Sinéad Gleeson’s blog
In the introduction to his collection of essays, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, Chuck Klosterman says the book is based on one premise: “Nothing can be appreciated in a vacuum” and he proves this by the sheer breadth of topics and themes he tackles. What we should all be asking ourselves, […]
Today is World Book Day so here are 10 random book-related links:
1) You’ve watched the TV programme, now read the book: Boy A has won the inaugural Books to Talk About award announced to coincide with WBD.
2) Eloise Miller reminds me how much I loved Lolly Willowes. Must dig that out and reread it.
3) […]
That’s the question the folk at the Man Booker Prize are asking. Just as they did with the ‘Booker of Bookers’ when the prize was 25 years old, now they’re asking the public to vote for their favourite* to mark the 40th anniversary in a ‘Best of the Booker’ competition. One of my all time […]
Pre-Christmas, bookshops were heaving with more music biographies than you could shake a Flying V guitar at. Most of them - Slash, Nikki Sixx, Ronnie Wood - ran the gamut of rock stardom excesses (groupies, drink, drugs). Things the Grandchildren Should Know, couldn´t be further away from the hedonistic rants of rock´s six-string A-listers. Written […]
When Sophie Dahl’s novella The Man With the Dancing Eyes was published, an unspoken sub-title lurked in invisible brackets (”an adult fairy tale”). Although Dahl, grand-daughter of children’s author Roald, has graduated to the novel, many aspects of the fairy tale filter into Playing With The Grown-ups. Populated with exotic characters, an entire family of […]
Two days since her Booker win, there are still some people not happy with Anne Enright’s win. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, but then another kind of backlash concerning the writer has emerged.
Eleanor Birne has an excellent evaluation of The Gathering (be warned of spoilers if you haven’t […]
Last week, after a break of over a year, I took the plunge and joined another book group. As I explained to Ryan Tubridy on Monday, there are lots of good reasons in getting together with a group of people to talk books. Apart from consolidating old friendships, in that you get to meet up […]
As mentioned in this post, Donogh is still calling on bloggers to post some (short) reviews of books they enjoyed in 2006. Anyone who’d like to take part should post a review on their blog and include the technorati tag at the bottom of this post. More details here:
The Emigrant’s Farewell by Liam Browne
Irish literature […]
1904 was a pivotal year for Irish literature. Joyce’s Ulysses is set in 1904; Patrick Kavanagh and Molly Keane were born; and the death occurred of Kate Chopin, an American writer born of Irish stock, who in her relatively short life wrote one of the most enduring and controversial works of feminist fiction.
The book, […]
Upon hearing that the book assigned to the panel of The View last week was called The Emigrant’s Farewell, my heart sank. The title, and the fact that it’s set in Derry, steeled me for another tale of Irish gloom. Despite its central theme of grief, it is far from an addition to the […]
Every nation has its literary kings and queens and Ireland, is no exception. For a such small nation, we have never had any problem making ourselves heard, particularly in terms of the arts, and notably writing. For every writer that is firmly ensconced in Irish literature’s Hall of Fame, there are many that have been […]
Compilations, be they of music or film, usually tend to be a varied bag of glittering gems and damp squibs. Faber’s new Irish collection of short stories is no exception, but the word ‘new’ hints temptingly at the possibility of more undiscovered writers than are actually included here. One thing an anthology like this promises, […]