Tullamore College Book Club
Recommended reading list for Junior Cycle students:
Click here for some reading suggestions for Junior Cycle students.
commended reading list for Senior Cycle students and adults:
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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
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The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
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White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
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The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
Book of the Month
March 2010: One Day by David Nicholls
One Day is one of those books that you can't put down. It opens on 15 July 1988 when two university students share a night together, neither believing that it will lead to anything further. Each chapter revisits the pair on that same date over the next 20 years and traces key events in their lives as their paths diverge and intersect. Throughout the years they grow apart: northern working class Emma takes a job in a Mexican food restaurant and later becomes a teacher, while the confident and handsome Dexter gains notoriety as a TV presenter. Though the description of the book sounds like the standard 'girl likes boy' story, what actually emerges is something much more. The relationship between Em and Dex is so accurately described that, by the end, it feels like Nicholls is giving us an indepth insight into the relationship of our closest friends.The tenderness, yearning and resentment experienced in the relationship of Em and Dex is perfectly balanced with the uncountable laugh out loud moments brought on by the hilarious witty banter between the pair. One Day is one of those books that you won't stop reading till you've reached the unexpected and heartbreaking conclusion.
February 2010: The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry
Roseanne McNulty is close to her 100th birthday and faces an uncertain future as the decrepit Roscommon Mental Home, in which she has spent the last 30 years of her life, is due to be demolished. As her psychiatrist Dr Grene evaluates her to decide whether she is fit to be granted her freedom, Roseanne begins to write a journal in secret, chronicling her life and the series of events that ultimatley led to her institutionalisation. Her testimony is segmented by the accounts of Dr Grene, a man who uses his investigation into Roseanne's mysterious past as a distraction from his own troubled personal life.
The Secret Scripture deservedly won the Costa prize in 2009- one of the most prestigious and popular literary prizes in Ireland and the UK. In this wonderful book, full of witticisms and old Irish sayings, Barry shows us the complexities of human relationships in all their beauty and devastation. This story of love, betrayal and tragedy will keep you reading until the shocking end.
January 2010: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
The first part of the Millennium trilogy is centred around the odd pairing of disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for slandering a disreputable businessman, and the feral Lisbeth Salander, asocial punk, computer hacker extraordinaire. Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger, who, for the last thirty six years has become obsessed with unearthing which member of powerful Vanger clan was involved in the murder of his great niece, Harriet. Under the guise that he is writing a family history, Blomkvist is sucked into a tragic and sometimes heinous world of corruption, violence, misogyny and greed, taking security analyst Salander along for the ride.
So begins The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a posthumous crime novel from the pen of Stieg Larsson. Refreshingly, there are no real heroes in Larsson story. Deep and dark, the book is a patchwork of human emotions, where the good aren’t very good, and where everyone has a darker side to themselves.
It throws together two compelling characters, both deeply flawed, forming a strong bond that is at times incongruous, but touchingly tender and unique. However, it is the character, Lisbeth Salander that is the real star of the show, a modern day heroine that is not only driven by her moral vindictiveness, but also by a deep sense of self-preservation.
December 2009: The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Road tells the story of a man and his son as they journey towards the coast in a post-apocalyptic world. Father and son move through a decimated environment, where all plant and animal life is dead or dying, on a constant search for food and shelter. Their survival depends on that which they can scavenge from the ruined and abandoned landscape.
They are not, however, the only people engaged in this dangerous journey and along the way the pair encounters the sinister side of humanity. McCarthy's novel, though dark, is remarkable for its ability to graphically describe the simplistic elements of nature and society and to show us their intricate beauty.
McCarthy elegantly describes both the hope and the desperation of man and boy as they struggle to survive in a world where society as we understand it has been destroyed.
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