August 27th, 2010 § Comments Welcome
1: You are a good person, worthy of fulfillment
2: When not your master, fear is your truest servant
3: You are strong: embrace challenge and risk rejection
4: Fantasy is good–but not in place of reality
5: Trust your instincts. Serve your truth. Be yourself.
flickr image by lanier67
July 29th, 2010 § Comments Off
Here’s an original story I told at an Open Mic in the Creel in Westport last night.
This story came second in the 2010 Jonathan Swift Satire Contest. I hope you like it.
flickr image by Conor Pendergrast
July 21st, 2010 § 1 Comment
In the week that the world’s biggest bookseller announced they are selling more Ebooks than hardbacks, it seems apposite to hearken to the message below, written with us in mind by Ulster poet Louis MacNeice.
This dates from just over half a century ago and the time to consider the poem’s meaning has surely come.
Happily our generation comes out of this interrogation rather well, as the English language, whatever the platform, is livelier and more playful than ever. But I leave it to you to decide–after all, the piece is addressed…
When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading and even speaking have been replaced
By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste
They held for us for whom they were framed in words,
And will your grass be green, your sky be blue,
Or will your birds be always wingless birds?
-Louis MacNeice (1957)
From Selected Poems
Flickr Image by ‘Quick, like a mule’ (CC Licensed)
May 9th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Video of the talk I gave the other night in Westport, at Ignite the West. Great fun, great people, and a really good forum to hatch new ideas. Thanks to the organizers, Steve and Dermot, for a great opportunity.
July 12th, 2009 § Comments Off
Image courtesy of 3ammagazine
July 9th, 2009 § Comments Off
One of the great things about having children is that it gives you the opportunity to return to childhood classics–and also read the books you’d like to read now if you were an 8-year-old. There’s many more we got through at bedtime than these of course, but these are stand-outs:
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner. Revisiting a favourite from my childhood. [AmazonUK]
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. Wonderfully funny–and witty too. [AmazonUK]
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night by Allan and Janet Ahlberg. Cervantes for the under-10 set. [AmazonUK]
Just William by Richmal Crompton. Misadventures of spirited boy prone to scrapes: a masterclass in comic writing. [AmazonUK]
Stig of the Dump by Clive King. Again, revisiting a favourite from my childhood with the alibi that I am reading to the kids. [AmazonUK]
The Unlucky Day by Richard Scarry. Disaster comedy puts credit crunch in perspective: imagine cold pickles for dinner in flooded home! [AmazonUK]
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. A young boy finds friendship with mysterious children in the garden, a place transformed when night falls and midnight strikes… [AmazonUK]
June 25th, 2009 § Comments Off
The non-fiction books that I’ve read over the past 12 months. Unfortunately Taleb was a real disappointment: the book equivalent of a late-night infomercial that makes much out of little; Twyla Tharp’s was on the other end of the scale, as was the Heaney book.
12 Books That Changed the World by Melvyn Bragg. Not the usual suspects, the ones that had a demonstrable effect on daily life.
A Short History of English Literature by Gilbert Phelps. Dry but useful account, mercifully devoid of psuedocritical psauce.
Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly while rocking the pram in the hall. Direct, insightful, and strangely encouraging.
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. Great fun for bibliophiles; for those left cold by reading, not so much.
Literary Lives by Edmund Sorel, illustrator. The dope on Jung, Sartre, Brecht, and other monsters, drawn with relish and wit.
On the Sublime by Longinus. “Sublimity is the echo of a great soul”. Nearly 2000 years old and still on the money.
Stepping Stones [Heaney Interviews by Dennis O'Driscoll]. Ulster Poet proves efficacy of unSilence, unExile, & unCunning for Irish literary triumph.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Probability Prof take smart thesis and goes off the deep end. Tiresome ego-trip.
The Irish Times newspaper from the day of my birth: snowstorms, death of revolutionary WT Cosgrave, and Vatican Council on TV
The Creative Habit. by Twyla Tharp. Practicalities for the artistically inclined. Engrossing, insightful, useful. Excuse me now while I defenstrate the television.
Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James. From an Australian boyhood through London bedsits to glittering success and hyper-productive maturity. The fourth volume, (North Face of Soho) is the most enjoyable of the set: as wisdom of age settles over the reminiscences.
June 18th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Thanks to Twitter, I’ve found a good system for tracking my recent reading. Here are capsule reviews of fiction that has made an impression on me in the last 12 months:
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Avant-garde means yield to poetic ends. A Southern King James in places. Riveting; funny too.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. Perfectly realized meditation on New York, cricket, and the immigrant experience. Pace Zelie Smith, too perfect perhaps?
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Wish-fulfilment thriller by Swedish journalist: misogynist execs decoded, destroyed
The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek. ‘Certified idiot’ tramps about w/Austrian army during WWI, proves to be sanest there.
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler. Tintin for adults.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. A Still Life in which everything is happening.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Very Funny. Malicious Devil amuses himself in Stalin’s Moscow. Poets irrepressible.
“What I Found Out About Her” by Peter LaSalle [Antioch Review 66.1]. A short story. Nuanced meditation on sad mystery of young suicide.
August 13th, 2008 § Comments Off
Another interesting revelation from the UNICEF report on Child Well-Being in Rich Countries I wrote about previously is that books are not valued in many wealthy and successful countries.
Below is a chart from that survey showing the Percentage of Children age 15 reporting less than 10 books in the home. It’s hard to generalize (even for me!) based on these figures so I will just confine myself to noting that the paucity of books in over 10% of Irish homes should be a real cause for concern for parents, children, educators, and community leaders here.
Unfortunately, despite Ireland’s literary tradition and love of the English language–whether spoken, written, or sung–our libraries are generally lamentable.
It may surprise you to hear that their equivalents in Las Vegas, where we previously lived, were infinitely superior in every way than their oddly impoverished Irish counterparts. (See comparison figures below).
On top of this, booksellers here are not what they were (vide , for one, the stock-gutting of Waterstones on Dawson Street), we love television, and the public transport system is poor: together all conspire to reduce opportunities for people to read good books. Children, meanwhile, are not read to at night, and when they are taken to bookshops find either “franchise books” (which may or may not be good) and celebrity tie-in pulp, which is generally not.
Quite reasonably they conclude more fun will be had online or playing console games.
So, what are we going to do about it? Read to your kids every bedtime. Let them see you enjoying books. And maybe embarrass your local bookseller into thinking beyond Harry Potter, Madonna, and Enid Blyton
The figures from the two library systems: Las Vegas slightly outspends Ireland on library stock purchased [$5.47 to $5.10 per capita]. But the most telling characteristic, for me, is the non-stock spend: only 11% of the Irish budget is spent on stock. Las Vegas, by contrast, raises their stock-spend to 20%, almost double the Irish rate, while maintaining an ambitious expansion program to meet the needs of a continuing population influx. [Sources: Ireland; Las Vegas; and xe.net for currency rates]
August 3rd, 2008 § Comments Off
An old friend of mine from New York, Aravind Adiga, has written a novel called The White Tiger which is stirring up some serious interest around the world (and has just been long-listed short-listed for awarded the Booker Prize).
That’s one thing…the other thing is that the book is a cracking good read and very witty.
Buy the book at Amazon US or Amazon UK
A share of the proceeds go towards running costs for The Second Circle, which I edit and Aravind writes for.
