Ireland Reads: 'You never have to wait for a book to charge up'
Anna Mulhall, aged 12 and her brother, Cian aged 10 at Ardkeen Library, Ardkeen Shopping Centre, Dunmore Road, Waterford. Picture: Patrick Browne
The first time 12-year-old Anna Mulhall bought books for herself, it was some Lego Friends books she got at an annual sale in her primary school.
She was about seven, and around that time she also won a prize for a story she’d written about an onion who dearly wished not to make his friends cry. “He went to an avocado fairy and she turned him into an orange so his friends would like him.
“I like writing stories about messages that people could use in their life,” says Co Waterford-based Anna, who loves reading mystery books (especially Harry Potter for the magic, though she’s currently reading The Famous Five) and who likes reading fiction because “it takes you somewhere else”.
Anna recently designed a poster – now up in Ardkeen Library – to highlight Ireland Reads, a campaign to get us all reading in the lead-up to a national day of reading this Saturday, February 25th.
Explaining the thought behind the poster’s message, ‘You don’t have to wait for a book to charge’, Anna says: “You have to wait for devices to charge. It takes a long time. In that space of time you could read a book. So why not read while you’re waiting? You could get so wrapped up in the book you don’t want to stop when the device is charged.”
Anna’s dad, Chris, says his daughter’s favourite place to be – apart from home – is the library. He and his wife, Cathy, aren’t originally from Waterford and they saw the library as a place to socialise their children from a young age – Anna has a 10-year-old brother, Cian.
“Every Saturday morning we’d go to the library and pick up books. We read a lot to the children. Ardkeen Library had a late Tuesday evening and we’d go down, have a hot chocolate and sit and read in the library. Sometimes we were the only people in there with the librarian.
“Now we go down Fridays after school to mark the end of the week. The habit has stuck,” says Chris, who loves factual books and autobiographies and who has done a PhD in dictionaries. “I have about 100 dictionaries in my office,” he says.
Author and Ireland Reads campaign ambassador Dave Rudden says reading means everything to him. As a child, reading was his way to connect with people. “I was really shy as a child, and other people were so good at being people – at being warm, friendly, knowing exactly what to say, and I didn’t. So reading allowed me get into other people’s heads, just to glimpse their internal landscape.
“I spent so much time in my internal landscape and it was really reassuring to see into the lives of others, to see how complex they were and to learn to bridge that gap.”
While reading still has that “empathic core” for Rudden, books are also an escape for him. “Reading is a reminder to stop and take time and do something just for me. I read absolutely everywhere – I listen to audio books, I read on my phone, in my office, at the bus stop.”
He’s currently reading fantasy Sci-Fi novel Gideon the Ninth about a lesbian necromancer in space. “It’s very intense. I’m enjoying it a lot,” says Rudden, who finds the more broadly he reads, the more he gets out of it. He recently read Finbar Dwyer’s Witches, Spies and Stockholm Syndrome: Life in Medieval Ireland, “a real glimpse into Irish history in a way I hadn’t anticipated”.
Radio presenter and founder of The Rick O’Shea Book Club, Rick O’Shea’s also an Ireland Reads campaign ambassador. He says his childhood reading was financed by his paternal grandparents.
“We’d go into Dublin city centre, walk down Henry Street and usually end up in Eason’s where I’d be told ‘off you go’,” recalls O’Shea, who lists boyhood favourites – The Famous Five, The Hardy Boys, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators series.
Today he reads “widely and voraciously” – non-fiction, contemporary fiction, new Irish writing in particular, works in translation. “For me reading is an opportunity to stretch myself out into the world, a way of travelling when I can’t travel, a way of experiencing other people’s lives, other places, other times in history.”
He has just finished reading Liz Nugent’s new book, Strange Sally Diamond, which will be out soon, and he’s looking forward to reading George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, which has been on his shelf for a while.
O’Shea’s a great believer in reading to keep on top of mental health. “It’s escape really. Others do it through exercise or going to the movies. If I need to opt out of the world, I’m never without a book. Sometimes escape is all you need to put yourself back on an even keel.”
- Ireland Reads aims to celebrate reading and all its benefits for wellbeing and enjoyment. The campaign invites everyone to ‘squeeze in a read’ on Ireland Reads Day this Saturday, February 25.
- Visit https://www.irelandreads.ie/ for book recommendations – 1,500 plus from librarians countrywide – suited to your interests and the time you’ve available, and to take the pledge to read this Saturday.
- In Waterford, Anna Mulhall has one message for Ireland Reads Day: “Find a writer whose style you like. Or start with some thinner books. Everyone can find a book they like.”
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