Rick O'Shea

Book Twenty 2014:  We by Yevgeny Zamyatin Orwell’s 1984 is one of my favourite books sever since I read it as a teenager and I’ve read it a fair few times over the years. I think if you’re doing dystopia / “here’s where the world is heading in a handcart” it has few, if any, peers. Imagine my surprise when I was reading something last year that suggested Orwell has “taken inspiration” from a 1921 Russian book called “We”. Honestly? I can see where tracts of 1984 had their origin points even if the worlds depicted and the way the story goes […]

Book Nineteen 2014:  The Sense Of An Ending by Julian Barnes I’ve read a couple of his things over the years (A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters and England, England) and was never sure why I didn’t stumble across him again. Glad I did. Simply, this is the story of a young man, the people he falls in with in school and college, an event that happens and the the ripples of which that extend all the way through his life right up to retirement. There are very sharp and real observations here mostly about the fallible nature of memory […]

Book Eighteen 2014:  The Quick by Lauren Owen I’m going to do her as I have done in so many others and say that I’d rather tell you as little as possible about Lauren Owen’s upcoming debut novel The Quick. It’s set in 19th century England, reads like it was written in 19th century England, deals in the gothic, you don’t get a confirmation of exactly what sort of book it is for at least 100 pages. Beyond that I’d rather not say any more as I think I’d be ruining it for you. She writes effortlessly and with huge energy where she needs […]

Book Seventeen 2014:  Night Train by Martin Amis This is both a recommendation from my wife and part of the project this year to read “authors I should have read before at some stage”. I’ve always had a roped-off corner of my world marked “my grá for noir books”. I’ve read a fair few Chandler, Hammett, Ellroys over the years and I’m currently wading my way through this, story by story: Night Train falls squarely within the genre even though it’s author is English, it deals with a hard boiled cop in the modern day and she’s a tired, disillusioned, […]

Book Sixteen 2014:  The News – A User’s Manual by Alain De Botton This was an easy sell for me. I’ve read every book he’s written and even a few written by others under his “School Of Life” banner. This time around he attempts to dissect modern news media and outlets (asking first why we never do that ourselves) and wonders are there better ways in which they could be giving us “The News”. Yes, most of it is pie in the sky and will never be touched by the gatekeepers of daily information that we all trust so blindly, but that’s […]

Book Fifteen 2014:  Black Moon – Kenneth Calhoun First-time novelist Kenneth Calhoun has chosen very, very crowded waters to swim in by creating a book set in a post-apocalyptic world. In the last 3 years alone I’ve read, amongst others, The Road, the Wool trilogy, The Girl With All The Gifts, World War Z, I Am Legend, The Passage and The Twelve… It’s the SF du jour at the moment and he is a brave man indeed. The premise is the first thing that sets him apart – his characters are all living in a world in which almost everyone […]