Booker’s Dozen @ Eoghan O'Suilleabhain

Eoghan O'Suilleabhain answers thirteen questions in a Booker's Dozen.

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

EO'S: A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy by Thomas C. Reeves, Voltaire: A Life, by Ian Davidson, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte.

TPQ: Best book you have ever read?

EO'S: Unfair question! But if you were to stick a gun to my head and say answer the question: then I would say Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. Because it was the first book I read at 14 that was so unalike all the other books I had read by then. It let me know good books were not a chore and are out there to learn from. Many of which would not be on my school’s curriculum or yours.

TPQ: A must-read before you die?

EO'S: An Evening with Richard Nixon by Gore Vidal.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

EO'S: Facts, nothing but the facts and a cogent analysis of them. But I very much enjoyed Catch 22 by Joseph Heller and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

TPQ: Favourite female author?

EO'S: Carol Angier who wrote The Double Bond: The Life of Primo Levi.

TPQ: Favourite male author?

EO'S: Tie: George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia) & Gore Vidal (United States Essays 1952-1993)

TPQ: First book you ever read?

EO'S: Biography of Knute Rockne – legendary University of Notre Dame football coach. I don’t know who wrote it but I was seven (7) years old when I read it from cover to cover.

A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

EO'S: Mark Twain.

TPQ: Any book you point blank refuse to read?

EO'S: The Book of Mormon.

TPQ: Any author you point blank refuse to read?

EO'S: Not really! But I’d be hard pressed to read Sean Hannity (assuming he actually writes his screeds).

TPQ: Pick a book to give to somebody so that they would more fully understand you.

EO'S: People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

EO'S: A picture book that proved the existence of God. I gave it to a heathen.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

EO'S: At this point I'd like to see a true-to-life movie about the young Herbert Hoover. Because his life from 1874 to 1919 was the stuff of legend. It’s hard to believe he was a disappointment as President of the United States from 1929-1933.

⏭ Eoghan O'Suilleabhain is a US lawyer.