Book picks similar to
The Collected Letters of Flann O'Brien by Flann O'Brien
irish
non-fiction
irish-and-irish-american-lit
memoirs-diaries-etc
Season of Second Chances
Aimee Alexander - 2020
A novel of family, love, and learning to be kind to yourself by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Aimee Alexander. Grace Sullivan flees Dublin with her two teenage children, Jack and Holly, returning to the sleepy West Cork village where she grew up. No one in Killrowan knows what Grace is running from - or that she's even running. She'd like to keep it that way. Taking over from her father, Des, as the village doctor offers a real chance for Grace to begin again. But will she and the family adapt to life in a small rural community? Will the villagers accept an outsider as their GP? Will Grace live up to the doctor that her father was? And will she find the inner strength to face the past when it comes calling? Season of Second Chances is a heart-warming story of friendship, love and finding the inner strength to face a future that may bring back the past. Perfect for fans of Call The Midwives, The Durrells, Doc Martin and All Creatures Great and Small. The villagers of Killrowan will steal into your heart and make you want to stay with them forever.
The Accidental Spy
Sean O'Driscoll - 2019
A bored trucker from New York took a holiday to Ireland with his new girlfriend and brought down the IRA. Just a quick Google search reveals the level of interest across Britain, Ireland and the US into exactly how this ordinary blue-collar worker found himself at the centre of an espionage ring. David Rupert, a complete outsider with no connection to Ireland, rose to the very top of the Real IRA, all while working for the FBI and British intelligence. But the story is really about just how a bored, frustrated New York trucking manager becomes one of Britain's most valued spies, brings down the entire IRA structure and makes $10 million dollars in the process. Along the way he finds himself in the most extraordinary and terrifying situations - he is involved in major terrorist operations, sets up an Iraqi sting operation and organises US arms shipments with a man being trained to kill the then British prime minister, Tony Blair.
Annotations to Finnegans Wake
Roland McHugh - 1980
Each page of the Annotations corresponds directly with a page of the standard Viking/Penguin edition of Finnegans Wake and contains line-by-line notes following the placement of the passages to which they refer. The reader can thus look directly from text to notes and back again, with no need to consult separate glossaries or other listings.McHugh's richly detailed notes distill decades of scholarship, explicating foreign words, unusual English connotations and colloquial expressions, place names, historical events, song titles and quotations, parodies of other texts, and Joyce's diverse literary and popular sources. The third edition has added material reflecting fifteen years of research, including significant new insights from Joyce's compositional notebooks (the "Buffalo Notebooks"), now being edited for the first time.
The Boy at the Gate: A Memoir
Danny Ellis - 2012
An acclaimed singer/songwriter, he is proud of the way he handled his difficult past: poverty in the 1950s Dublin slums and the brutality of the Artane Industrial School. He felt as though he had safely disposed of it all, until one night, while writing the powerful song that would launch his highly-praised album, 800 Voices ("A searing testament." —Irish Times), Danny's past crept back to haunt him. Confronted by forgotten memories of betrayal and abandonment, he was stunned to discover that his eight-year-old self was still trapped in a world he thought he had left behind.Although unnerved by his experience, Danny begins an arduous journey that leads him back to the streets of Dublin, the tenement slums, and, ultimately, the malice and mischief of the Artane playground. What he discovers with each twist and turn of his odyssey will forever change his life. Elegantly written, this is a brutally honest, often harrowing, depiction of a young boy's struggle to survive orphanage life, and stands as an inspiring testament to the healing power of music and love.
Joyce's Voices
Hugh Kenner - 1978
Joyce's Voices is both a helpful guide through Joyce's complexities, and a brief treatise on the concept of objectivity: the idea that the world can be perceived as a series of reports to our senses. Objectivity, Kenner claims, was a modern invention, and one that the modernists--Joyce foremost among them--found problematic. Accessible and enjoyable, Joyce's Voices is what so much criticism is not: an aid to better understanding--and enjoying more fully--the work of one of the world's greatest writers.
The Underbury Witches
John Connolly - 2006
Scanlan had spent some time working in public libraries in Dublin before she became a full-time writer, and was acutely aware of the literacy problems facing a large segment of the adult population, and the dearth of appropriate reading material available to them. It is 1915, and war is raging in Europe. In the small English village of Underbury, a man lies dead, torn apart by an unseen killer. Two detectives from Scotland Yard are sent to look into the death. But they soon find this is no ordinary murder.
On Elizabeth Bishop
Colm Tóibín - 2015
Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Toibin creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Toibin.For Toibin, the secret of Bishop's emotional power is in what she leaves unsaid. Exploring Bishop's famous attention to detail, Toibin describes how Bishop is able to convey great emotion indirectly, through precise descriptions of particular settings, objects, and events. He examines how Bishop's attachment to the Nova Scotia of her childhood, despite her later life in Key West and Brazil, is related to her early loss of her parents--and how this connection finds echoes in Toibin's life as an Irish writer who has lived in Barcelona, New York, and elsewhere.Beautifully written and skillfully blending biography, literary appreciation, and descriptions of Toibin's travels to Bishop's Nova Scotia, Key West, and Brazil, On Elizabeth Bishop provides a fresh and memorable look at a beloved poet even as it gives us a window into the mind of one of today's most acclaimed novelists.
Lincoln and the Irish: The Untold Story of How the Irish Helped Abraham Lincoln Save the Union
Niall O'Dowd - 2018
And it was Abraham Lincoln who, a year earlier at Malvern Hill, picked up a corner of one of the Irish colors, kissed it, and said, “God bless the Irish flag.”Lincoln and the Irish untangles one of the most fascinating subtexts of the Civil War: Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with the men and women coming to America to escape the Irish famine.Renowned Irish-American journalist Niall O’Dowd gives unprecedented insight into a relationship that began with mutual disdain. Lincoln saw the Irish as instinctive supporters of the Democratic opposition, while the Irish saw the English landlord class in Lincoln’s Republicans. But that dynamic would evolve, and the Lincoln whose first political actions included intimidating Irish voters at the polls would eventually hire Irish nannies and donate to the Irish famine fund. When he was voted into the White House, Lincoln surrounded himself with Irish staff, much to the chagrin of a senior aide who complained about the Hibernian cabal. And the Irish would repay Lincoln’s faith—their numbers and courage would help swing the Civil War in his favor, and among them would be some of his best generals and staunchest advocates.
Hard Core Poor - a book on extreme thrift
Kelly Sangree - 2014
I hope it helps you too!
Favre for the Record
Brett Favre - 1997
Born the son of an indomitable high school football coach in hardscrabble Kiln, Mississippi, Favre has gone on to become the NFL's most valuable player two years running (a feat equaled only by the legendary Joe Montana) and, after twenty-nine years, has brought the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Favre has also paid dearly for his devotion to the brutal game of professional football. Priding himself on his ability to withstand incredible levels of physical pain and to continue playing when most players would head to the sidelines, Favre admitted last year to a dependency on Vicodin pain killers. But he faced his problem like he faces opposing defensive linemen, head-on, and voluntarily admitted himself into the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas for drug counseling. In Favre, Brett shares portions of his daily journal written during treatment and will reveal just what it took to break a debilitating habit. In the end, readers will be inspired by this small town son's sacrifice and struggle to make it to the NFL, his unwavering commitment to honor his profession, and his perseverance to realize his dream on his own terms.
The Million Word Crossword Dictionary
Stanley Newman - 2004
Meticulously compiled by two crossword professionals with a combined fifty years in the field and based on a massive analysis of current crosswords, there has never been a crossword dictionary with the breadth, depth, and currency of this one. From Jim Carrey to Sister Carrie, Homer Simpson to Homer’s Iliad, the wide-ranging entries include 500,000+ synonyms, 3,000+ literary works, 3,000+ films, 20,000+ famous people from all fields, and more than 50,000 fill-in-the-blank clues so popular in today’s crosswords.Featuring an introduction by New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, The Million Word Crossword Dictionary makes every other crossword dictionary obsolete.This updated edition offers thousands of new entries, including slang terms; brand names; celebrity names; and the latest films, novelists’ works, sports Hall of Famers, automobile models, and more. The new, larger type size makes finding the answers easier than ever.
The Bend for Home
Dermot Healy - 1996
Out of the blue she hands him the forgotten diary he had kept as a fifteen-year-old. He is amazed to find the makings of the writer he has become, as well as taken aback at the changes his memory has wrought upon the events of the past. Here is the seed of his story-the vision of the boy meets the memory of the man-which creates a stunning, illusory effect. The strange silhouettes who have haunted his past come back to inhabit these pages: his father, a kind policeman who guides him back to bed when he stumbles down the stairs sleepwalking; his mother, whose stories young Dermot has heard so often that he believes they are his own; or Aunt Masie, whose early disappointment in love has left her both dreamy and cynical. In this billowing and expansive series of recollections, Healy has traced the very shape of human memory.
A Monk Swimming
Malachy McCourt - 1998
Bejesus, isn't America a great and wonderful country?" His older brother Frank's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes, took its somber tone from the bleak atmosphere of those slums, while Malachy's boisterous recollections are fueled by his zestful appreciation for the opportunities and oddities of his native land. He and Frank were born in Brooklyn, moved with their parents to Ireland as children, then returned to the States as adults. This book covers the decade 1952-63, when Malachy roistered across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, but spent most of his time in New York City. There his ready wit and quick tongue won him an acting job with the Irish Players, a semiregular stint on The Tonight Show hosted by Jack Paar, and friendships with some well-heeled, well-born types who shared his fondness for saloon life and bankrolled him in an East Side saloon that may have been the first singles bar. He chronicles those events--and many others--with back-slapping bonhomie. Although McCourt acknowledges the personal demons that pursued him from his poverty-stricken childhood and destroyed his first marriage, this is on the whole an exuberant autobiography that pays tribute to the joys of a freewheeling life.
Little Bones
Sam Blake - 2016
Then her grandmother, head of the Grant Valentine department store empire is found dead, and a trail of secrets is uncovered that threatens to shake a dynasty.In a story that moves from London's East End to the Las Vegas mafia, one thing is certain - for Cat, life will never be the same again.
Barbaro: A Nation's Love Story
Tom Philbin - 2007
Barbaro was a favorite to be the twelfth until May 20, 2006, at the Preakness Stakes, when his jockey, Edgar Prado pulled him up a couple of hundred yards from the starting gate. Subsequent examination revealed that he had virtually exploded bones in his right rear leg so badly that under normal conditions he would have been euthanized right on the track. But his owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, chose another path, one filled with anxiety and tears—but also courageous determination to save his life.This touching, soaring book—filled with insights from Barbaro's trainers, breeders, caretakers, and owners—follows Barbaro from foal to colt to champion to perfect patient. But In the end it is not just a story of a down-but-not-out champion, but of human beings at their very best.