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We need your help to make the Irish Picks great! If you've got a great Irish site that we don't know about, send the site's full name and address to editor Sheila McDonald, and one of our reviewers will check it out. Click here if you only want to view this month's list of sites.
It all began in 1993, when proprietor Louis Hemmings was offered 32 boxes of secondhand theological books "for a song". Now Hemmings' venture is online at Samovar Books: and if the religious book you want isn't there, he'll find it for you. Hundreds and hundreds of books are listed here, from Bible dictionaries to hymnology, complete with codes to indicate each used book's degree of scruffiness. If you're not a theologian, the site is worth a trip for its pensive musings on the nature of old bookshops: "I love the slaphappy chaos of clutter: the boxes stacked, the books bundled in Pisa-like piles..."
House-hunters have another weapon in their battle with Ireland's fierce property market. Housefinder includes a powerful search tool and more than 200 property listings in the Dublin and Wicklow areas, from houses and apartments to derelict cottages. Housefinder includes some of the best details we've seen on Irish property sites, including maps and directions, a mortgage calculator, good photography, and specific email contacts for estate agents. Agents can register to add their own properties to the site, and customers can choose to view listings for individual agents only. Great stuff!
Fans of the Irish children's show Den2 will find plenty to keep their mouses happy at this flashy new site - providing their computers can view Flash animation, that is. The site will take time to load on slow connections, but it does have fun and educational features for kids, including a Shockwave version of Join the Dots, plus animal profiles from the popular Creature Feature show, from earwigs to elephants. A full TV schedule of child-friendly programmes is also listed, and kids can download pictures of favourite Den characters, including the grumpy turkey Dustin, to print out and colour in.
Get your fill of celebrity interviews, mistaken headlines and memorable quotes at the irreverent Bowsie.com. Learn about the Egyptian man who reportedly offered a thousand camels to an Irish man in exchange for his celebrity wife, or about the call-in radio contestant who confidently answered "Hamlet" when asked for Shakespeare's home town. The site also claims to have unearthed an original, rambling fax from Sinead O'Connor to an Irish magazine, but neither this nor any of the other goodies on the site are substantiated. Still, the headlines in particular make for amusing reading, including this insight on the Northern Ireland peace process reported in an Irish Times headline: "VIOLENCE DELAYS PEACE."
"Bowsie" - local slang for "troublesome character" - figures in the final site of the month, the quirky new Dublin Slang Dictionary and Phrasebook. This guide pledges to provide it all, from essential swear words to traditional Irish curses. There's also a decent collection key phrases that slot well into any pub conversation, from "That fella'd skin a fart" (that person will do anything for money) to "I will in me hat" (meaning, "I certainly won't.") If you've ever witnessed a Dublin bus driver trying to push through traffic, or overheard two city locals in an animated conversation, you're sure to recognise some of the entries in this amusing guide.