Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

When I recently discovered I was pregnant (and after I got over the shock), I did what most first time expectant mothers do – ran out and bought lots of pregnancy books. While most of these books are useful, the majority of them scare the living daylights out of me, and my ability to retain information seems to disappear as quickly as I turn

read more

An extraordinarily committed war journalist and novelist, Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) also found the time in her wide-ranging and busy life to become Ernest Hemingway’s second of many wives. And it is for that, rather than her own writing, that she is remembered. A truly ambitious woman, this was a fact that she found intolerable while she

read more

South African-born Gillian Slovo is the daughter of two extraordinary people – journalist and political activist Ruth First, murdered in Mozambique in 1982, and Joe Slovo, head of the South African communist party and one of the founders of the ANC’s military arm. Both privileged white people in the turbulent South Africa of the Fifties

read more

It’s amazing how, when you get pregnant, your first reaction is to read and inwardly absorb as much information as possible, much of which is incomprehensible and terrifying. I’m lucky in that I have a friend who has gone before me – already has a baby, that is – and this is the book she gave me.

Written by five friends who

read more

Subtitled ‘Travels with a Celtic Saint’, The Accidental Pilgrim is the story of a 2000 mile bike ride by the author from Bangor in Northern Ireland to Bobbio in northern Italy via France and Switzerland.

The journey follows in the footsteps of the Irish missionary Saint Columbanus who travelled the same route in the 6th century.

After surviving

read more

If you’re put off by the size of Hermione Lee’s tome on Virginia Woolf’s life, Nigel Nicolson’s 160 page offering is far more digestible. He is the nephew of Vita Sackville-West, a former lover of Woolf’s and offers lots of personal insight into the life of one of best female writers of the twentieth century. Very informative

read more

I am probably a little behind, as I have only just read Tuesdays with Morrie. This book was apparently responsible for changing people’s lives all around the world and has been published in 19 countries in 16 different languages.

Tuesdays With Morrie is a memoir, written by Mitch Albom, about his professor Morrie Schwarz. Mitch had lost touch

read more

This book was given me to my grandmother it was one of the first biographies I ever read, and I have been constantly disappointed ever since, no-one can match Jung Chang’s ability to tell a story.

It’s a beautifully written story of a grandmother, mother and daughter. Each woman’s life is very different and seems to typify a different

read more

In 1997, Lily Burana met a Wyoming cowboy while travelling cross-country on a journalism assignment. This is a true story and – as sometimes happens in real life – it turns out that opposites attract, the cowboy proposes and Lily accepts. There’s only one problem: Lily is an ex-stripper. It’s not a problem for the cowboy

read more