Book Hub Publishing

Cat playing a hurdy-gurdy.
Detail from a French Book of Hours,
ca. 1485–1490.
This marginal illustration (drolerie) reflects the medieval tradition of depicting animals in human roles.
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (MS M.26, fol. 88r

We’re delighted to announce that ‘Clipper the Hurl’s Campsite Adventure’ has just gone to second print only a month after publication. Well done Katherine Scanlon 📘📕✨

Dublin By Dusk: Visit the NLI After-Hours 🌃

On the last Thursday of every month, explore our historic Reading Room after hours (5–8.30pm), usually reserved for readers and researchers, and discover one of Ireland’s most beautiful literary spaces.

You can also enjoy late opening at the Live Aid Exhibition in Temple Bar, featuring iconic music from the legendary concerts in Wembley and Philadelphia.

Join us on Thursday 25 June for a special Director’s Tour with Dr Audrey Whitty (6–7pm), exploring the history of the Library, its Victorian architecture, and connections to some of Ireland’s greatest writers and thinkers.

Learn more: https://www.nli.ie/news-stories/news/dublin-dusk-visit-nli-after-hours

It’s all happening in the Tuam Library for Katherine Scanlon 📘📕

More lovely writing by Kevin from Books by Kevin McManus

Time, the clock upon the wall,
late evening light upon her face,
bright eyes of blue, a faded hue,
once raven hair now white as frost.

A voice that sang is now a whisper,
precious memories fading slow,
cherished youth it drifts away,
Like grains of sand upon a breeze.

Beneath the lights of home,
a feeling gone but never forgotten,
but time it is a silent thief
and old age has laid its hand upon her.

Cloud Storage
Nobody keeps things in drawers anymore.
The biscuit tin beneath the bed
that held old photographs,
the elastic-bound bundle of letters,
the parish newsletter yellowed at the fold,
the funeral card tucked
inside a missal for twenty years—
all of it has drifted upward.

Now memory lives somewhere else.
In a place nobody can point to.
No field. No townland.
No room above the shop.
No attic smelling of dust
and old wallpaper.

Only a word:
Cloud.
As if our lives had become weather.

The top shelf held envelopes
fat with black-and-white faces,
men standing stiff beside bicycles,
women in coats too heavy for spring,
children squinting into sunlight
that disappeared before I was born.

You could touch those years.
You could feel their weight.
The paper curled at the corners.
The photographs carried
the smell of damp and turf smoke.

Now a thousand images
sleep inside a telephone.
Birthdays.
Holidays.
Meals nobody remembers eating.
Sunsets photographed twice
because the first one wasn't perfect.

A thumb moves.
A face appears.
Another thumb moves.
The face is gone again.

There is something miraculous in it.

And something lonely.

I wonder what future generations
will find when they go looking.
Will they open a cardboard box
in the back of a wardrobe?

Will they discover a letter
creased from being read too often?

Or will they inherit passwords,
usernames,
forgotten email addresses,
and photographs floating invisibly
through distant servers
on the far side of the world?

Perhaps memory has always been fragile.

A letter can burn.
A photograph can fade.
A hard drive can fail.

Loss changes its clothes
but remains the same old visitor.

Still,
on wet evenings
I sometimes open a drawer
and find my father's handwriting
on the back of an envelope.
The ink has softened.
The paper has yellowed.
Yet there it is.
Solid as stone.

While somewhere above us,
beyond the rain clouds
millions of digital memories drift unseen,
waiting for a password
that somebody, someday,
will forget.