Sebastian Barry
Playwright and poet
My first book is one I'll be re-reading this summer, Colm Toibin's Story Of The Night which is really the most extraordinary book, that didn't quite receive the level of comprehension it deserves. There's a huge magic in this story of an innocent destroyed by a corrupt world.
The first chapter of John Banville's The Untouchable is so searingly brilliant that it would scorch your hand it filled me with such envy and delight I had to put it down. It's such a musical book, I'm waiting for a time when I can fully enjoy the full symphony.
I never read any English authors but I have decided that this is undemocratic and unfriendly to the Anglo-Irish agreement so I am working on Martin Amis's The Information, which is a very bitter book, unlike the other two. The fourth book I'm looking forward to is Danis Rose's edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, which is a nice-looking edition and of great interest. I am also enjoying watching how the conversation between himself and Stephen Joyce unfolds; he's a brave man.
Seamus Heaney
Poet
I got the second volume of John Richardson's Life Of Picasso as a present last Christmas, and intend to face into it in earnest. More recently I was sent a proof copy of Andrew Motion's forthcoming biography of Keats so it's on the list too.
And since I can't get to Santiago de Compostela this summer, I'm going to read Cees Nooteboom's Roads To Compostela. Like everybody else, I'm always catching up on Irish fiction and hope to read more of Deirdre Madden, whose work always rings true.
Bertie Ahern
Taoiseach
The book I am presently reading, or rather dipping into, is a most interesting Dublin Anthology edited by Douglas Bennett. It is a wonderful collection of fictional, social and cultural, historical,biographical and travel excerpts from the finest of fine writers.
I find certain articles irresistible because they inform my political curiosity and my unquenchable thirst for all things Dublin. Two of the excerpts which delighted me particularly were Mary Byrne's piece on the North Strand Bombing and Lord Ardilaun's Souvenir Of The Opening Of St Stephen's Green in 1880.
But there are endless other delights from Maeve Binchy, Tony Cronin, John D. Sheridan, Behan, Crosbie, Bill Kelly, George Moore, W.B.Y., Churchill ...
We would do well to heed the words of Chiang Yee in The Silent Traveller In Dublin who sums up the philosophy of Robert Boyle (no less) with a Chinese proverb: "Showiness invites trouble; modesty has advantages".
Indeed. Thank you Douglas Bennett.
Ted Turton
Director, Galway Arts Festival
Unusually for me there's two novels on my list - I'm really a visual person and don't read much fiction. However, with Caryl Phillips reading at the festival, I'm looking forward to reading his novel, The Nature Of Blood, and as the film of The Butcher Boy is premiering at the Film Fleadh, I really want to read the book by Pat McCabe. The other two I'm going to read are The Re-Enchantment Of Art by Susie Gablik, which is an examination of people's alienation from art, and The Art Of Photographing Nature by Art Wolfe, which is a truly beautiful book.
John Banville
Novelist, Irish Times Literary Editor
A 750-page biography of a book reviewer may seem excessive, but Jeremy Lewis's Cyril Connolly is a witty, elegant and sly portrait of a gilded generation of English men and women who lived superbly but achieved little.
I am re-reading, again, Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September. Bowen is one of the three or four truly great English-language novelists of the century, and this early work, set in a Big House in Co Cork during the Civil War, is a stylistic masterpiece.
Sophie Dahl
Model
I'm reading Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh this summer. I saw the film of his book
Trainspotting and wanted to read more of his work so I'm going to plunge into Ecstasy, his latest work.
Michael D. Higgins
Former Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht
At last I'll have some time this summer to catch up on some reading, though I'll also be working on a few writing projects of my own.
I haven't had a chance to read Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes yet so that's on my list, as well as some others I got during the year like Seamus Deane's Reading In The Dark and Dermot Healy's Goat Song. I'm also looking forward to Paul Rabinow's latest volume, Essays On The Anthropology Of Reason as well as the countless books I started during the year and just haven't finished as yet.
Frank McCourt
Author
My first definite one is the new translation of Homer's Odyssey by Robert Fagles. I'm also looking forward to reading Tim Pat Coogan's De Valera; Long Fellow, Long Shadow and my third book of the summer is a biography by Frank Byatt entitled Rogue Mayor.
Ben Barnes
Theatre director
During the winter, I've been making my way through a lot of Elizabeth Bowen's novels and I've just found a second-hand copy of Victoria Glendinning's biography, Portrait Of A Writer, so I'm going to read that as well as Bowen's own autobiography, Bowen's Court.
I've also been saving Roy Foster's biography of Yeats, The Apprentice Mage, to read this summer, and am looking forward to the spate of books about the British election that will undoubtedly flood the market in the coming months.
Pauline McLynn
Comedian and actress
The one I have out every night religiously is a little pink book entitled The British Government's Guide To The Inland Revenue For Non- Residents. I'm trying to make sense of it but it's not going very well at the moment. As I'm getting married in the autumn my other essential is a book I found in a friend's loo called Angela Lansbury's Guide To Wedding Etiquette.
Apparently as a bride all I have to do is look lovely, choose the flowers, be nice to everyone, listen to my husband's speech and throw my bouquet - which is fine by me, although I'll have to work at being nice to everybody. It's a great laugh anyway.
The third one I'm looking forward to is The Gunseller by Hugh Laurie which is his new and very funny novel.
Conall Morrison
Director and playwright
I've just finished Francis Stuart's Black List Section H which I rather misguidedly took on holiday with me. Although it's a fascinating study of Ireland and Germany from Yeats to the present day, it's also slightly nasty and naive and not the best reading for the beach. I'm loving Seamus Deane's Reading In The Dark, every phrase in it is perfect and it describes my parents' generation growing up in Derry in such a textured way.
As I'm shortly returning to rehearsals of Gary Mitchell's A Little World Of Our Own which I'm directing, I'm going to darken and educate my mind with Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald's book UVF. It looks to be a good if disturbing account of the nature of sectarianism.
Dancer, ex-Riverdance star
At the moment I'm just diving into John Kelly's Cool About The Ankles. I'm a big fan of his show, Eclectic Ballroom, on Radio Ireland and the book is just so fresh and exciting and entertaining. I'm going through a real phase of looking for books that are about people my age living and working in an urban environment - I really enjoyed Chris Bushell's Sex And The City which is about life in New York where careers have taken the place of sex. Interesting stuff.
I'm in the middle of moving house so the pile of books beside my bed is all packed up but among them is Joyce's Ulysses which I began afresh on Bloomsday but has once again got the bookmark in it. I'll be going back to it when I finally unpack.
Nuala O'Faolain
Author, Irish Times columnist
The book I'm toting around everywhere is Atlas Of The Irish Rural Landscape, a magnificent book edited by Aallen, Whelan and Stout that was just published last week. It incorporates maps, paintings, photographs and information and is truly a beautiful book - probably my favourite book ever.
I'm also looking forward to Mary Dorcey's Biography Of Desire that the blurb on the back tells me is a lyrical meditation on the nature of sexual identity, and am in the middle of an undiscovered jewel called The Country Of The Pointed Firs. It's written by Sarah Orne Jewett in Maine of the 1890s and it really is very good indeed. Willa Cather writes in the preface that the three great American novels are Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and this, and really she's right.
Roy Foster
Historian and author
I'll finish two impressive collections: Angela Bourke's deceptively limpid stories, By Salt Water, and Tom Paulin's fizzy essays, Writing To The Moment (which whet the appetite for his forthcoming study of Hazlitt).
And I'll read Sunil Khilnani's The Idea Of India, an incisive interrogation of political dynasticism, uneven modernity, religious discord, and life after colonialism. Sounds familiar.
Gerry Ryan
Radio and TV presenter
At the moment I'm reading two from the New York Times bestseller list - How-ard Hughes: The Untold Story by Peter Harry Brown and Pat Broeske, and Rich-ard Newcombe's Iwo Jima. I'll also be tucking into the biography of Orson Welles, Rosebud, by David Thomson. I'm obsessed with the facts - there's enough fiction in my life as it is.
Thomas Mitchell
Provost, Trinity College Dublin
I'm really looking forward to the first authorised biography of Yeats, Roy Foster's The Apprentice Mage. The task was begun by my predecessor as Provost, F.S.L. Lyons, and after his death his pupil, Foster took it on. As he's a remarkable historian, it should be a good read.
I'm also going to begin reading Patrick O'Brien, an author who is receiving an honorary degree from us this month. In his 18 novels, O'Brien has redefined the nautical novel until it has become a distinct species and though I won't manage all 18, I certainly hope to make a dent in them.
My third novel is Black Puddings And Slim by Maurice Hayes, a writer who writes about his own life with such candour and vividness. He is a native of my own Co Mayo and I well remember my own mother making slim - a very thin pancake - for us as children.
Seamus Deane
Author and academic
Of all the books I should read, want to read or want to have read by summer's end, I would choose Danis Rose's new edition of Ulysses, from which I expect both familiar and unfamiliar pleasures. I intend to read Gita Mehta's Snakes And Ladders which is an account of contemporary India by a writer who knows it intimately and who writes with precision and panache; and the much-praised novel by Arundhati Roy, The God Of Small Things.
Finally in the USA, the new books by the long-silent Thomas Pynchon, Mason And Dickson, and the rarely-silent Philip Roth, American Pastoral. One of them might win the Great American Novel award before the millennium or the Platonic Fiction of Fictions.
Loretta Brennan Glucksman
American Ireland Fund
I have a section of our library in New York for "Hall of Fame Favourites" which I re-read regularly, and the top of that evergreen list is Flannery O'Connor, especially Everything That Rises Must Converge.
I recently read Stranger at the Wedding by Bruce Arnold and was mesmerised; I shall finish that trilogy this summer. I loved Black Puddings And Slim by Maurice Hayes and happily anticipate his next memoir.
Carrie Crowley
Radio and TV presenter
I've bought Blake Morrison's book, As If and I'm really looking forward to reading it. Although there was a lot of fuss about one chapter where he describes changing his child's nappy, I read it and thought it very moving and thoughtful - I think we can sometimes be too alarmist.
A friend has recommended Pat Barker's trilogy of books set during the war; Regeneration, Eye In The Door and The Ghost Road, so if I have time at all I'll start into those. I have a number of poetry books lying round the house and a large part of my reading is just picking them up and browsing. I'm particularly fond of Richard Murphy for his Galway poems; Paul Durcan because I can just hear him speaking when I read his work; Pablo Neruda and those spiritual Latin American poets, as well as many of the Russian poets.