"I think there is a book in me." When next I hear the expression I shall encourage the prospective author, so impressed was I with the result of such encouragement by writer Susan L. Mitchell of her mother, Kate Cullen (1832-1913). So encouraged, she jotted down memories of her life through the Famine and period of great change in 19th-century Ireland; the result is Hilary Pyle's compilation, The Sligo-Leitrim World of Kate Cullen (Woodfield Press, £9.99). It is centred in the Sligo-Leitrim area where Kate lived and married and is an invaluable record of the time.