SOMETIMES I get obsessed by the first World War and stories relating to it.
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (Penguin, £6.99 in UK), winner of last year's Booker prize, is a and emotional book which takes you into the carnage of that particular war, and into the hearts and minds of extraordinary human beings. I also loved Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt (HarperCollins, £16.99 in UK). It made me laugh and it also made me very sad. It was like reading a wonderful Dickensian novel. Those are the two books I read this year that really stand out.
Marian Keyes author of bestselling popular novels Watermelon and Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married
SHE best book I read in 1996 was without doubt Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (Corgi, £6.99 in UK). An incredible first novel, it won the Whitbread prize. It is set in York and manages to be several books in one a family saga spanning five generations, the life story of a woman, and a psychological thriller. It is spellbinding, and written beautifully, with exquisite irony and moving compassion.
I also loved Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres (Mandarin, £6.99 in UK). It is a hypnotic novel, a vast tapestry woven in tiny, colourful, intricate detail. Although ostensibly a heartwarming love story about a Greek girl and an enemy Italian soldier who was billeted in her home during the second World War, it is also a graphic and moving commentary on the futility of war. This magical book stayed in my head long after I had finished it. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (Gollancz, £6.99 in UK) is probably on everyone's list of best reads of 1996. Even though it has had the unfortunate effect of teaching men how to behave like boys again, it has also given women an insight into how men think. It's a very special book - honest, perceptive, funny, sharp, sad and moving.
Dermot Healy writer, his latest book is The Bend for Home
IN fiction, I read Grace Paley or the first time. It was like discovering Alice Munro with the humour more dotty and generous (The Collected Stories of Grace Paley, Noonday, £12 in UK). Then there was Last Orders by Graham Swift (Pan Books, £15.99 in UK), a simple story with characters and personalities emerging via a finely tuned, street wise dialogue. Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (Cape, £12.99 in UK) had my hair standing on end. An unflinching act of imagination and empathy.
In non fiction, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist by Tony Cronin (Harpercollins, £25 in UK) was a compulsive read: he skilfully penetrates the abstract, meanwhile unearthing wondrous moments in Beckett's life. Both Nuala O'Faolain (in Are You Somebody? New Island Books, £7.99) and Frank McCourt (in Angela's Ashes) have written memorable memoirs, and between them, have put some missing links in Ireland back in place.
Doireann Ni Bhriain
Commissioner, L'Imaginaire Irlandais
I had an exceptionally busy year and did virtually no reading for the first six months. The first piece of fiction I had time for had to be an escape from Irish culture, and David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (Bloomsbury, £5.99 in UK) fitted the bill perfectly. This absorbing story set in a Japanese American community in the Pacific has all the tensions of a good thriller, but also the depth and skill of a well crafted novel. A real discovery. Seamus Deane's poetic gifts shine through his account of a childhood in Derry, Reading in the Dark (Cape, £13.99 in UK) to illuminate lovingly the complex world of a small boy as he tries to understand it all.
Many years ago, when I had more faith in Nuala O'Faolain's talents than she had, I begged her to write me a story any story. She's told one at last, the best story of all, her own in Are You Somebody? A beautifully written and important memoir of the dark as well as the bright sides of a richly lived life in modern Ireland. And the wisdom and honesty of the accompanying pieces of selected journalism make this book such a vivid and moving chronicle of our times.
Jean Kennedy Smith
American Ambassador to Ireland
HAZEL: A Life of Lady Lavery 1880 - 1935 by Sinead McCoole (Lilliput, £15) is a book about a fascinating character in Irish history. Hazel Lavery was a woman with extraordinary gifts who touched the lives of very important and influential people in Ireland, the US and Britain. The book is well written, and brings to life social and political life in the early part of the century and its bearing upon modern Ireland. The story of her life would make a wonderful movie. How Far From Austerlitz by Alistair Horne (Macmillan, £20 in UK) is a brilliantly written and absorbing story about an important time in history. The book shows how, between 1805 and 1815, Napoleon was unstoppable, and this belief led to his eventual downfall. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane is a wonderful, unusual, lyrical book that captures a childhood impossible to describe. You just have to read the book.
Frank McCourt author of Angela's Ashes
THE Seventh Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton (SPCK, £20 in UK) is about a rich young playboy who went to Oxford, lived in Paris, and was doing his MA and PhD in Columbia in New York when he converted to Catholicism. This book is about the strange odyssey of his conversion; he eventually became a Trappist monk. He started out completely unreligious, and ended going on a fascinating search for spiritual certainty. On a completely different level, I also loved M.F.K. Fisher's The Art of Eating (Macmillan). This Californian of Protestant Irish descent never wrote a cookbook. She just wrote a lot about food and wine and the good life her love affairs and marriages, and threw in a few recipes along the way. She calls attention to the importance of enjoying what you eat. So many of us just gulp. She goes back to the pagan idea of feasting and celebrating all that is delicious in life. Finally, Tim Pat Coogan's Michael Collins (Random House, £9.99 in UK)
shows us the genius who created modern guerrilla warfare. His disregard for the English rules of battle was brilliant. He was a man with great gusto and ebullience. The book also shows us the Civil War, where people who had fought together for independence turned on each other - just like the American Civil War. It fascinates me how that kind of evil comes about.
Lar Cassidy director, Ireland and its Diaspora festival at the Frankfurt Book Fair
THE publication of Collected Poems by Thomas Kinsella (OUP, £11.99 in UK) gives the reader an overview of the original work of one of our major poets. He is the great poet of the Republic as surely as Seamus Heaney is the poet laureate of Northern Ireland. From the early, precise metrical poems like "Baggot Street Deserta" to the post Poundian sweep and ambition of the present cycle of "Peppercannister Poems".
Thomas Kinsella continues to write in an innovative and mind stretching way.
Anthony Cronin has brought off a great biography in Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (Harper Collins, £25 in UK). Besides his work as a creative writer, I have been greatly impressed by Tony Cronin's ability to argue a literary case, as witness his spirited championing of Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey and other Dublin modernists in The Irish Times in the 1970s. In a sense, this highly readable biography is a culmination of Cronin's formidable critical writing where he has room to explore. It is gratifying to have this Irish perspective on Beckett.
Finally, the most enjoyable comic book I have read recently is the quirky, honest and pacy The Road to Notown (Blackstaff £7.99 in UK) by the satirical Michael Foley. In the manner of Tony Cronin's Life of Riley, Foley draws entertaining but merciless portraits of Ulster writers. It is not necessary to know who the models are to enjoy the subversive comedy of this timely depiction of the foibles of Ulster writers.
Mike Murphy presenter of The Arts
Show
IT has been a good year. Mike McCormack announced it as such with his thrilling debut short story collection, Getting it in the Head (Cape, £9.99 in UK) in which he explores the same surreal rural landscape as Pat McCabe. Dermot Healy's The Bend for Home (Harvill, £14.99 in UK) kept us in the Midlands with his deeply moving and funny memoirs of the local "bad influence" with a caring heart. His Under Milk Wood style, passage about Cavan town on a half day is superb.
Two books to marvel at in terms of encyclopaedic research and story telling ability: Ann Douglas's Terrible Honesty (Pan Books £20 in UK) and E. Annie Proulx's Accordian Crimes (Fourth Estate, £16.99 in UK). Douglas takes you on an insider's romp through the music literature and characters of 1920s Manhattan, while Proulx concocts an amazing myriad of stories from American nooks, crannies and bayous around the flimsy structure of the odyssey of a single musical instrument.
One of our greatest ever painters is paid proper tribute in Tony O'Malley (Scholar Press, £345 in UK). Brian Lynch wrote the comprehensive text, while the reproductions of O'Malley's work are brilliant. And finally, aficionados of the American West must have Geoffrey C. Ward's huge, fascinating and wonderfully illustrated The West (Weidenfeid and Nicholson, £30 in UK).
Sean McSweeney painter, he and Conor Fallon had a show in the RHA earlier this year
GOOD art books are like a piece of good music for me. If I am tired or down, I pick one up and something always sings out to me. Frank Auerbach by Robert Hughes (Thames & Hudson, currently not available) is one such book. Auerbach is a fine painter, originally from Berlin, now living in England. He is a painter who has limited himself to just a few subjects:
he paints portraits of a small number of friends and scenes from a small area of London. This is a book I know I'll en joy for a long time.
My daughter Orna just brought me back a book on Goya from the Prado. Goya: Life and Work (Taschen, £14.99 in UK) is a complete guide to all his works, with 48, beautiful colour plates.
For years I have carried around with me The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Technique by Ralph Mayer (Faber & Faber, £22.50 in UK) and Notes on the Technique of Painting by Hilaire Hiler. They are very important reference books for me. Recently I bought another book, Formulas for Painting by Robert Massey (Watson, and Guptill, £14.99 in UK)which is like a good cookery book, full of recipes. It tells you everything you need to know about glazes, varnishes, acrylic, guache, pastel, fresco and much more.
Pauline McLynn comedienne, she has been nominated for Best TV Comedy Actress at the British Comedy Awards for her role in Father Ted. The winner will announced tonight a deadly soccer supporter, so a very useful book for me is The Supporter's Guide to Premiership and Football League Clubs (Soccer Book Publishing, £4.99 in UK). It has lots of phone numbers, maps and travel instructions. The Brimstone Wedding by Barbara Vine (paperback due in January, Penguin £6.99 in UK) is a woman's book in the best possible way. It is about an unusual relationship between two women, one of whom is dying. There is loads of love and loss very moving, really.
Love and loss from a man's perspective is explored in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. This is a funny and poignant book, with a great soundtrack (he works in a music shop, you see). Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson (Mandarin, £5.99 in UK) is a fantastic, excellent, adventure novel set in Russia. You can't go wrong with any of Davidson's books. I read the whole lot of them in a rash during the filming of the second series of Father Ted.
Nuala O'Faolain
Irish Times columnist and author of Are You Somebody?
THE book that most I moved me to laughter and tears was Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. The one with the best pictures was the catalogue of the Vermeer exhibition (available from the shop in the National Gallery of Ire land, £25). The most happy discovery was the poem "In the Wake of Home" in a 10 year old collection by Adrienne Rich called Your Native Land, Your Life (Norton, £7.95 in UK). But if I could rescue only one book from a burning bookshop, it would be Selected Stories by the great Alice Munro (Chatto, £16.99 in UK).
John Bruton
Taoiseach
ON the strength of its first 125 pages, I'd say Frank Callanan's book TM. Healy (Cork University Press, £35). This is a major work, probably one of the most important works of history written in Ireland over the past five years. It is a biography, but it is also about Ireland. I'm still reading it and enjoying it very much. Earlier in the year I read some of Alison Lurie's fiction, two novels. I was very impressed.
Mary Morrissy her novel, Mother of Pearl, has been shortlisted for the Whitbread prize
MORTALLY Wounded by Michael Kearney (Marino, £9.99) is a strangely grip ping book on the subject of dying in which Michael Kearney, a consultant in palliative medicine, explores both the spiritual and mythological resonances of death. In a world overburdened with hectic "how to" manuals, this is a thoughtful and fascinating meditation on how we all might go more gently into the good night.
Derek Jarman's Garden (Photographs by Howard Sooley), (Thames & Hudson, £15.95 in UK) is about how the film maker and artist, Derek Jarman, carved out a bleak and wild garden under the shadow of the Dungeness nuclear power station. This is not a gardening book per se, rather, Howard Sooley's 150 vivid photographs of lichens, dog roses, sea kale and wild poppies, accompanied by extracts from the late Jarman's diary, makes this a poignant testament to an artist's last season.
Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, is a memoir of growing up in the slums of Limerick in the 1930s. A harrowing, funny, heart breaking and utterly compelling book. The portrait of his leckless, roguish, alcoholic father is particularly touching for its complete lack of judgment. A great deal of pain went into the living of this book but bitterness has not found its' way into the telling of it.
John Banville novelist and literary editor of The Irish Times
ONCE in a while a book resents itself to one's attention in the most unassuming way and then turns into a major intellectual event. Such was my experience with Nietzsche in Turin, by Lesley Chamberlain (Quartet, £10 in UK). Chamberlain is neither a philosopher nor an academic she has written three books on cookery - but she is a linguist, a thinker, and, that rarest of things, a wonderfully sympathetic reader. Nietzsche needed a woman's touch, both metaphorically and in life, and here he gets it, if belatedly. This is simply the best book I have read in a very long time on the greatest philosopher of the modern age (philosopher, or artist? the question is pertinent, and Chamberlain addresses it with subtlety and vigour).
Another unique spirit is treated in Anthony Cronin's Samuel Beckett. The Last Modernist and Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, by James Knowlson (Bloomsbury, £25 in UK). The latter is the authorised biography, and is packed to bursting with fascinating and valuable facts, but Cronin has a slight edge thanks to the force of his imaginative grasp of Beckett and his work, and also to the elegance of his style. But anyone really interested should read both - a far more enjoyable experience than might seem likely, given the size of the books.
Brian Kennedy
Singer
YOU Send Me The Life and Times of Sam Cooke by Daniel Wolfe (DMS/ Worldwide Books, £17.99 in UK) is an essential read for anyone interested in the man behind the extraordinary voice and writer of soul classics such as A Change Is Gonna Come and Bring It On Home To Me. Given that he was a black man born at a profoundly racist time in history, he managed to negotiate a graceful and eloquent path all his own.
The other book I could not put down was The Dead School by Patrick McCabe (Picador, £6.99 in UK), having been completely taken over by his previous novel, The Butcher Boy. He's just one of those writers who gets you drunk very slowly after one too many of his sentences. I could absolutely relate to each character and could do nothing other than accompany them in their inevitable descent into mostly fatal neurosis and therefore feel how closely many of us walk that line.