September Meeting

Bullfighting is a collection of 13 short stories from the author Roddy Doyle which centre around middle aged men. In the first story “Recuperation,” a man sets off for a prescribed walk around his neighbourhood, the sights trigger memories and recollections of his wife, his children and his younger days. In “Animals,” George remembers caring for his children’s many pets, his efforts to spare them grief when they die or disappear, looking, in the eyes of his wife like a hero like “your man from ER.” But now his kids are reared and he’s unemployed, and he’s slowly getting used to that. Comments form the bookclub were that the stories were quite depressing and very similar in that they were all about men of a similar age who all seemed to be having some kind of a mid life crisis, they also lacked the usual humour present in Roddy Doyle’s books. The stories ended very abruptly and because they were all very similar they were difficult to distinguish from eachother and we had difficulty remembering individual ones. One story that did stand out however was “Blood” which was about a man who suddenly developed vampire-like tendencies and went to extraordinary lengths to satisfy his craving. The book received a poor 2/10 bookclub rating. The book to be discussed at the October meeting is “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake” by Aimee Bender

Man Booker Longlist announced: 26th July 2011

A total of 138 books, seven of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen’ longlist. They are:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape – Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child (Picador – Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus – Random House)

Man Booker Prize Winner

Philip Roth has been chosen as the winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2011.

He beat off competition from such prestigious writers as John Le Carre and Anne Tyler to receive the prize at Sydney’s Writers’ Festival recently.

Philip Roth is an American and the author of such acclaimed novels as “American Pastoral” and the “Human Stain”.

Orange Prize for Fiction: the youngest ever winner!

19.15pm, London, 8 June 2011 – Serbian/American author Téa Obreht has won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction with her debut novel The Tiger’s Wife (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). At 25, Obreht is the youngest-ever author to take the Prize. Click here for the full article.

Ch4 Summer Reads

Click here for Channel 4′s Summer Reads as advertised on the TV Book Club.

Summer Reads @ the County Library, Tallaght

Looking for a good Summer Read – Look no further than South Dublin Libraries. Check out two seasonal displays at the County Library, Summer Reads and Crime in a Warm Climate.

The displays feature many of the books mentioned in the Irish Times article Thirty titles to tide you over summer which was published on Saturday 25th June 2011. Click here fro the article.

Colum McCann:Winner of Dublin Impac Literary award

Colum McCann was announced as the winner of the Dublin Impac Award last night. Click here for more information.

McCann is the second Irish author to win the prize since it began in 1996.

Recommended Reads

Jussi Adler-Olsen has been hailed as the next Stieg Larsson.

Mercy:

At first the prisoner scratches at the walls until her fingers bleed. But there is no escaping the room. With no way of measuring time, her days, weeks, months go unrecorded. She vows not to go mad. She will not give her captors the satisfaction. She will die first.

Copenhagen detective Carl Mørck has been taken off homicide to run a newly created department for unsolved crimes. His first case concerns Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years ago. Everyone says she’s dead. Everyone says it’s a waste of time. He thinks they’re right.

The voice in the dark is distorted, harsh and without mercy. It says the prisoner’s torture will only end when she answers one simple question. It is one she has asked herself a million times:WHY is this happening?

This is the last of the Wallander series.

A novel that works on a number of levels: as a compelling investigation into a Swedish cold-war spy ring, a philosophical assessment of policing and its social function, and a very personal evaluation of a person’s worth in the grand scheme of things…Written in Mankell’s downbeat style (beautifully translated by Laurie Thompson) it has a fatalistic tone that is entirely fitting for the final testimony of one of crime fiction’s great protagonists…a hugely satisfying novel that ranks alongside Mankell’s best, a heartbreaking tale of descent into despair and darkness that serves as a totem for what great crime writing can achieve’ –The Irish Times

Free literary event at The Sugar Club on May 11.

Free literary event at The Sugar Club on May 11.

While it would be quite a cool name for a band, Murder in the City is actually an event with a more literary spin. Crime authors from Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy and Scotland will give readings and discuss their work, accompanied by similarly spine tingling music from some DIT musicians. The event will be introduced by crime journalist and writer Niamh O’Connor. Catch it at The Sugar Club on May 11 at 18.30. No booking is required, and best of all it’s free.

The Sugar Club
Harcourt Street
Dublin 2.

Summer Book Club meetings

Our book club group have decided to meet unofficially throughout the summer months to discuss books they are reading by themselves. We will post the most popular summer reads as they are voted for