Books

Recommended Reading

Saturday 4th of February 2012

Click here to see the psychology books recommended by Dr. Tony Bates

Saturday 11th December 2011

Click here for Joe Duffy, Dermot Bolger & Cathy Kelly's recommended reads of 2011.

Saturday 12th June 2010

Click here for Summer Reads recommended by presenter of Morning Ireland Aine Lawlor, Singer Brian Kennedy and entrepreneur Sean Gallagher.

Click here to see our list of recommended reading for children and adults

Saturday 20th March 2010

Click here to view the list of Irish authors recommended by author Chris Binchy & Dr Eibhear Walsh from the Dept of English UCC.

Saturday 2nd January 2010
"Accidental Leadership" by Paul Mooney. Published by Liffey Press

Saturday 21st November 2009
"Running With The Bulls: My Years With The Hemingways" by Valerie Hemingway. Published by Ballantine Books

Saturday 7th November 2009
The philosopher Fr Brendan Purcell, artist Hilary Orpen and lover of all things Italian Mark Minihan discussed an internationally-acclaimed book detailing one woman's travel odyssey when faced with depression and divorce. The book is called "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy, India & Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Publlished by Viking

Saturday 24th October 2009
"In My Own Time", a memoir by journalist James Downey
Published by Gill & MacMillan

Saturday 12th September 2009
"Fat Around the Middle" by Marilyn Glenville - nutritionist Dr Marilyn Glenville gives tips on how to loose weight around the middle of your body. Publishers Kyle Cathie Ltd

"Super Sense - Why We Believe The Unbelievable" by Professor Bruce Hood. Publishers Harperone

"Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks" by John Curran. The world's leading exoert on Agatha Christie John Curran's book is based on Agatha Christie's notebooks. Publishers Harper Collins

Sunday 6th September 2009
"Keynes: The Return Of The Master" by Robert Skidelsky (the author questions whether the predictions of economists be trusted or should we follow the Keynesian model - that the future is unknown?). Published by Public Affairs

Saturday 15th August 2009
Dr. Eibhear Walsh of the School of English in UCC and
Niall MacMonagle, teacher & author of 'Text-A Transition Year English Reader' with their recommendations for Leaving Cert books that are worth revisiting:

"Hard Times" by Charles Dickens
"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte
"Silas Marner" by George Eliot
"Persuasion" by Jane Austen
"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
"Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
" Regeneration" by Pat Barker
"Circle of Friends" by Maeve Binchy
" The Grapes of Wrath" & "Of Mice & Men" by John Steinbeck

Saturday 4th July 2009
Literary agent Robert Kirby with his choice of some of the best celebrity biographies around -

"The Moon's A Balloon" by David Niven
"On My Mother's Knee" by Paul O'Grady
"Up Close & Personal" by Colleen Nolan
"The Story Of Led Zeppellin" by Mick Wall
"By Any Means" by Charlie Boorman, travel writer
"The Lost Executioner" by Nic Dunlop, photojournalist
"Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream" by Barack Obama
"Stalin's Children:3 Generations Of Love & War" by Owen Matthews

Saturday 13th June 2009
Sandra Mara talked about her career as Ireland's first female private investigator. She has just written "No Job For A Woman-The Inside Story Of Ireland's First Female Private Investigator"

Saturday 23rd May 2009 (presented by Rachael English)
How to write a memoir - with Irene Graham who runs creative writing workshops & is the author of 'The Memoir Writing Workbook' (only available via www.thememoirwritingclub.com)
and Dr. Eibhear Walsh from the School of English in UCC. Dr Walsh's recommendations for 5 of best memoirs available:

1. Vladamir Nabokov "Speak Memory"
2. Elizabeth Bowen "Seven Winters: Memories of a Dublin Childhood (1942)"
3. Anthony Trollope "An Autobiography"
4. John McGahern's "Memoir"
5. Lorna Sage "Bad Blood"

Saturday 25th April 2009
"Airlift To Biafra: Breaching The Blockade" by Tony Byrne, published by Columba Press

Saturday 21st January 2009
Mary O'Sullivan and Dr Eibhear Walsh discussed the fact that apparently 65% of us have lied about reading the great works of literature. Which classics have we pretended to know?

"1984" George Orwell
"War & Peace" Leo Tolstoy
"Ulysses" James Joyce
The Bible
"Madame Bovary" Gustave Flaubert
"A Brief History Of Time" Stephen Hawking
"Midnight's Children" Salman Rushdie
"In Remembrance Of Things Past" Marcel Proust
"Dreams From My Father" Barack Obama
"The Selfish Gene" Richard Dawkins

Sunday 28th December 2008
Newspaper panel - Aileen O'Toole, Managing Director of Amas and co-founder of the Sunday Business Post, Fiona O'Malley, PD Senator, John Cooney, Religion Correspondent with the Irish Independent and author of "Battleship Bertie", Donncha O'Connell, Law Lecturer in NUI Galway, Eoin Fahy, Chief Economist with KBC Asset Management

Books mentioned by panellists this morning -

Aileen O'Toole - "Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile" by Geraint Anderson (written by an investment banker who broke the City's "code of silence" as a newspaper columnist to publish a full-scale account of life in the Square Mile

Fiona O'Malley - "Long Walk to Freedom", Nelson Mandela's autobiography

John Cooney - "Disputed Truth" by Hans Kung, memoirs of the priest and theologian

Eoin Fahy - "The Blair Years", the Alistair Campbell diaries

Donncha O'Connell - "Bear In Mind These Dead" by Susan McKay, exploring the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict for families, friends and communities

Saturday 23rd August 2008
Recommended memoirs, autobiographies and biographies by Diarmuid Ferriter and Anna Carey:

recommended by Diarmuid:
"Peig: The Autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island"
"Nuala O'Faolain - Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman"
"Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt
"Against The Tide" by Noel Browne
"Memoir: All Will Be Well" by John McGahern
"To School Through The Fields" by Alice Taylor

recommended by Anna:
"Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
"What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami
"Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford"
"Shakespeare: The World As Stage" by Bill Bryson
"The Duchess" by Amanda Foreman
"My Booky-Wook" by Russell Brand

Saturday 26th July 2008
Actor and director Alan Stanford recommends the following Classics:

"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte
"How Many Miles To Babylon?" by Jennifer Johnston
"Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens
"Cry, The Beloved Country" by Alan Paton

Saturday 19th July 2008
'Life With My Sister Madonna' by Christopher Ciccone & Wendy Leigh. Published by Simon & Schuster

Saturday 12th July 2008
"Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial" by Dr Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst. Published by: Bantam Press

Saturday 14th June 2008
My Father's Watch: The Story Of A Child Prisoner In '70's Britain" by Patrick Maguire, published by Harper Collins

Saturday 17th May 2008
Áine Lawlor and Paul Carson discussed their love of crime fiction. They mentioned writers they both love:

Áine: Alan Furst, James Lee Burke, Michael Connolly, Lee Child, Henning Mankell, Janet Ivanovich, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Walter Mosley, George Pelecanos

Paul: Michael Crichton, John Burdett, Ed McBain, Cormac McCarthy, Colin Bateman

Saturday 10th May 2008
Zlata Filipovic talked about her childhood in Serbia and the book she wrote about her experiences of the war in Yugoslavia
"Zlata's Diary" by Zlata Filipovic, published by Penguin

Saturday 29th March 2008
"A Prisoner Of Birth" by Jeffrey Archer, published by Pan MacMillan

Saturday 2nd February 2008
"Pure Sport: Practical Sport Psychology" by John Kremer & Professor Aidan Moran, published by Routledge

Saturday 19th January 2008
"It's In The Blood: My Life" by Lawrence Dallaglio
published by Headline

Saturday 5th January 2008
Patrick Guinness, author of "Arthur's Round: The Life & Times Of Arthur Guinness" (published by Peter Owen Ltd)

Sunday 2nd December 2007
"Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing On The Edge" by Tom Bower
Published by Harper Collins

Sunday 18th November 2007
"40 Shades Of Green: A Wry Look At What It Means To Be Irish" by Des Geraghty, published by Real Ireland Design

Saturday 17th November 2007
John O'Donohue, philosopher & author of a number of books on the theme of spirituality in the modern age. His latest book is
"Benedictus: A Book Of Blessings", published by Bantam

John O'Donohue's other books are:
"Anam Cara" (published in 1997)
"Eternal Echoes" (published in 1998)

Saturday 27th October 2007
"A Book Of Uncommon Prayer", compiled & edited by Theo Dorgan
Published by Penguin Books

Saturday 20th October 2007
"No Man's Land: Dispatches From The Middle East" by Richard Crowley, published by Liberties Press

"Ronnie" by Ronnie Wood, published by MacMillan

Saturday 13th October 2007
"Our George" by Barbara Best, published by Gill & MacMillan

Saturday 15th September 2007
"Mediterranean Escapes" by Rick Stein, published by BBC Books

Saturday 8th September 2007
"In God We Doubt" by John Humphrys, published by Hodder & Stoughton

Saturday 18th August 2007
"The Hoax" by Clifford Irving, published by Corgi Press

Saturday 11th August 2007
"The Law Of Attraction" by Michael Losier

Sunday 8th July 2007
"Foot In Mouth - Famous Irish Political Gaffes" by Shane Coleman
Published by Mentor Books

Saturday 9th June 2007
"Diamonds & Holes In My Shoes", a memoir by Deirdre Purcell
Published by Hodder Headline

"Remember Me" by Mary Monaghan
Published by Tortoise Press
Available only through Kenny's online bookshop www.kennys.ie

Sunday 20th May 2007
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" by Jimmy Carter
Published by Simon & Schuster

Saturday 28th April 2007
"How To Have A Champagne Wedding On A Bucks Fizz Budget" by Sarah Traynor. Published by Gill & MacMillan

"Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill" by Erasmus Udo
Published by ALIVE Books

Saturday 14th April 2007 - presented by Áine Lalor
"Why Do People Get Ill?" by Darian Leader & David Corfield
Published by Hamish Hamilton

"The Unquiet" by John Connolly, published by Hodder & Stoughton

Sunday 25th February 2007 - presented by Tom McGurk
"Dark Side Of The Moon" by Gerard DeGroot. Published by Vintage

Saturday 24th February 2007 - presented by Leo Enright
"Strange Piece Of Paradise" by Terri Jentz. Published by Picador

Saturday 17th February 2007
"Scoring Points: How Tesco Is Winning Customer Loyalty" by Clive Humby, Terry Hunt & Tim Philips. Published by Kogan Page Ltd

Saturday 10th February 2007
Irish novelist Catherine Dunne's most recent novel is "Something Like Love" (published by MacMillan). Her next novel will be "At A Time Like This" (published in August 2007)

Saturday 20th January 2007
On the programme today Keith Barry mentioned a book about mind reading - "Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading" by Ian Rowland

Saturday 6th January 2007
"North Face Of Soho-Unreliable Memoirs, Volume IV" by Clive James. Published by Picador

Saturday 25th November 2006
"Causes For Concern: Irish Politics, Culture & Society" by Michael D Higgins. Published by Liberties Press

Saturday 18th November 2006
"Timeless Wisdom - What Irish Proverbs Tell Us About Ourselves" by Aidan Moran & Michael O'Connell, published by UCD Press

Saturday 11th November 2006
"Being A Girl: Navigating The Ups & Downs Of Teen Life" by Kim Cattrall, published by Little Brown

Sunday 5 November 2006
"How Bush Rules: Chronicles Of A Radical Regime" by Sydney Blumenthal, published by Princeton University Press

Saturday 28th October
"Back From The Brink", a memoir by Paul McGrath
Published by Arrow Books

Sunday 15th October 2006
"The Blunkett Tapes: My Life In The Bear Pit" by David Blunkett
Published by Bloomsbury

Saturday 14th October 2006
"Provence A-Z" by Peter Mayle, published by Profile Books

Sunday 8th October 2006
"Speeches That Changed The World", with an introduction by Simon Sebag Montefiore, published by Quercus

Sunday 1st October 2006
"Something Rotten: Irish Banking Scandals" by Simon Carswell
Published by Gill & MacMillan

Saturday 30th September 2006
"Rachel's Favourite Food At Home" by Rachel Allen
Published by Harper Collins

Sunday 17th September 2006
"Jesus & Paul: Parallel Lives" by Fr Jerome Murphy O'Connor
Fr Murphy O'Connor's talk on this subject is available as an audio CD from www.eist.ie

Saturday 16th September 2006
"6 Weeks To Superhealth" by Patrick Holford, published by Piatkus