Sile de Valera, Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands
I found Visiting Rwanda (Lilliput Press, £15.99) by Dervla Murphy a most unusual travel book in that, unable to travel as much as she had intended, she spoke with Rwandans from both sides of the conflict. It is quite a political book which pulls no punches in assessing the causes of the conflict. I've just started to read An Age of Innocence: Irish Culture 1930-1960 (Gill and Macmillan, £19.99) by Brian Fallon, which vigorously challenges the stereotypical view of that period as a cultural wasteland. On the fiction front I'll go for Four Letters of Love (Picador, £5.99 in UK) by Niall Williams, a fellow Clareresident, and The Untouchable (Picador, £5.99 in UK) by John Banville, both out in paperback this year. The former is a magical tale tracing the crossed paths of two young loves, one in Dublin, the other on an island off the west coast, meant for each other but seemingly fated not to meet. The latter is an elegantly written mix of politics, espionage and art history.
Simon Coveney, FG Cork South TD
I read A Perfect Storm (4th Estate, £6.99 in UK) by Sebastian Junger while I was sailing around the world. It gives a tremendous insight into the lives of the swordfishermen of the North Atlantic, and particularly into the lives of the crew on one boat which gets hit by two colliding storms. Home to Roost (Wolfhound, £7.99) by Liz Kavanagh, is an account of life in the countryside and her experience of it. She lives in rural Cork near where I live and it is light but entertaining and especially good for any urban people who have moved to the country.
Cormac Kinsella, editor of The Waterstones Guide To Irish Books
My favourite novel published this year was The Salesman (Secker and Warburg, £9.99 in UK) by Joseph O'Connor. It tells the story of Billy Sweeney, tv-salesman-cum-vigilante, and manages to be tragic, comic and poignant, while keeping up a great storytelling pace. Then, The Rest is History (Abbey Press, £7.95 in UK) by Gerald Dawe is a beautifully written series of meditations on Van Morrison, Belfast, Stewart Parker and his own youth. News of the World: Selected & New Poems (Gallery Press, £7.95pb/£13.95hb) by Peter Fallon is a brilliantly effective summary of his poetic career to date, from his earlier verses which tuned into his locality of rural Meath to his later engagements with American history - essential poems.
Mildred Fox, Independent TD for Wicklow
I'm choosing just two books. Snakes And Ladders (New Island Books, £9.99pb/£20hb) by Fergus Finlay puts personalities on a lot of faces, giving a human side to people whose face and public facade everyone is familiar with, such as Garret FitzGerald and Charlie Haughey. I also read Bag of Bones (Hodder and Stoughton, £16.99 in UK) by Stephen King - I am a bit of a thriller/horror fan. This was very good, if comparatively a bit tame. It's about a writer whose wife dies and keeps coming back to warn him of things that might happen.
Conrad Gallagher, chef and restaurateur
I am a fan of any sort of biographical books and I thought The General - The Godfather of Crime (O'Brien Press, £6.99) by Paul Williams, an interesting and very frightening insight into the goings-on in the Dublin underworld. Charlie Trotter's Seafood (Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, £40 in UK) by Trotter is the work of one of the great chefs of today. I still have not made it to the restaurant, which is in Chicago, but the beautiful food and photography are superb. Besides being a beautiful story, Memoirs of a Geisha (Vintage, £6.99 in UK), by Arthur Golden has many references to Japanese food and the whole ceremony of eating which I really enjoy reading about.
John Connolly, journalist and novelist
Peter Biskind's East Riders, Raging Bulls (Bloomsbury, £20 in UK) proved you don't have to be an unpleasant, drug-abusing womaniser to succeed in Hollywood - but if you are, it helps. Cities of the Plain (Picador, £16.99 in UK) by Cormac McCarthy proved a low-key conclusion to his Border Trilogy, although I still have no idea what the final pages are about. Finally, a dead heat between two books:
Timequakes (Vintage, £5.99 in UK) by Kurt Vonnegut is a wonderful, fictionalised autobiography which made me want to write to the author to thank him for producing it; Team Rodent (Ballintine, $8.95 to order from the US) by Carl Hiaasen is a short and very unkind dissection of Disney culture.
Brian Fallon, former chief critic of The Irish Times
In Seamus Heaney - Opened Ground 1966- 1996 (Faber and Faber, £12.99pb/£20hb in UK) the poet charts the whole of his poetic development thus far. The Pity Of War (Allen Lane, £18.99 in UK) by Niall Ferguson takes a lot of the mythology out of the first World War and shows the extent to which Germany was demonised. It also challenges the notion that Germany started the war - which of course it did, but it was pressurised into doing so. Jack Yeats (Yale University Press, £29.95 in UK) by Bruce Arnold, is well researched and pretty authoritative. It should become, I would say, the definitive work on Yeats's life for at least another 20 to 30 years.
Eamonn Dunphy, broadcaster
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson's Life and Times 1961-73 (Oxford University Press, £33.30 in UK) by Robert Dallek is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary men. Perhaps the best I have read all year. Then there's Fayed: the Unauthorised Biography (Macmillan, £21.50 in UK) by Tom Bower, which really changed my mind about the man. Last I'd choose A Traitor's Kiss - a Life of Richard Brindsley Sheridan (Granta, £8.99 in UK) by Fintan O'Toole, which was riveting.
Monica McWilliams, founder of the Women's Coalition
This year I read with enormous interest The Greening of the White House (Gill & Macmillan, £8.99) by Conor O'Clery, a clearly-written and fascinating insight into the people and the events which brought Ireland to the top of the American political agenda.
I was utterly drawn into Sophia's Story (Gill & Macmillan, £8.99) by Susan McKay, the story of Sophia McColgan, the Donegal woman who, with her siblings, was dreadfully abused, not only by her father but also, through their neglect, the authorities. Heartbreaking, but inspiring.
Danny Morrison, novelist and Sinn Fein member
I have just finished Death of a Chieftain (Wolfhound, £8) and A Love Present (Wolfhound, £14.40hb/£7.75pb) by John Montague, brilliant short stories - some masterpieces - written between 1952 and 1997. The Last Fine Summer (Picador, £18hb) by John MacKenna, who is a short-story-writer turned novelist, was sensual and haunting. I can still visualise the bogs, lanes and orchards. The best foreign novel I read this year was The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (Faber & Faber, £18.85hb) by Mario Vargas Llosa, about a Peruvian lawyer coming to terms with jealousy and duty. Although this book is a little mad, it is also a little treasure.
Gerry Ryan, broadcaster
The first book I'd choose is High Concept (Bloomsbury, £16.99 in UK) by Charles Flemming, a biography of the Hollywood Producer Don Simpson. It's a fascinating look at the manipulation, lifestyles etc of the Hollywood film industry. The Damage Done (Mainstream, £9.99 in UK) by Warren Fellows, is a hair-raising account of his time imprisoned in Thailand for heroin-trafficking. The last one I'd have to go for is Gangland (Gill and Macmillan, £7.99) by Paul Williams, an account of gangland bosses in Ireland: it's quite terrifying to think we could be passing these people in the streets, eating in the same restaurants as them, and be utterly unaware of it.