Three Questions – Holiday Special!

As a challenging semester and year draw to a close, we thought it would be nice end on a positive note and to ask everyone three questions. Here are the responses from colleagues – they will provide you with plenty of suggestions for things to read, watch and listen to over the Christmas break.

What was the best thing you read this year?

• The Mystery of Henry Pick, by David Foenkinos
• Can I have two? Mark O’Connell’s “Notes from an Apocalypse” and David Quammen’s “Spillover”. Both focused on the environment in their own ways and both beautifully written – Kieran Fitzpatrick
• Escapist murder mysteries set in Iceland…..by Ragnar Jónasson – Lorraine McIlrath
• ‘Olive Again’, by Elizabeth Strout – Molly Byrne
• The Splendid and the Vile – Gordon Bromley
• I finally got around to reading Philippe Sands’ East-West Street — what a marvel of research, happenstance and storytelling! – Ulf Strohmayer
• Homeland – Fernando Aramburu
• “Our Little Cruelties”, “The Silent Patient” and currently “The Guest List” – Emma Brinton
• Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ – Su-ming Khoo
• Volar a casa – Daniel Monedero – Amazing collection of stories in Spanish – Pilar Alderete
• I really enjoyed the latest from Benjamin Myers, The Offing, but I think my favourite novel this year was Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police. One of those books that haunts the mind long after you’ve finished reading – and with some profound lessons for how we think about the day-to-day functioning of authoritarian states. – Kevin O’Sullivan
• I spent a number of weeks ploughing through ‘Ulysses’ and was delighted to finally get it finished!, – Suzanne Gilsenan
• Fiction: the overstory by Richard powers. Non-fiction: These Truths by Jill Lepore. – Patrick Lonergan.
• In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor (2010), – Annie Byrne
• “There was naturally a lot of time for reading during endless weeks of lockdown. And 2020 was a good year with the publications of Ian Cobain’s “”Anatomy of a killing””, Tim Wilson’s “”Killing strangers””. However, the best book I read in 2020 was a book published in 2018: Marshall Poe’s “”How to read a history book: The hidden history of history””. It is an excellent, honest, and incredible engaging analysis of the higher education, the academy, and the disciplines of humanities and social sciences in the 21st century. A must-read for everyone working in higher education, teaching, research – as well as students! Apart from books, the best (and most disturbing) things I read were Adrienne LaFrance on QAnon in the June edition of The Atlantic and Jeff Sharlet’s “”The Second Coming”” on the campaign of Trump supporters for the July/August edition of Vanity Fair. – Dieter Reinisch
• Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo
• The novels of Joyce Cary, which I hadn’t known. All of them, really. – Michael Shields
• More than a woman Caitlin Moran – very funny – laugh out loud stuff, – Siobhan O’Higgins
• Unnatural Causes – Dr Richard Shepard
• The urge to view everything through the lens of the pandemic is hard to resist but this was a good year to read Svetlana Alexievich’s _Second-hand Time_. The book is an oral history of the collapse of the Soviet Union, comprised of interviews with witnesses to the two decades after 1991. The immediacy of the upheaval in people’s lives and the arrival of a radically new way of living sounded close echoes in 2020. The book is a real literary achievement, too: while the speaker’s voices and testimony are always foregrounded, Alexievich’s craft and style in arranging the material is hugely compelling, – Justin Tonra
• Just one?! To be honest, it was a classic: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I was meant to teach it in the spring but it ended up being cut from the course. I picked it up anyway, having not read it since I was an undergraduate student. How many writers can make a story one knows intimately completely immersive? Honourable mentions: Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton (a grossly underrated writer, in my view), The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghríofa, Dung Kai-Cheung’s Atlas. – Emily Ridge
• M Train by Patti Smith. Whilst I found Just Kids fascinating, it was also at times unbearably pretentious. M Train strikes a much better balance. – Steven Hadley
• “Living a feminist life” by Sara Ahmed
• American Dirt – Lorraine Tansey
• Donal Ryan’s Strange Flowers – a luminous, deeply moving text on grief, loss and the redemptive power of love, – Deirdre Byrnes
• “Ysenda Maxtone Graham, British Summer Time Begins (London: Little,Brown 2020); Amanda Craig, The Golden Rule (London: Little Brown 2020)”, – Caitriona Clear
• Seb Falk, ‘The Light Ages’ (Penguin 2020). – Jacopo Bisagni
• In non-fiction I’m torn between Michael W. Twitty’s The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South (2017), an amazing book about African American foodways and so much more, and Ian Maleney’s book of essays Minor Monuments (2019), a book of great thoughtfulness about family life, identity and reconnection. In fiction, definitely Anna Burns, Milkman (2018). – Dan Carey
• Catlin Moran-More Than a Woman – Miriam Lohan
• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – Caroline Casey

What was the best thing you saw? (Film, TV, drama, performance, etc.)

• A Streetcar named Desire, with Vanessa Kirby and Gillian Anderson
• Film: Le Mans ’66; TV: The Long Way Round (Apple TV) – Kieran Fitzpatrick
• Druid’s Lady Gregory drama series in September in the open air in Coole Park and Kinvarra! Feeling very lucky that I managed to get a ticket too. With the Toy Show a close second! – Lorraine McIlrath
• Either ‘The Hunger’, Irish famine documentary on RTE (to put things in perspective) or ‘Succession’, HBO drama (for complete escape) – Molly Byrne
• Schitts Creek
• Unorthodox because it didn’t require and occupy weeks of anyone’s attention while telling a most interesting story in a captivating style. Also, it allowed me to traverse the streets of Berlin when otherwise I couldn’t. – Ulf Strohmayer
• Queen’s Gambit
• Late Late Toy Show! – Emma Brinton
• Druid Theatre’s performance of The Cherry Orchard – Su-ming Khoo
• Coriolanus – National Theatre London at the Donmar – Pilar Alderete
• Straying away from anything too heavy here, one of the best things I watched was a film set in North Carolina about a young man who wants to become a wrestler: The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019). – Kevin O’Sullivan
• The best thing I saw was an outdoor performance by Druid of the Lady Gregory play ‘Hyacinth Halvey’ at the old railway station in Ballyglunin. The railway platform was the stage and the 15 members of the audience sat on the railway tracks. I felt privileged to be one of them, they put on a great show as always. I also got to see ‘On the Outside’ in a hotel carpark in Athenry, the set was outside the side door, another brilliant performance. – Suzanne Gilsenan
• Film. David Copperfield; Tv. Staged (bbc lockdown comedy). – Patrick Lonergan
• The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix) – Annie Byrne (Soc and Pol)
• I was most eagerly awaiting the release of series 3 of Killing Eve and it didn’t disappoint me, far from it. – Dieter Reinisch
• The Queens Gambit on Netflix
• A 1988 etching by Caspar Walter Rauh, “Beginnende Verwandlung” (“Incipient metamorphosis”). After looking at it a while, animal faces are liable to appear from different angles. – Michael Shields
• Unorthodox on Netflix – Siobhan O’Higgins
• Ozark
• I am a late arrival to Line of Duty but that meant that I was able to binge all five seasons of the programme in quick succession this year. It fits into the long tradition of British police procedural shows but goes well beyond its predecessors in its complexity and intricacy. In that sense, Line of Duty is closer to a programme like The Wire, whose layers of narrative and character connections awe the viewer with the effects of a network sublime. Season six cannot arrive quickly enough. – Justin Tonra
• During the first wave of Covid, I embarked on a Billy Wilder spree: The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, Witness for the Prosecution, and so on. I recommend it as a pandemic pick-me-up during this quieter Christmas season! – Emily Ridge
• The National: I Am Easy To Find, Live From New York’s Beacon Theatre or Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You – Steven Hadley
• Predictable but as a huge fan of the book, I thought the TV adaptation of Normal People was just perfect. Beautifully shot with an exceptional cast, I was hooked from the first second to the last.
• Film: Enola Holmes, And Breath Normally. Series: Queens Gambit.
• In January 2020 I saw Hamilton in London. – Lorraine Tansey
• Black Mirror (nearly all of it) on Netflix. – Caitriona Clear
• The Queen’s Gambit. – Jacopo Bisagni
• Michaela Coel’s series I May Destroy You. In film, hard to top Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho). Unless it’s Les Misérables (dir. Ladj Ly). – Dan Carey
• Ted Lasso – Miriam Lohan
• Succession – TV series – Caroline Casey

What was the best thing you heard? (New music, podcast, radio show, etc.)

• The David McWilliams Podcast. I’ve learned more about economics from listening to this than I did through my entire formal education. – Kieran Fitzpatrick
• For even more escapism…The Laughs Of Your Life with Doireann Garrihy Podcast – Lorraine McIlrath
• Sinead O’Connor singing Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’ to honour Ireland’s COVID-19 heroes back in April (still makes me cry) – Molly Byrne
• My son playing Finbar Furey’s ‘Lonesome Boatman’ on his traditional flute.
• Víkingur Ólafsson’s interweaving of the music of Rameau and Debussy — a marvellous journey that I never thought I’d make. – Ulf Strohmayer
• Dermot Kennedy
• Since schools started back in September, RTE Radio 1 has been my best friend while continuing to work from home! – Emma Brinton
• Audiobook of Philippe Sands The Ratline – Su-ming Khoo
• Going Coastal – Galway – Pilar Alderete
• The first album by Dublin-based artist, Aoife Nessa Frances, titled ‘Land Of No Junction’. Her voice is incredible. As a reviewer said on Arena (RTE Radio 1), you could listen to her sing the phone book. – Kevin O’Sullivan
• “Music – Titanic Rising by Weyes Blood. Audiobook. Beethoven – A Life in 9 Pieces by Laura Tunbridge. – Patrick Lonergan
• Doireann Ní Ghríofa talking about her new book, Ghost in the Throat – Annie Byrne (Soc and Pol)
• 2020 will not go down as a particularly notably year in Music history. However, there were still several fine record releases from some of my favourite artists, such as Bright Eyes, Taylor Swift (both, although Folklore is better than Evermore), Bruce Springsteen, and Travis. I was particularly looking forward to Belle & Sebastian’s new live record. The greatest find of the years was RVG; it’s an Australian band. The second record, realise in April, very much reminds me of one of my favourite bands, The Go-Betweens. – Dieter Reinisch
• Petra Somlai playing Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata on a Walther fortepiano, on YouTube – Michael Shields
• Zaz (Jazz) & The Michelle Obama Podcast
• The Relentless Picnic is a podcast unlike any other I have heard and its richness belies the simple description of its content: three friends have a series of conversations on a topic in culture, politics, or philosophy. Its appeal lies in the dynamic between the trio and in the fierce intelligence and humour of their conversations, whether they are about hitchhiking, the death penalty, or Donald Trump’s views on Citizen Kane. Earlier this year, the podcast began a timely and engaging new series called “Cabin,” exploring themes of solitude, isolation, and community via the writings of kindred individualists Henry David Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber – Justin Tonra
• “The episodes of the podcast 99% Invisible on Kowloon Walled City and the Bijlmermeer offer fascinating introductions to two distinct and idiosyncratic architectural marvels. [Link 1, Link 2] – Emily Ridge
• Folklore by Taylor Swift. Produced with Aaron Dessner from The National, this has been last-stage lockdown listening for a lot of people I know. – Steven Hadley
• The 2 Norries Podcast and in particular the episodes that tell the stories of the hosts, James Leonard and Timmy Long. Their stories truly highlight the role that education can play in turning people’s lives around.
• Katherine Ryan: Telling Everybody Everything- Podcast – Lorraine Tansey
• A Newstalk documentary podcast (from October 2016): Caitlín Maude: Renaissance Woman of Carna – Deirdre Byrnes
• Estampie, ‘Secrets of the North’ (released in 2013) – Jacopo Bisagni
• Courtesy of Youtube reminding me, I keep listening to Heat’s rendition of Stairway to Heaven (from 2012). Incredible vocals by Ann Wilson and accompaniment – Dan Carey
• Dermot and Dave on Today FM – a nice bit of comic relief for a tough year – Miriam Lohan
• Ghosteen by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Caroline Casey