June 2024 - In Conversation With The Wonderful Mary O'Brien

Join my wonderful friend Mary and I in an extended conversation about all the incredible books she’s read over the years. She talks about Irish writers, old and new; reading obsessions, past and present; the miracle of the written word; and so much more!

Mary is one of my closest and dearest friends and I am so happy that you get to hear from her. She is an extremely avid reader who relishes in having complex intellectual and philosophical discussions. She’s someone who hasn’t lost the art of debate without extreme polarisation, and is always prepared to reflect, rethink and keep an open mind.

 

Mentioned books:

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
• Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
• Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara
• Walking with Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne
• Time Pieces by John Banville
• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
• Sinbad the Sailor
• Arabian Knights
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
• Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
• The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
• Long Island by Colm Toibin
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
• The Dialogues of Plato by Plato
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• The Reader by Bernhard Schlink 
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• Short story: Music at Annahullion by Eugene McCabe 
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• Mills & Boon books: https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/
• The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
• A Time to Kill by John Grisham
• The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Cider House Rules by John Irving
• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
• Foster by Claire Keegan
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• The Barracks by John Mcgahern
• Death and Nightingales Eugene McCabe
• Quirke by Benjamin Black (John Banville pseudonym)
• Cormoran Strike by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling pseudonym)
• The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling
• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
• Mythos by Stephen Fry
• Heroes by Stephen Fry
• Odyssey by Stephen Fry
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
• Notes From a Big Country by Bill Bryson
• Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
• Down Under by Bill Bryson
• At Home by Bill Bryson
• If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley
• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
• American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
• Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

 

Mentioned films/TV shows:

• The Bridges of Madison County
• The Remains of the Day
• Never Let Me Go
• Mystic River
• A Time to Kill
• Philomena
• Michael Collins 
• Wilde
• Oppenheimer
• HBO Mini Series on the American opioid epidemic: Dopesick

 

Other mentions:

• MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland): https://moli.ie/
• US meat industry lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SjV4vxnaY3U
• University of Reading Mills & Boon archive and collection: https://collections.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/collections/mills-and-boon-archive-and-library/
• Romance Author:  Barbara Cartland
• Russian author: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
• The Art of Reading Book Club with Colm Toibin podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9nzyTicyDg&list=PLLWo1zNvgJVO-SU1g0K6CxucAq7cKQ1b7
• Short story writer: William Trevor
• Stephen Fry talks about God on The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo
• QI (Quite Interesting) BBC Game Show