Read Mór - 3,600 Books Gifted in Hospitals on Culture Night

Patients in selected hospitals across the country will be gifted a free book on Culture Night / Oíche Chultúir 2023 by the Arts Council

The Read Mór book gifting project is back again for its second year. This time patients in selected hospitals across the country will have an opportunity to participate in Culture Night and escape to the furthest reaches of their imagination with a choice of 29 different books by Irish based authors and publishers. This year the Arts Council is proud to partner up with HSE Healthy Ireland. Read Mór will ensure that more people in more places can enjoy Culture Night.

On the 22nd of September the Read Mór ‘Book Doctors’ and their teams will be prescribing over 3,600 free books from their Library Trolleys as they visit the wards and public spaces in 7 hospitals across Ireland including: Connolly Hospital, Dublin; Letterkenny Hospital, Donegal; Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe, Galway; St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny; Naas Hospital, Kildare; Ennis Hospital, Clare; and Croom Hospital, Limerick on Culture Night. The Book Doctor’s rounds will commence nationwide from 3pm onwards.

 

Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly said: “In a world filled with technological distractions, the joy of reading a physical book remains an invaluable resource. Read Mór is all about the public engaging with stories, ideas, and emotions that transport us to different realms of our imagination. This year, Read Mór will also help bring the magic of Culture Night to those who cannot join in with the night’s events in the usual way. We could not have done this without the enthusiastic support of so many writers and publishers. We are especially grateful to our partners in HSE Healthy Ireland for their support in making Read Mór happen in hospitals across Ireland this Culture Night.” 

HSE Director of Strategy & Research Dr Philip Crowley said: “The HSE is delighted to be part of this event. The visit from the Read Mór Book Doctors and their teams to the hospitals will be a wonderful novelty and add some joy to our patients and healthcare staff. We can’t underestimate the benefits of reading to our mental health and wellbeing, and we hope this project will increase awareness of those proven benefits. Many of the benefits that reading bring can last a lifetime and it’s never too late to start reading”.

HSE National Healthy Ireland Lead Sarah McCormack said: “Participation in Read Mór is yet another key step forward in our implementation of Healthy Ireland promoting the building of healthy environments and adopting healthy lifestyle behaviours. This initiative will also include our staff working on the night. We hope it will remind them of the importance of taking time out for their own mental health and wellbeing and how a book can be such a valuable resource. We are very grateful to the Arts Council for choosing HSE Healthy Ireland as their partner for Read Mór”.

Once finished, patients are encouraged to share the joy of reading by passing on their book when they leave hospital to a family member or friend. With a wide variety being gifted, some as Gaeilge, there will be titles to suit all interests and ages, from novels, short stories, poetry, memoirs, to children’s and young adult books. Audiobook versions of a selection of the titles will also be available. 

There are a wealth of authors who are part of the Read Mór book gifting programme including Eimear McBride, who won the inaugural Goldsmith prize; John Banville, winner of the Booker Prize 2005; Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, leading Irish poet; Oein DeBhairduin, co-founder of LGBT TARA (Traveller and Roma Alliance); and Emma Donoghue, whose book was transformed into the Oscar winning film, Room; and many more!

The Read Mór 2023 books have been selected by the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024, Colm Tóibín; the Laureate na nÓg 2020-203, Áine Ní Ghlinn ;  the Laureate na nÓg 2023-2026 , Patricia Forde and the Ireland Professor of Poetry, Paul Muldoon

 

REad MÓr Authors and titles

AUTHOR

TITLE

GENRE

AUDIENCE

Suad Aldarra
I Don’t Want to Talk about Home
Memoir
General
John Banville
The Singularities
Fiction 
General
Oein DeBhairduin (illustrated by Olya Anima)
The Slug and the Snail
Children’s
Children (4-8 years)
Martina Devlin
Edith
Historical  Fiction 
General
Emma Donoghue
Haven
Historical Fiction 
General
Naoise Dolan

Exciting Times

Fiction 

General

Malachy Doyle
Muireann agus na Deilfeanna*
Children’s

Children (3-6 years)

Aingeala Flannery
The Amusements
Short Story

General

Nicole Flattery
Nothing Special

Fiction

Young Adult

Hugo Hamilton
The Pages
Fiction / Historical Fiction

General

Louise Kennedy
Trespasses
Fiction 

General

Victoria Kennefick
Eat or We Both Starve

Poetry

General

Clara Kumagai
Catfish Rolling
Fiction 
Young Adult
Bernard MacLaverty
Blank Pages and Other Stories
Short Story
General
Fearghas Mac Lochlainn (illustrated by Paddy Donnelly)

An Slipéar Gloine *

Children’s

Children (3-6 years)
Eimear McBride
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
 Fiction 

General

Majed Mujed (translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
The Book of Trivialities

Poetry

General

Muireann Ní Chíobháin (illustrated by Roísín Hahessy)
Eoinín agus a Chairde*
Children’s

Children (0-3 years)

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (translated by Paul Muldoon)
The Fifty Minute Mermaid**
Poetry

General

Alan Nolan
The Sackville Street Caper
Children’s 

Children (10+ years)

Philip Ó Ceallaigh
Trouble
Short Story 

General

Joseph O’ Connor
My Father’s House
Historical Fiction
General
Rossa Ó Snodaigh (illustrated by Wayne O’Connor)
Cad a Chuirfeadh Sceon ar Leon?*
Children;s

Children (6-10 years)

James Conor Patterson

Bandit Country

Poetry 

General

Jayne A. Quan

All this happened, more or less

Essay Collection
General

Padraig Ryan

Some Integrity

Poetry
General

Tristan Rosenstock

Inis Mara*

Children’s

Children (10-14 years)

Sam Thompson (illustrated by Anna Tromop)

The Fox’s Tower

Children’s
Children (9-11 years)

 Molly Twomey

Raised Among Vultures

Poetry 
General

 

* Irish Language
** Published as parallel text in Irish and English

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