Liz O'Donnell
Liz O'Donnell is Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs
Lost lives by David McKittrick, Seamus Ketters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton (Mainstream, £30 UK) is a chronology of those thousands of individuals who died in the course of the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland. It is quite simply a factual record of the deaths in all of their tragic diversity; a pathetic roll call of the human cost of the troubles. It is a compelling reminder to us, as we grapple with outstanding political issues, that no matter how thorny those problems are, the peace process must be unstoppable and irreversible. Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora by Tim Pat Coogan (Hutchinson, £25 UK) is a fascinating tale of emigration from Ireland over the centuries, and analyses the many varieties and different acquired status of the Irish diaspora. It's primarily the story of economic migration and integration and the capacity for human development in host countries. It is bang up to date and offers some challenging propositions to this generation of Irish readers who must respond, hopefully, honorably to the 21st-century diaspora on our doorstep.
Caroline Walsh
Literary Editor of The Irish Times
Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's The Pale Gold of Alaska and other Stories (Blackstaff, £12.99) is proof, if proof were needed, that the Irish short story is on the crest of an exciting new wave. Stories like "The day Elvis Presley died" show her mastery of the genre: whether it's the tale of an emigrant Irish girl in love with a Blackfoot Indian in the wilds of Montana, or a mother on a Kerry beach convinced her son has drowned, there is in these stories the rare perfection of completeness. Irish Classics by Declan Kiberd (Granta Books, £25 UK) with its central thesis that the Irish and English languages, far from being polarised within the culture, are in fact inextricably linked, offers inimitable readings of seminal texts that will send readers racing back to Kate O'Brien, Louis MacNiece and many others. An inspired successor to Kiberd's 1995 classic Inventing Ireland. Finally, Mary Morrissy's The Pretender (Jonathan Cape, £10 UK) is as fresh in the mind as when first read in January. Who was Fraulein Unbekannt, pulled from Berlin's Landwehr Canal in 1920, if not, as proven, the fourth Romanov daughter Anastasia? A novel about identity, pretence and sheer survival that lingers long after the last page is read.
Roy Foster
Member of the judging panel of this year's Booker Prize
Marianne Elliott's The Catho- lics of Ulster: A History (Allen Lane Penguin, £25 UK) is a major study by a historian unafraid to take on a subject whose parameters are both wide and problematic, and to make it her own. She triumphs by judicious use of evidence, ability to understand and recreate historical atmosphere over the centuries, and a deep-rooted empathy, conveyed with restrained emotion in the fascinating Prologue. Historical empathy of another kind shines through John McCourt's The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920 (Lilliput, £25). This is literary history at its best: the world of "tarry easty" with its strange churches, socialist cafes, exotic women, and polyglot culture is shown to permeate Joyce's later fiction in a different but no less pungent manner than his recreated Dublin-in-exile.
Pauline Mc Lynn
Pauline McLynn's novel Something for the Weekend is published by Headline at £5.99 UK
I am a huge fan of Joe O'Connor. His book Inishowen (Secker and Warburg, £10 UK) is a vast pageturner, full of compassion, laughter and zest for the human condition, as well as a rattling good story. He has a brilliant eye for detail and the language that different people use. Anne Enright's What Are You Like (Jonathan Cape, £10 UK) is a perfect example of this woman's extraordinary prose. It is a remarkable exploration of identity, the choices we make and those made for us, and the nature of love and the baggage it brings with it. I have only ever bought one book on the Internet, principally because I am useless with technology and I love bookshops too much. But there was one this year that I could not wait for, so I "shipped it in" from the US before publication here. It is Janet Evanovich's Hot Six (Macmillan, £14.99 UK) which is the latest instalment in the adventures of bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. She is mistress of the screwball.
Sean O Mordha
Sean O Mordha won an ESB National Media Award this year for his television series Seven Ages
My Christmas holiday read will undoubtedly be Liam Mac Con Iomaire's Breandan O hEithir - Iomramh Aonair (Clo Iar-Chonnachta, £20) the great bilingual journalist of our time. "Cead slan leis an am mhor . . ." And a diary to match that of Anne Frank is Victor Klemperer's riveting and immense documentation of life in Dresden from 1933 until the German defeat in 1945, The Klemperer Di- aries Volume I and II (Phoenix, £8.99 each). An original and valuable addition to Richard Ellmann's classic biography was The Years of Bloom, James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920 (Lilliput, £25) by John McCourt. A most illuminating inside picture, and beautifully written. MY Christmas holiday read will undoubtedly be Liam Mac Con Iomaire's Breandan O hEithir - Iomramh Aonair (Clo Iar-Chonnachta, £20) the great bilingual journalist of our time. "Cead slan leis an am mhor . . ." And a diary to match that of Anne Frank is Victor Klemperer's riveting and immense documentation of life in Dresden from 1933 until the German defeat in 1945, The Klemperer Diaries Volume I and II (Phoenix, £8.99 each). An original and valuable addition to Richard Ellmann's classic biography was The Years of Bloom, James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920 (Lilliput, £25) by John McCourt. A most illuminating inside picture, and beautifully written.
Terry Wogan
Terry Wogan's autobiography, Is It Me, was published this year (BBC Publications, £16.99 UK)
Brought up as I was on Carty's schoolbook History of Ireland, I know plenty about the Firbolgs and Silken Thomas and very little of the world's past. Since I have lived in Britain for the past 30 years, I thought I'd better have a go at Simon Schama's History of Britain (BBC Publications, £25 UK). I love history, and Schama is the most readable and entertaining of popular historians. He sheds great shafts of light over my ignorance of Anglo-Saxons, Plantagenets, and Tudors. Part One finishes with the 15th century. It will be of no surprise that most of the Irish action takes place off stage.
Marianne Elliott
Marianne Elliott's The Catholics of Ulster: A History, is published by Allen Lane Penguin at £25 UK
In the year-long effort to put my own book to press, my general reading was somewhat thinner than usual. Susan McKay's Northern Protestants, An Unsettled People (Blackstaff, £12.99 UK) centres on Drumcree with its no surrenderism on all sides - a courageous and wonderfully paced book. Breaking new ground in the history of Ulster is Diane Urquhart's Women in Ulster Politics 1890-1940 (Irish Academic Press, £35) - particularly enlightening on the role of Unionist women. Ben Shephard's A War of Nerves, Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994 (Jonathan Cape, £20 UK) is not as intimidating as the title suggests, but a hard-hitting and moving study of the treatment of shellshock through the wars of the 20th century.
Blanaid Mckinney
Blanaid McKinney's collection of stories Big Mouth, is published by Phoenix at £6.99 UK
Funnily enough, I read very little fiction; short stories seem to represent the limit of my concentrative abilities, so it's appropriate that, for me, one of this year's most striking books was Stewart Brand's The Clock of the Long Now (Phoenix, £6.99 UK). It's a cool and beautifully reasoned treatise on how modern civilisation's pathologically short attention span has had hideous consequences for our environment, our culture, even our collective mental health. Before its mainstream chunk was coopted by the "bitches, ho's, guns 'n gold" school, rap was virtually the only form of music capable of absorbing any style that took its fancy.
Turning it into something humorous bitter, sinuous, frighteningly clever and openly political, William Shaw's Westsiders, Stories of Boys in the Hood (Bloomsbury, £11.95 UK) is a fascinating documentary about the lives of seven young men in south central LA. Illuminating and scary.
Adrian Frazier
Adrian Frazier's George Moore 1852-1933 is published by Yale at £29.95 UK
This summer on the train I began reading Eamon Grennan's Selected and New Poems (Gallery Press, £8.95). I am reading it still. Through descriptions of upstate New York and Connemara, the beauty of this visible world is made to suffice, amid the hazards of a very human life. I spent several weeks lost in admiration of T.J. Clark's Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (Yale University Press, £35). Combing through daily detail from the period, he tries to sort out if Modernism abetted or opposed Modernisation. Is the modern painting he loves just part of the disenchantment of the world? Best of all, his descriptions of what's on the canvases (of David, Pissarro, Cezanne, El Lissitsky, and Jackson Pollock) are like seeing through a great new pair of glasses.
Cathy Kelly
Cathy Kelly's latest book is Someone Like You (Poolbeg, £9.99)
I love biographical and historical books, and this year I've read several. David Starkey's Elizabeth I (Chatto & Windus, £20 UK) and Greg King's Duch- ess of Windsor: Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson (Aurun, £14.99 UK) were wonderful, but my stand-out favourite has to be Daughters of Britannia; Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives by Katie Hickman, now out in paperback (Flamingo, £7.99 UK), which looks at the lives of the wives, sisters and daughters of British diplomats from the 17th century onwards. As an exfilm critic, I love reading insider movie stories and couldn't wait to get my hands on William Goldman's Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures In The Screen Trade (Bloomsbury, £16.99 UK). It's priceless; Goldman wields his pen like a scalpel, with fabulously bitchy behind-the-scenes gossip from film sets including Absolute Power and Maverick.
Tim Carey
Tim Carey's Mountjoy; the Story of a Prison is published by Collins Press, £12.99
In a year which saw my first book published and the birth of our first child, the number of books I've read is definitely down from previous years. Those Are Real Bullets, Aren't They? Bloody Sunday, Derry, 30 January 1972 (Fourth Estate, £12.99 UK), by Peter Pringle and Phillip Jacobson is a disturbing but compelling account of the shooting of 13 unarmed Catholics by the Paratroop Regiment. Horrific in its detail, I found myself transported by the narrative to the killing zone. Terrifying but essential reading for those who are trying to keep up with the current Bloody Sunday inquiry. An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (The Collins Press, £20) by Michael Smith, is a beautifully produced account of Kerryman Tom Crean's Antarctic adventures with Scott and Shackleton. The epic struggles, heroics and the unbelievable hardships of the voyages are wonderfully told.
GEORGE SZIRTES
George Szirtes is TCD's first international fellow writer. His latest book is The Buda- pest File (Bloodaxe, £9.95 UK)
Memories will be short in this case, but The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi (Picador, £14.99) has received much justified praise, the whole book very dark but shot through with lightning. A family of six young Maltese immigrants in Cardiff is ruined by their gambler father. It's the sheer physicality of the place that oppresses and illuminates. If The Hiding Place is like poetry, Peter Sirr's Bring Everything (Gallery Press, £7.95) actually is poetry, as poetry should be, heading off into the unknown, and only just in control. There is something strongly European, too, about the feeling of these humane poems of urban riches and displacements. The best anthology of poetry is Paul Keegan's The New Penguin Book of English Verse (£20 UK). Its notion of English includes both Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Miroslav Holub, and the whole is arranged not by poets but by the chronological order in which the poems appeared, from the anonymous work of 1300 onwards. It is a brilliant stroke. Poetry in this case is less to do with nationality but with what constitutes the growth of a mind.
Martina Evans
Martina Evans' novel No Drinking No Dancing No Doctors is published by Bloomsbury at £14.99 UK
Through reading with my nine-yearold daughter, Liadain, I have come across some wonderful children's stories. One of the books of the year for me was Holes, by Louis Sachar (Bloomsbury, £5.99 UK.) The story centres round a boy who is sent to a juvenile detention camp; harsh realism, magic, interwoven stories and tight plotting all combine to make this book a real knockout. Penelope Fitzgerald died in April this year and The Means of Escape, (Flamingo, £12.99 UK) a book of her collected short stories, was published in October. The stories are very short, ranging over place and time, with sharp and surprising endings. The tone is perfect, wry, and totally original. Gunnar Kopperud is a Norwegian whose novel The Time of Light (Bloomsbury, £15.99 UK) has been translated by Tiina Nunnally into an affecting, lyrical series of tales of war. During the nine-day Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1994, a troubled former Wehrmacht soldier seeks atonement for his part in the battle of Stalingrad by telling his stories to an Armenian priest. A compelling and unforgettable novel.
Alain De Botton
Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philoso- phy is published by Hamish Hamilton at £14.99 UK
The Earth from the Air by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Thames and Hudson, £39.95) is a strange idea for a book. It's a large picture book, making the point that we spend a lot of time looking down from aeroplanes at a private landscape we don't often see, and how we should take care of that landscape. I'm also choosing the series of essays by Adam Phillips, Promises, Promises, (Faber, £10 UK) about literature and psychoanalysis. It's a muddle of things held together by an attractive tone.