Michael Harding - Columnist, novelist and playwright
There's something about A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (Galley Beggar / Coffee House) which makes it the book of the year for me, but it is not easy to explain. It's not an easy book to read. The jagged language is difficult at times to absorb but, when you get into the rhythm, and when you read slowly, it turns out to be enormously satisfying.
I missed the stage adaptation in the recent Theatre Festival but I know it’s coming to the Project in the new year, so tickets for that would make someone an excellent gift at Christmas.
I loved Alice Munro's book of stories, Dear Life (McClelland and Stewart) and Sebastian Barry is at his best in The Temporary Gentleman (Faber & Faber) and would be perfect for a winter days at the fire.
A new novelist Michele Forbes wrote a very beautiful book called Ghost Moth (Bellevue Literary Press) last year, and Hugo Hamilton's memoir of Nuala O'Faoilean, Every Single Minute (Fourth Estate) offers a heartbreaking and vivid picture of Nuala in her last days.
Anna Carey - Author
Sarra Manning writes brilliantly about "difficult" teenage girls and female friendship. In The Worst Girlfriend in the World (Atom), she tells the story of Franny and her best friend Alice, who has a reputation for breaking boys' hearts; especially boys who were already going out with other girls. Franny has always defended her friend, but when Alice goes after the boy of Franny's dreams, their relationship is threatened. Funny and poignant, with brilliantly realised characters.
There are very different friendships in Irish author Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours (Quercus) set in a terrifying future in which girls are brought up in schools where they are trained for one of only three options available for women: totally submissive wife, concubine, or chaste teacher of next generation of girls.
All other girls are rivals and friendships are discouraged. It’s both a blistering satire on current gender expectations and an unsettling thriller.
Equally disturbing is EL Lockhart's brilliant We Were Liars (Hot Key), set on a private Massachusetts island owned by the rich and glamorous Sinclair family. Teenager Cadence Sinclair Eastman spends every summer there with her extended family, but when she's 15 something bad happens: Cadence can't remember what, but it leaves her physically and mentally shattered.
And if you want to interest a teenager in real history, Only Remembered (Jonathan Cape) is an anthology edited by Warhorse author Michael Morpurgo, collecting stories, songs, pictures, comics and news reports from and about the First World War. Each is selected and introduced by a wide variety of well known figures, from Eoin Colfer and Miranda Hart to John Boyne and Jilly Cooper. The result is a fascinating and often deeply moving book.
Mark Little - Founder and chief executive of Storyful
I'm drawn to books that inspire and infuriate me in equal measures and 2014 has been a bumper year for those of us who love a bit of cognitive dissonance. Dave Eggers is someone I pay attention to no matter what tangent he leads me off on. His novel The Circle (McSweeney's) imagines a sinister but alluring Google-esque corporation which uses humanitarian rhetoric as a cover for world domination. Best read with your tongue firmly in your cheek.
Social media gurus also come off badly in Hatching Twitter (Penguin) by New York Times correspondent Nick Bilton. The true story of Twitter's dysfunctional family of founders, it charts the heartbreak and betrayal that came with the birth of this social media colossus.
Any list of tech-related books in 2014 has to include Flash Boys (WW Norton) by Michael Lewis. Lewis combines deep research and a novelist's style in his account of predatory high-frequency trading and the resulting backlash by a group of Wall Street's reformers.
I'm not usually a fan of inspirational business tales but Creativity Inc (Random House) by Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull is exceptional. If you're planning to start your own tech company (or take one to it next level) then invest in this.
For a journalist with a global perspective, 2014 has also been a big year. Far too many non-fiction books about war, media and the global economy to mention but this year I finally found the book I have been waiting for since 2003: a novel big enough to capture the tragedy of Iraq.
The Yellow Birds (Little, Brown and Company) by Kevin Powers finally does justice to a war without apparent end and delivers perhaps the immortal truth about war: "We only grieved those we knew".
Jacqui Hurley - RTÉ sports broadcaster
The accidental early release of Roy Keane: Second Half (Orion) book at a Tesco in Manchester certainly added to the circus surrounding the release of Roy Keane's latest autobiography, but whether it was a well co-ordinated publicity stunt or a genuine error, it lead to the best bits of the book being splashed across the internet for all to see, without shelling out a penny for the book itself.
Cover to cover it’s actually quite a good read. For Manchester United fans there are some more interesting insights into his departure from Old Trafford and the breakdown of his relationship with Alex Ferguson and his number two Carlos Quiroz. The image Keane describes of crying in his car after the realisation that it was over is particularly emotive.
There’s plenty in it, including his return to the Irish team, some funny dressing room stories and generally that quick wit we’ve become accustomed to from Keane over the years. The collaboration with Roddy Doyle was one that surprised me, but strangely it works.
Brian O'Driscoll's autobiography The Test (Penguin) is aptly titled, and let's face it, that's the chapter we all want to read. I was in Australia for the Lions series last year and even there the feeling among locals was that Warren Gatland's decision to drop O'Driscoll for the final test against the Wallabies was scandalous. O'Driscoll hasn't said too much about it in the intervening period, obviously with the book in mind.
He switched ghost writers this year; a fallout with Paul Kimmage led to him starting a new book with Alan English, so it’s hard to know how much of the old book will be in English’s redo, not much I would suspect. I don’t expect the same level of fireworks as in Keane’s book, but O’Driscoll has been around for a long time and is sure to have some pretty good stories in his repertoire.
Níal Conlan - Musician with Delorentos
Howling At The Moon (Abacus) by Walter Yetnikoff
From "the most powerful man in music industry" comes a harrowing tale of the madness and excess that engulfed the music industry in the 1970s. Unlike The Dirt by Motley Crue, there is actually real knowledge and affection for great music at the heart of all the depravity. If you want anecdotes about the working lives of Michael Jackson, David Geffen and Rupert Murdoch, you could do worse than picking up this incredible book.
Our Band Could Be Your Life (Little, Brown) by Michael Azerrad
There was a generation of independent American musicians, a decade after Apple and HP were started in garages, that created a different DIY aesthetic. They codified a sensibility that was to influence independent music across genres for decades to come. They were never as successful as those that followed but their legacy is real and tangible and told here for the first time.
The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, and the Demise of English Rock (Fourth Estate) by John Harris
A first-hand account of Britpop from the ground. John Harris was a reporter in London at the height of nineties Britpop. He shares his unparalleled access to the excess, subterfuge and intrigue that was at the heart of Blur, Suede, Elastica, Oasis, NME, Melody Maker and in some cases in the higher echelons of the British establishment. A great read.
Rock On, An Office Power Ballad (Algonquin) by Dan Kennedy
From the host of the Moth Radio Hour, and an occasional McSweeney's contributor, comes a funny and embarrassing story of working in the music business at the worst possible time. At the height of its excess, the music industry begins to crumble in the face of the digital revolution and Dan Kennedy lands a job at a corporate rock behemoth, Atlantic Records. In his short time there, he does almost everything wrong, but luckily for him he's not the only one. Luckily for us, he documented everything.
