Rick O'Shea

  This one is somewhat of an oddity in the many, many books I’ve read about the world today and what the hell is going wrong. Harry Leslie Smith is a 91-year-old who grew up in incredible poverty in Barnsley during the Great Depression, fought in World War II and now has taken to writing about how he sees the contract that was promised to his generation after 1945 (greater social equality, free healthcare, the social safety net) has been eroded so far that, quite literally, he’s as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. No he’s not a lifelong journalist, commentator or author, […]

Book One Hundred 2014: Dubliners 100 It seemed only appropriate to finish off an incredible year and a huge project with something Irish and appropriate. I’m glad I did. He didn’t give himself an easy editorial job, you know, but Tom Morris’s collection of what he calls “cover versions” of the original stories in Joyce’s Dubliners is a combination of the interesting, the bizarre and the downright brilliant. Each either retells, reshapes or just takes a jumping off point from the original story they’re based on. They vary wildly from John Kelly, Andrew Fox, Mary Morrissy and Sam Coll’s great modernisations of […]

Book Ninety Nine 2014: Playing To The Gallery by Grayson Perry Straight off and in the interest of disclosure, I love Grayson Perry. I love what he makes, shows he curates, his TV shows about art, the whole lot. This book does nothing to change my opinion of him. It’s a readably slight run through his take on the modern world of modern art, why artists make art and in particular the relationship between art, galleries, money and the public in general and how that is changing. He has some incredible insights while at the same time never giving us less than […]

Last one. Promise. As mentioned on Arena the other night when I was talking about the 100 books in 2014 thing, I mentioned that Louisa in Raven Books in Blackrock was kind enough earlier in the year to crunch the stats and do the breakdowns of the books. She’s done the final version. For stats nerds like me only 🙂

Book Ninety Eight 2014: The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing This was part of my early 2014 project to read something by authors I had never read and thought I should have (Dickens, Burgess, Coupland, Amis). It’s set in Rhodesia in the 40s – Mary is a girl about town who’s almost old enough to be considered a spinster until Dick (a failing farmer a little older than her) asks her to marry him and takes her away to live in the veldt miles away from civilisation. I’m not revealing anything (it’s on the first page) that she’s found dead on the steps of their home […]

It seemed like a mental idea to begin with. The very first column I wrote for Insider Magazine explains how it came about: The first question someone asks you when you tell them that you’re trying to read a hundred books in 2014 is “are you a mental case?” closely followed by “is it a bet?”, “what’s your problem?”, “are you a mental case?” again and then usually settling on “why?” Last year I set myself the task of reading a book a week as a single, unbreakable New Year’s resolution. One I might actually stick to for once. I did it […]