A selectio of paerbacks reviewed by The Irish Times
Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 Diarmaid MacCulloch Penguin, £9.99
The first two parts of MacCulloch's book are chronological, narrating the main events of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. His presentation of the great reformers, both Protestant and Catholic, is breathtaking in its depth and scope. The third section examines social and intellectual themes. Stimulating and provocative insights abound, such as that Erasmus created a new category of career: "the roving international man of letters who lived off the proceeds of his writings and from the money provided by his admirers". It would be hard to better H.L. Mencken's definition of Puritanism: "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy". - Brian Maye
The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language Melvyn Bragg Sceptre £8.99
Bragg charts how the English language developed and consolidated itself within England and identifies its most subtle and ruthless characteristic: its capacity to absorb others. In chronological sequence he describes the emergence of Shakespearean English and of English as the predominant language of America. He highlights America's importance in its enrichment of the language by its polyglot immigrants, African slaves, frontiersmen of the West and Native American tribes. He identifies that the new economy has created the need for new words and that text messaging is creating new ways of spelling for the young. The language has never been static and it continues to adapt. - John McBratney
Are You Talking To Me?: A Life Through The Movies John Walsh Harper Perennial, £7.99
Drawing on his early cinematic experiences, Walsh recalls how the movies shaped, moulded and refined his impressionable 1960s Catholic-Irish childhood, adolescence and early manhood. A well-written introspection that juxtaposes the ordinariness, challenges and inevitability of growing up with the resourcefulness, escapism and charisma of romantic swashbuckling heroes and devil-may-care luminaries who helped forge Walsh's early emotional and psychological template. An often hilarious memoir that confirms that matinee-idol charm, mischievous roguishness and irresistible double-entendres, while essential for most leading men, are cumbersome distractions in the armoury of aspirant movie-worshipping Romeos. - Paul O'Doherty
Something Might Happen Julie Myerson Vintage, £6.99
In a seaside town, Lennie, a local artist, mother of two young boys, is brutally killed when an attacker rips the heart from her body.Although not a thriller in the strict whodunit sense, Myerson's excellently crafted story unfolds the complexity of the lives equally brutally savaged, by their loss, through the voice of Lennie's best friend, Tess. The tangled situations fray into total chaos as shock and grief make already tenuous relationships unbearable until the dreaded something of the title, inevitably, happens. - Christine Madden
Tobias Smollett Jeremy Lewis Pimlico, £8.99
For a self-confessed devotee of the 18th century, Jeremy Lewis is enthusiastic in his exploration of the filth and glamour of Augustan London as background to Smollett's sparsely documented life. Making no claims for original research, this life relishes recounting Smollett's experiences as a doctor, "a manual job akin to hairdressing"; his savage adventures as a naval surgeon; his flirtations with politics as a prickly Scot in London after the Act of Union; his efforts in trying to hack out a living as a man of letters; wading through huge workloads; the loss of his only child at 15; the rollercoaster swings in his financial affairs; and his death at 50 from exhaustion. Though deeply sympathetic to the thin-skinned, humane Smollett, the author is the first to admit that his narratives were crying out for the intervention of a literary editor. - Olivia Hamilton