The Booker Prize Longlist announced

The judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today, Tuesday 27 July, announce the longlist for the prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world. A total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen’ longlist of 13 books.

There are two Irish Authors on the list:

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)

Due for publication next week, ‘Room’ was sold to publishers in Britain and the US for over €1m after a bidding war.

The novel was directly inspired by the Fritzl case in Austria. Fritzl locked his daughter in the basement of his home for 24 years, raped her and had children with her, some of whom never saw sunlight until their release.

In Ms Donoghue’s novel, a boy and his mother are held captive in a one-room garden building, similar to the Jaycee Dugard case in California. The story is told in the voice of five-year-old Jack who thinks the locked room he lives in is the whole world. He was born there and to protect him his mother has never told him about the outside.

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)

Dubliner Paul Murray’s second novel ‘Skippy Dies’ is a tragic comedy about a couple of boys in a Dublin boarding school.

One is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, while his roommate falls for the frisbee-playing siren from the girls’ school next door. Published earlier this year, the book has won huge praise from the critics here and in the UK.

The TV Book Club: Ch4

The TV Book Club champions the best in holiday reading from both emerging and established authors, hosted by a presenting panel that include: Jo Brand, Dave Spikey, Laila Rouasso and Stephen Tomkinson.Watch it every Monday @12.05pm on Ch 4.

The books up for review are: The Help, The Man Who Disappeared, The Legacy, The Bed I Made, Stones Fall, Ellis Island, The Devils acre & The Weight of Silence.

Have a look at http://bookmooch.com/

Set up by John Buckman and based in Berkeley, California, BookMooch is a website where you can give away unwanted books and then ask people for books you actually do want-the only cost involved is in sendingthe book. Click on the link to have a look.

Vive La France

American Crime Fiction @ The County Library Tallaght

Celebrate U.S.A. Independence day with an American Crime Read

50 year Anniversary: July 11th

Join the Celebration

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee!

This heart-wrenching, coming-of-age tale set in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis of an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. Trivia: Did you know Harper Lee lived next door to Truman Capote…..

Bookworms-The Play

Click here for more information. Our book club members have given it rave reviews.

TV3 Interview with book club members

Click on the link below for the TV3 interview with our book club members.

tv3 interview

Recommended Read ‘No and Me’

Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend called Lucas who gets her through the school day. At home her father cries in secret in the bathroom and her mother hasn’t been out of the house properly for years. But Lou is about to change her life – and that of her parents – for good, all because of a school project she decides to do about the homeless. Through the project Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou cannot bear that No is still on the streets when she goes back home – even if it is to a home that is saddened and desolate.

CONGRATULATIONS to Eileen Casey

CONGRATULATIONS to Eileen Casey, poet and writer who has won the Poetry category of the Green Book Festival in Los Angeles with “From Spit and Clay” a collection of green poems including pictures of Tallaght in the snow. Please click on the link below for more information on the festival:

http://www.greenbookfestival.com/