Books: Glorious, Beautiful, Marvelous Books

Today I took a stroll to St. Pat's cathedral, which is about twenty minutes from my current location. I didn't go into the grand old gothic cathedral though, I had already spent some tourist moments on my last trip to Dublin in the church of which author and satirist Jonathan Swift was Dean. Today I visited St. Pat's for an entirely different reason, its next door neighbour, the small, hidden jewel for bibliophiles in Dublin, Marsh's Library. The Library opened in 1701, and it holds an astonishingly beautiful collection of old books. I spent a good hour in this small building, which is still a public library, and soaked it all in. None of the flashiness and 'don't touch me, I'm expensive' glass cases of Chester Beatty Library, nestled in the courtyard of Dublin Castle (not that I didn't absolutely love this place too!) Marsh's Library is like the Old Library of Trinity College, but on a much smaller, more intimate scale (so intimate in fact that they used to lock scholars into reading rooms to prevent them from stealing the books). I think what I loved most about this place though was the fact that in the middle of the library there were scholars actually using these texts! And, what's more, upon having a conversation with the libarian, I was encouraged to make an appointment to come back and read some of the old law and history texts that they hold in the library! Needless to say, this caused me to have a minor embolism and I have full intentions of taking them up on this offer. 

After Marsh's I was inspired and visited a few of the city's myriad of bookstores (which are littered, literally, all over the place). I found a brilliant little bookstore just across the way from Trinity College, on Dame Street, Upstairs Books, a spectacular little old second hand bookstore specialising in old, old, old books, many of them first editions, and a larger, more modern store closer to home that had a bargain basement (literally) filled with all of the classics from around 2.99 Euro a piece! Even though I have recently become a turncoat and purchased a Kindle for convenience, I couldn't help myself, and I purchased a couple of Edith Wharton books and Anna Karenina (Tolstoy and I are old, embattled friends, but War and Peace caused me to take a long hiatus from anything with his name on the cover), and I got everything for under 10 Euro. I also have my eye on a collection of Oscar Wilde's work, and feel that it would be only right to purchase it and read in the sunshine amongst the flowers of Merrion Square. I think that bookstores are going to be much frequented places on my Irish jaunt. 

I also discovered today that the Dublin Writers Festival commences on the 1st of June, and I have full intentions of going to see Ian McEwan and Yann Martel. And, of course, on the 16th, Bloomsday is upon us. I have just started Ulysses and I will, nay, I must, finish it in time to understand what the hell is going on on that historically charged day! All very exciting. 

As a brief aside, Dublin Boy Watch continues, and I am pleased to report that there was not one, but two (!) rather fetching young gentleman scholars making use of the books in Marsh's Library today. The bookstores are also hot spots, with many dapper young things in scarfs and blazers gazing at literary brilliance. I have to say, I've always felt that I was meant for one cut from this scholarly mould (rather than the beer-swilling, rugby and poker-playing, pot-smoking, but still for the most part highly entertaining men that usually catch my eye), and think that hanging out in libraries and bookstores is something I can definitely do in the quest for true love, written, as it were, in the stars (or the margins of Joyce, Wilde and Stoker).