The play was hilarious with a particular story line being very personal to me. In the play, Brendan faints in the church on his confirmation day and as his father said, he showed great presence of mind to faint at the particular time that he could avoid taking the pledge of abstinence. 
Well would you believe the exact same thing happened to me on my confirmation day?!!
Yes I fainted too on my confirmation day!
And also at this point in the proceedings! 

After the play, Amy and I visited Tower Records where I bought a copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band.

It was 20 years ago today.......well not exactly, it was actually 50 years ago a few days ago when The Beatles created it in Abbey Road - and boy has it stood the test of time!

We also visited the Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dawson Street where Amy bought a bottle of whiskey as a gift.

And after all that I cycled home!

Fun times!

And more fun later in the new Bunsen in Ranelagh