To say that we’re a community of avid readers here in M-CO is an understatement. To celebrate World Book Day today, (and maybe inspire you to pick up a new book!), we thought we’d share five of our favourite recent reads.
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
Read by: Ciara Ross, Senior Project Manager
I compulsively read this unputdownable book by Natalia Ginzburg.
Written from London in the 1960s about the author’s life growing up in 1930s Italy against the backdrop of progressing fascism, the narrative strands of this book are written in crystalline but cosy prose, using the Levi family as its locus, and weaving autobiographical detail and the intimacies of the everyday together with seismic political and social upheaval happening beyond the domestic sphere.
The book is about family culture and cultural inheritance, memory, the foibles and idiosyncrasies at the heart of every family, and the mini eco system that ripples out from the family unit – friends, relatives, teachers, and the wider community.
Each person the reader meets impacts Natalia and her family in some way, be it sparking a job opportunity that changes the course of a life, marrying in and bringing new customs and contacts, politically influencing and motivating activism, or by showing an act of love in a time of pain.
The book reminds me to value community ties, solidarity, connection, conversation as hobby, and working together for common cause.
It also serves as a reminder to look to our pasts to teach us things about tackling the problems of the present.
An Irish Atlantic Rainforest by Eoghan Daltun
Read by: Richie Jermyn, Associate Director
Eoghan Dalton’s descriptions of a temperate Atlantic rainforest really captured my imagination.
The book beautifully illustrates how nature can bounce back and thrive when allowed to rewild, offering hope amid ecological crisis and biodiversity loss.
It encourages readers to coexist and support nature, fostering a connection rather than separation from the environment.
Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker
Read by: Alex Calder, Communications Director
This is the story of the descent into fascism, authoritarianism, and ultimately, war and genocide in the first half of the 20th century.
It’s told through diary entries, letters, newspaper excerpts and official documents by the people who lived it – from statesmen to writers, spies to soldiers.
It’s the story of how banal the unfolding of evil can appear when you’re in the middle of it, and of how easy it could be to let yourself be swept along on the tide when you see what’s happening to those around you who resist.
At a time when the foundations of the post-war democratic consensus are on increasingly shaky ground, it makes for sobering and timely reading.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Read by: Della O’Donoghue, Managing Director
Many years ago, when I was going through a time of personal upheaval my Friend Who Knows Everything directed me to stop reading books described on their back cover as ‘gripping’ or ‘compelling’.
Unusually, I followed direction. I lasted the length of a Jeeves and Wooster box set – Laser on South Great Georges Street how we loved you – and then I was back like a shot to the books that make it worth living.
And this really this is one of those. Demon Copperhead is gripping and compelling. No doubt.
From first moment, you’re there as witness in this story of a boy, a people and a place struggling for life. Told in the first person voice of Damon – a child and later in the novel a teen – the novel is gut-wrenching, at times poignant, devastatingly sad in so many aspects, but not without hope and the dark, dark humour of the survivor.
The Appalachian Mountains of Virgina are the other key character. Their natural beauty and the many challenges facing the communities there are described in incredible prose. The sharp observations of Damon, gifted kid as he turns out to be, arise from the unflinching honest gaze of a child turned on a community of family, neighbours, social workers and school.
There is love and beauty and humour too in this ode to the sheer grit of the human spirit.
What a book.
Be warned though you might need some Jeeves and Wooster after to recover. Happily, I own the box set.
Making Space: Women and the Man Made Environment by The Matrix Collective
Read by: Bernardine Carroll, Senior Project Manager
First published in 1984, this book collects a set of texts which describe how the design of our buildings, streets, and cities affects women.
How safe we feel in public spaces, how housing design affects how we care for children, how designing in car dependency further isolates those who do not drive – questions that all are still relevant 40 years later. I’ve been reading this relatively small book for two years now.
Every few months I read a chapter and then continue on with my life with a slightly adjusted lens to view the world around me.