The Last Bookshop on Camden Street has become my favourite second-hand bookshop in Dublin

I could linger for hours on end in the Last Bookshop on Camden Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I have been back in Dublin a few times in recent weeks, and each time as the buses drove along Aston Quay and Bachelor’s Walk I am realised that among the many things that I still miss are the second-hand book barrows that have long disappeared from the Quays and from Clare Street.

The Camden Street and Harcourt Street area has become a new favourite place to stay when I am back in Dublin. And there, over the last year or two, I have found what I think is my new favourite second-hand bookshop.

The Last Bookshop is a second-hand bookshop run by Alan Warnock and his wife Mary. They once ran a similar shop in Ranelagh that I remember fondly. They moved the Last Bookshop to Camden Street almost seven years ago, in November 2017, but I had moved from Dublin by then and I have only got to know the sop in Camden Street in the last year or two.

Like those bookshops on the Quays that many of us miss, there are trays of books outside on the footpath. Inside, behind the bright red shopfront and awning, it is an Aladin’s Cave of second-hand fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama.

Thousands upon thousands of books are organised on shelves and tables and precariously stacked in tottering but neat piles that cover every available space.

Trays of books outside the Last Bookshop on Camden Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Where can I find anything? Mary and Alan rely on memory when it comes to any particular title or volume.

The front of the shop is devoted to books on Irish interest, including books on Irish history, culture and language. One wall is history, another is Irish fiction, and there are four shelves of Irish language.

A narrow path between the books leads to the rear of the shop where I can find general fiction, history, religion, and science books. There are books on art and architecture and cinema, theatre, set design and costumes.

Many of the books look as though they may never have been read. But then we all have books at home that we never get around to reading. Many of the books come from house clearances or from people who are downsizing.

With such a vast collection, this is exactly what a good second-hand bookshop should look like. Alan Warnock has worked in Hodges Figgis, managed the Waterstones shops on Dawson Street and Jervis Street, and then he sold online for a while.

Thousands upon thousands of books cover every available space in the Last Bookshop (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

I could linger for hours on end in a shop like this, forgetting the time of day and rekindling my imagination. Second-hand bookshops are about serendipity. You walk in thinking about one theme, and you walk out with half a dozen books on topics you never realised you were interested in.

It is not the same experience as looking for books on Amazon. There is little point in going into a second-hand bookshop looking for a specific title. ine for that, but while its algorithms may be programmed to know what people like me are buying, it can never grasp how my imagination works or what I my find curious and enticing.

My mind is wider, deeper and more nuanced than any algorithm, and it is best catered to by a good second-hand bookshop. And I still like to have a book in my hand, to turn its pages, to feel the texture of the paper and to smell the pages.

A back door and an archway of bamboo leads into a hidden courtyard and the Cake Café, which has a strong sustainability ethos in an eco-friendly building.

The Camden Street shop is in the Daintree Building, once a print shop that sold paper and stationery. Now it is one of the first eco-friendly developments in Dublin, and was developed specifically with conservation in mind, recycling rain water and using solar panels, with as little waste as possible.

But how could time spent in a second-hand bookshop – or in a café – ever be a waste of anything? It’s certainly never a waste of time.

I still miss the second-hand book stalls once found on Aston Quay and Bachelor’s Walk (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 151, Wednesday 9 October 2024

‘Padre Nuestro, que estas en el Cielo … Our Father, who art in Heaven’ … the words of the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish in the shape of a Cross (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIX).

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Denys, Bishop of Paris, and his Companions, Martyrs (ca 250) and Robert Grosseteste (1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Philosopher, Scientist.

Later today, I am due a B12 injection and a check-up on my B12 levels. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Give us each day our daily bread’ … bread in a shop window in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 11: 1-4 (NRSVA):

1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ 2 He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

‘Give us each day our daily bread’ … bread on the table in a restaurant in Panormos, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

The version of the Lord’s Prayer in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 11: 2-4) is not the same as the familiar text we use, based on the version in Saint Matthew’s text.

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Christ teaches the Lord’s Prayer within the context of the Sermon on the Mount. But in Saint Luke’s Gospel, immediately after visiting the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany, Christ finds a private place to pray. It is then that the disciples ask him to teach them ‘to pray, as John taught his disciples.’

The disciples are already familiar not only with the prayers of Saint John the Baptist, but also with traditional Jewish prayers in the home, in the synagogue and in the Temple in Jerusalem.

As a rabbi and a religious leader, Jesus was responsible for teaching his followers how to fulfil Jewish religious commandments, including the obligation to pray at certain times and in certain forms.

Then and now, a religious community has a distinctive way of praying; ours is exemplified by the Lord’s Prayer, which is a communal rather than individual prayer, expressed in the plural and not the singular:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

We approach God in a personal way, as Father. We then bring before him five petitions that are not on behalf of me personally, but on behalf of us, on behalf of all.

Sometimes we miss out on the impact of the Lord’s Prayer because we are so familiar with it. But, in the public worship of the Church, we often facilitate people missing out on the impact of the Lord’s Prayer when we privatise it.

Many of us were taught to pray the Lord’s Prayer as a private personal prayer as children, perhaps even saying it kneeling by our bedside, hands joined together, fingers pointing up.

So often, in our churches, we encourage people to kneel for the Lord’s Prayer, as if this was now both the most sacred and the most personal part of the Liturgy, rather than asking them to remain standing and to continue in collective prayer.

At synods and mission conferences, we often invite everyone present to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language. In this way, a collective, public prayer becomes a private, personal prayer, detached from and ignoring where everyone else is at each stage in the petitions.

As someone with English as my first language, I often notice how others finish a lot later than we do – the Finns in particular, but even the Germans too. Each language has its own rhythms and cadences. And the cacophony and conflicting rhythms mean it sounds as if we are in Babel rather than praying together, collectively and in the plural.

The first two petitions place us in God’s presence (‘hallowed be your name’ and ‘your kingdom come’), the next two bring our needs before God, both physical (‘daily bread,’ verse 3) and spiritual (forgiveness, verse 4), and the final petition has an eschatological dimension, looks forward to the fulfilment of all God’s promises, in God’s own time (‘the time of trial,’ verse 4).

The ‘time of trial’ is the final onslaught of evil forces, before Christ comes again, but also refers to the temptations we experience day-by-day.

So there is a temporal and an eternal dimension to these petitions, even when we pray for ourselves in the here and now.

The privatisation of the Lord’s Prayer, even on Sundays, takes away from its impact and from the collective thrust of each of the petitions.

Jesus, when he is teaching us to pray, is responding not to one individual but to the disciples as the core, formative group of the Church. God is addressed not as my Father, but our Father, and each petition that follows is in the plural: our daily bread, our forgiveness, our sins, our debts, how we forgive, and do not ‘bring us.’

When we say ‘Amen’ at the end, are we really saying ‘Amen’ to the holiness of God’s name, to the coming of Kingdom, to the needs of each being met, on a daily basis, to forgiveness, both given and received, to being put on the path of righteousness and justice, to others falling into no evil or into no harm.

If we privatise the Lord’s Prayer, we leave little room for its collective impact to grab a hold of those who are praying, and we leave little room for our own conversion, which is a continuing and daily need.

And so, let the kingdom, the power and the glory be God’s as we pray together:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

‘Lord, teach us to pray’ (Luke 11: 1) … prayer books and prayer shawls in the synagogue in Porto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 9 October 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is the ‘Humanitarian Corridors project in Leuven, Belgium.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by Rebecca Breekveldt, Second Secretary, Central Committee of the Anglican Church in Belgium.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 9 October 2024) invites us to pray:

Father God, grant safety and protection for those yet to arrive via the Humanitarian Corridors project.

The Collect:

O God, forasmuch as without you
we are not able to please you;
mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit
may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Holy and blessed God,
you have fed us with the body and blood of your Son
and filled us with your Holy Spirit:
may we honour you,
not only with our lips
but in lives dedicated to the service
of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Faithful Lord,
whose steadfast love never ceases
and whose mercies never come to an end:
grant us the grace to trust you
and to receive the gifts of your love,
new every morning,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘Give us each day our daily bread’ … bread and wine on the table at the end of the day in the Sunset Taverna in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org