Tag: Reading list

Contemplation, Writers Read

Reading and Consideration

Now that the brighter days are here (though they have already started to shorten), I’m starting another reading and consideration bout; a lovely mix of stories, poetry, philosophy, essays, fiction and non-fiction. I assembled the pile for physical balance rather than any particular order. The following books appear from top to bottom in the photograph above:

  • Mary O’Donnell Walking Ghosts (Mercier, 2025)
  • Mary Oliver A Poetry Handbook (HarperCollins, 1994)
  • Max Porter Shy (Faber, 2023)
  • Susan Sontag As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Picador, 2012)
  • Nóirín Ní Riain Sacred Rituals (Hachette, 2023)
  • Greg Dinner Fragments (Ogham & Dabar Books, 2025)
  • Gerald Dawe Catching the Light (Salmon, 2018)
  • Philip Marsden Under a Metal Sky (Granta, 2025)
  • Jan Zalasiewicz How to Read a Rock (The History Press, 2022)

On Reading, Writers Read, Writing Life

Heading Towards Winter: Reading

With the weather getting wetter, the evenings getting darker, and the days starting to get a little colder…the threshold has been crossed and I’m drawing the curtains and lighting a room to settle and read.

Here are two of my reading piles as we head towards winter 2022, whatever that may bring.

  • Yevgenia Belorusets – Lucky Breaks (Translated by Eugene Ostashevsky)
  • Annie Proulx – Fen, Bog & Swamp
  • Manchán Magan – Listen to the Land Speak
  • Greg Dinner – A Requiem for Hania
  • Maureen Gallagher – Limbo
  • Claire-Louise Bennett – Checkout 19
  • Marcin Wicha – Things I Didn’t Throw Out
  • Lydia Millet – Dinosaurs
  • Olivia Fitzsimons – The Quiet Whispers Never Stop