Off the Shelf - Series: June - August 2005

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Programme 13: August 27th 2005
Julia Carlson and Niall McMonagle discuss "Villages" by John Updike.

Programme 12: August 20th 2005
Michael Cronin and Anne Fogarty discuss two books by literary critic and philosopher Terry Eagleton. In The English Novel: An Introduction, Eagleton provides a wide-ranging, accessible and humorous introduction to the English novel from Daniel Defoe to
the present day. Eagleton's most recent work After Theory cogently indicts current cultural and literary theory, and what Eagleton sees as the bastardization of both.

Programme 11: August 13th 2005
On this week's programme Tony Roche and Ailbhe Smyth discuss two recent collections of essays. Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing is by the brilliant novelist and poet Margaret Atwood. The essays range from book reviews, to an account of a journey in Afghanistan that sowed the seeds of The Handmaid's Tale, to funny stories of 'my most embarrassing moments'. The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature by John Bayley is a wide-ranging guide to essential reading. It examines classics and neglected gems and masterpieces of our time.

Programme 10: August 6th 2005
Julia Carlson and Niall McMonagle discuss Magic Seeds and Half a Life, both by the veteran Booker Prize-winning novelist VS Naipaul.

Half a Life finds Naipaul on familiar territory, blending autobiography and fiction in an exploration of the "half lives" of individuals brought up in the English colonies and educated in the metropolitan centre. Naipaul's protagonist is Willie Somerset Chandran, named after Somerset Maugham's encounter with Willie's father in the 1930s, whilst travelling "to get material for a novel about spirituality".

Magic Seeds continues Willie's story. Now, in his early 40s, after a peripatetic life, he succumbs to the demanding encouragement of his sister - and his own listlessness - and joins an underground movement in India ostensibly devoted to unfettering the lower castes.

Programme 9: July 30th 2005
This evening Ivana Bacik and John Waters discuss Neoconservatism, edited by Irwin Stelzer. In the United States a small group, known as neo-conservatives, stand accused of hijacking the nation's foreign policy. Their critics call the neocons 'democratic imperialists' in pursuit of unachievable goals.

This book brings together the key ideas that underpin 'neoconservative' thought, with contributions from Tony Blair, Michael Gove, Robert Kagan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Condoleezza Rice, Irwin Stelzer; Margaret Thatcher; Adam Wolfson; and James Q. Wilson, among many others.

Programme 8: July 23rd 2005
THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GLOBALISED WORLD by Thomas Friedman (Allen Lane) and The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World by John Ralston Saul (Atlantic)are discussed by Paul Sweeney and Moore McDowell.

Programme 7: July 16th 2005
Mary Maher and Paul Musgrave discuss " Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House - 1911 to 1980" by Bob Colacello.

Programme 6: July 9th 2005
Julia Carlson and Derek Hand discuss the new John Banville novel The Sea.

This story is about Max Morden, a man who has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

Programme 5: July 2nd 2005
Professor Ian Robertson and Professor Aidan Moran discuss Blink: Thinking about Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell claims in the book that intuition is not some magical and mysterious property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments and particular rules and principles. This book shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices and in everyday life.

Programme 4: June 25th 2005
Books of Irish Poetry, "Dancing with Killy Stobling" and "The New Irish Poets" discussed by Tom Roche and Selina Guinness.

Programme 3: June 18th 2005
Ethna Tinney and Harry White discuss an important new biography of the English composer Edward Elgar by Michael Kennedy, which draws on letters and documents that have become available in the last twenty-five years. They've also been reading Elgar: Child of Dreams by Jerrold Northrop Moore, which links the composer to the English landscape that formed the backdrop to all of his work.

Programme 2: June 11th 2005
Julia Carlson and Niall McMonagle review two recent English novels: Saturday by Ian McEwan and Reader, I married him by Michele Roberts.

Ian McEwan's protagonist in Saturday is neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, a man comfortably ensconced in an enviable upper middle class existence. His wife is a successful newspaper lawyer, his daughter Daisy a budding poet. But as he wakes one Saturday morning and witnesses a plane accident through his window, he is not yet aware that this is a harbinger of a sustained assault on all that he holds dear.

Michele Roberts' novel Reader, I married him is the story of Aurora. Every time she becomes a new Mrs (three times when last we counted) she becomes a new woman. After her last husband's demise, she decides to take herself off to Italy to visit her old friend, Leonora, a nun, and finds herself plunged into intrigues at the convent and at the nearby art gallery.

Programme 1: June 4th 2005
The new series of 'Off the Shelf' begins with a discussion on 'Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture' by Daniel Libeskind. Frank McDonald and Joan O'Connor have been reading this very personal story from Libeskind. For him, life's adventure has been through architecture, which he has found has the power to reshape human experience.

Born in communist Poland to Jewish Holocaust survivors, Daniel Libeskind has designed iconic buildings around the world - including the Jewish Museum Berlin, and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester. Now he has been chosen as the Master Plan architect for New York's World Trade Center reconstruction - a city of which he has long become, since his boyhood emigration, an adopted son.