Art Kavanagh

This time, there are just two I’ve written about (39 and 31) and two I’ve read but haven’t written about (47 and 27): The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: 50 to 26 📚

I’ve written about eight of these in my newsletter or (in the case of 96) on my personal site: 96, 92, 88, 86, 84, 75, 69, 58. I have copies of 99 and 77 but haven’t yet got around to reading them; and I’m just about to start reading 72: The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: 100 to 51 📖

Reupping this post about why I don’t intend to stop reading Alice Munro. In fact, I haven’t read anything by her since I posted it last August so I’m putting this here mainly as a reminder to myself 📚

In wartime and its aftermath, the pursuit of some approximation of justice is represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the military who do the actual fighting and the lawyers, some of whom attempt to ensure that legality is maintained. These are their stories.

I clicked on a headline which read McCall: ‘My brain operation supersized by gratitude’ and the story didn’t contain a single word about The Equalizer 📺. I feel cheated.

It’s hardly one of the best films to feature Hackman’s talents but I love Roger Donaldson’s No Way Out. Hackman plays a dovish Defense Secretary surrounded by hawks, and desperately trying to shift the blame for the killing of his lover to a Soviet sleeper in whose existence he doesn’t believe 🍿

“We create models of the future by recruiting our memories of the past,” wrote Eleanor Maguire, a neuroloscientist who died last month, aged 54. This seems to fit with my own impression that severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) tends to make me “forget” the future.

I’m very relieved to read that Grace Slick hated (Jefferson) Starship’s 1980s hits. She went along with them because she thought she owed it to the band to have some chart success. Sober in the 80s 🎶

I’m reading Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden stories for the first time, having found them in the Oxfam shop last week. I’m amazed to learn that a tv adaptation of “The Traitor” by Troy Kennedy Martin was broadcast live in 1959. Apparently it wasn’t recorded ☹️ 📚

Predictably, the Common Reader’s attempt to agree on the twenty best English poets ends in tiers 📖

Liz Nugent’s two most recent novels have several things in common — terrible parents and alternating first-person narratives, for starters — but they offer very different reading experiences, partly because of the more interesting characters in the second book.

Ethan Iverson remembers Edge of Darkness (BBC, 1985), as should we all. (I have it on DVD, I’m glad to say) 📺

The latest post from Talk about books is about two novels by Irish women writers each of which features an intense friendships between a straight young woman and a slightly older gay man: Caroline O’Donoghue, The Rachel Incident, and Belinda McKeon, Tender 📖

Two novels by Irish women writers, published in the last 10 years but each set 13 to 18 years earlier, feature intense friendships between a straight young woman — a college student or recent graduate — and a slightly older gay man.

Trump is good at distraction. His first term was all about the Supreme Court but many people ignored that. This time, it’s all about dismantling much of the Federal government and taking firm control of what’s left. Don’t be distracted by Greenland or Gaza. Concentrate on stopping Musk and DOGE.

There’s a lovely and (to me) informative post by Richard Williams about Laura Nyro on his The Blue Moment blog. I bought a vinyl copy of Gonna Take a Miracle at a vide-grenier maybe 15 years ago but I’ve never had a turntable to play it on 🎶

The current post from Talk about books is about Wendy Erskine’s first collection of short stories, Sweet Home (2018). It’s a couple of days late because my phone/internet connection went missing on Saturday afternoon, presumably because of the storm.

Wendy Erskine, whose first novel will be appearing soon, is perhaps the most remarkable short story writer working in or to have emerged from Northern Ireland. In this post, I take a look at her first collection, Sweet Home.

Trump’s first 100 days … Has it been 100 days already? It feels like barely six weeks 🤷🏻‍♂️

The Verge headline reading “Trump’s first 100 days: all the news impacting the tech industry”

At last Emma Healey has a new novel coming out, her third. We can’t begrudge her the longish gap: she had a baby in 2017, leading to “an exercise and fasting regime … [which] became obsessive and damaging”. I was afraid she might have given up writing; so glad she hasn’t 📚

Irish schools have been told that a psychologist’s report alone isn’t enough to justify an exemption from mandatory study of Irish. I can’t believe Irish is still mandatory. In the 1970s and 80s there seemed to be wide agreement that the language should be optional.

The use of the word “cringe” as a noun makes me … um … wince.