John Montague, Ireland Professor of Poetry
Revisiting the top reads of 1998: from blockbusters to biographies, poetry to politics, sport to science, some of this year's people reveal which books they most enjoyed, while left and right, experts with interests from sci-fi to history list their top choices from the books published in their own fields
THE extraordinary drama behind Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters (Faber, £14.99 in UK), written to Sylvia Plath, makes it an obvious choice. The American poet, Donald Hall also produced an elegiac volume on his dead wife, Jane Kenyon, called Without: Poems (Houghton Mifflin, £13.95 in UK). It was good year for Irish poetry, especially from northerners, with Heaney's almost collected Opened Ground (Faber, £20 in UK). And among the post-modern pleasures of Hay (Faber and & Faber £14.99hb/ £7.99pb in UK) by Paul Muldoon, is a homage to his father, Third Epistle To Timothy. Finally, I was greatly entertained by the Wicklow anthology, Stream and the Gliding Sun (Wicklow Co Council, £5 approx) edited by David Wheatley.
Anne Haverty, novelist
In Adultery and other Diversions (Secker and Warburg, £12.99 in UK) Tim Parks uses an appealing form - half essay, half story - that might in fact best be described by the sad word "sermon" - to mediate on our everyday life. Not that he sermonises, of course - he is far too subtle for that. In Candy (Vintage, £6.65 in UK) Luke Davies escorts us through the messy parallel world of heroin addiction, sparing none of its horrors while revealing its fatal attractions. Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics, £3.99 in UK) by William Thackery, has been around for a long time but it is reborn in a sense this year, with its TV outing. I started to read it in the interests of research, and finished for the pleasure.
Patrick Kielty, comedian
The Undertaking (Vintage, £5.99 in UK) by Thomas Lynch is about an undertaker in middle America who sees his job not as burying the dead but as an undertaking to the people left behind. It turns the whole morbid thing of undertakers on its head. Conversations with my Agent (Faber, £5.99 in UK) by Rob Long, written by the guy who wrote the comedy series Cheers, is a good book for anyone in TV because it really shows that when you're hot, you're hot and when you're not, you're not. The Committee (Roberts Reinhardt, $24.95, available in US only) by Sean McPhilemy is banned in the UK, and is about this committee which is said to have existed in the North, an orchestrated assassination committee from the top down to the RUC. I don't know how much of it I'd believe, but it's a great read.
Cora Venus Lunny, violinist
Human Croquet (Black Swan, £6.99 in UK) by Kate Atkinson is about a Newcastle girl and involves a bit of time travelling. It's not a children's book, more a spiritual book. It's about awakening, finding out things about her mother and people. Rather disturbing. I also read Tales of the Night (The Harvill Press, £6.99 in UK) by Peter Hoeg, which is a book of love stories - a bit different from the usual. Hoeg also wrote Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. A Walk in the Woods (Black Swan, £6.99 in UK) by Bill Bryson, is hilarious. It's about a walk along an Appalachian trail, the wildlife, the experiences, the scrapes, and is very, very funny.
Patrick O'Reilly, artist
The Queen of Whale Cay (4th Estate, £5.99 in UK) by Kate Summerscale is the story of a lady called Joe Carstaras, who was the fastest female speed-boat racer in the 1930s. The heir to the Standard oil fortune, she was quite eccentric. She bought an island in the Bahamas and some might think she frittered away the fortune. A great read. An Age of Innocence - Irish Culture 1930-1960 (Gill and Macmillan, £19.99) by Brian Fallon, is about Ireland in the 1950s. It's a different view to the usual, not sad so much as realistic. Like Venus Fading (Harper Collins, £16.99 in UK) by Marsha Hunt is about a black woman from the ghetto in the southern US who goes to LA, and she's the first black screen goddess. It's about hopes, salvation, disappointments, starting over repeatedly. A heartbreaking story.
Glen Brady, Dublin DJ
A song of Stone (Abacus, £6.99 in UK) by Iain Banks is almost science fiction, though more subtle. It imagines a wealthy family in a post-conflict situation in Britain where there's no government and there are several armies. Snow Blind (Canon Gate, £6.99 in UK) by Robert Sabbag is the of a cocaine smuggler, an American who smuggles between Columbia and New York. Tom Clancy's Net Force (Headline, £6.99 in UK) by Tom Clancy and Steve Piczenick, set about 20 years in the future, is about an internal police in the FBI, which deals with the virtual world and computers. Really action-packed and the kind of book you'd stay up all night with.
Nadette Foley, director of the Irish Refugee Council
I loved The Land of Green Plums (Granta, £9.99 in UK) by Herta Muller, who is a member of one of Romania's ethnic minorities. It gives quite a chilling account of the consequences of the oppressive dictatorship under Ceaucescu and paints a picture of the internal emotional life of one young woman and her closest friends. For me, it really reinforced my understanding of the way a political climate of fear personally impinges on someone striving to preserve their own dignity and individuality. An Antique Land (Granta, £7.99 in UK) by Amintav Ghosh is about an Indian student who goes to Egypt to learn Arabic and do some research on old Jewish manuscripts.
It's an account of the author's own experience of India and Egypt but we also see, through the 1000-year-old manuscripts, the pressure then on young Egyptians to travel to provide for those at home.
Sinead O'Connor, singer
I liked A Monk Swimming (Harper Collins, £11.95 in UK) by Malachy McCourt. It's kind of a lighter look at life than his brother Frank McCourt took in Angela's Ashes. The Pool
of Memories by Michal Levin (New Leaf, £8.99) is an autobiography of a medium, the story of how she became aware of her psychic self and of her professional psychic training. There's a lot in it for anyone who feels they might have psychic skills and it's a very compassionate book. My daughter Roisin, who's two, loves to hear me read from If You Give a Pig a Pancake (Harper & Row, US$14.95 to order) by Laura Numeroff. It's very funny and it's all about thinking about the consequences of your actions.
Carrie Crowley, tv and radio presenter
Four Letters Of Love (Picador, £5.99 in UK) by Niall Williams is exquisite. It traces the lives of different people, and through the book there are letters between the protagonists telling you more, and it's beautifully descriptive. I was given Mother of Pearl (Vintage, £5.99 in UK) by Mary Morrissy when I went on holiday to Donegal in July and I loved it so much it stopped me going out to the pub at night. It's about a young TB patient in a sanitorium and she ends up marrying one of the other patients, and they can't have children. So she ends up kidnapping a child. I found Mary, Mary (Town House, £14.99) by Julie Parsons, riveting. It's set in and around Monkstown, where I often walk, and I find myself looking about at places referred to in the book. It's terrific.
Tom Johnson, a producer/ director on @last tv:
Hidden Agendas (Vintage, £8.99 in UK) by John Pilger is a real reminder for us smug Celtic Tiger-cubs that all is far from well in the world. Reading Pilger can evoke feelings of fascination, outrage and guilt simutaneously. 253 (Harper Collins, £6.99 in UK) by Geoff Ryman, is an innovative, non-linear approach to fiction writing. Or maybe it's a smart-alecky gimmick for the generation of the short attention span. Well, I liked it and the chapter about William Blake's ghost wandering through modern London is worth the price alone. About a Boy (Victor Gollancz, £15.99 in UK) by Nick Hornby is not quite Fever Pitch or High Fidelity, but Hornby's enjoyable style makes this a great read - particularly resonant for a new father like myself.