Barry Gilheany answers 13 questions in a Booker's Dozen.


TPQ: What are you currently reading?

BG: Jumping between book as is my wont but I will pick out The Age of Surveillance. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Required reading for all those who need to know about the dynamics of digital capitalism and the rapacious pursuit of the raw material of behavioural surplus by the robber barons of our age – the tech giants; Google, Facebook, Microsoft and the rest.

TPQ: Best book you ever read?

BG: How long have we got? Like asking me who my favourite pop artist is! I will say Germinal by Emile Zola. Describes the human decay that alcoholism involves in excruciating, degrading but compulsive (dare I say addictive) style.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

BG: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

BG: Enid Blyton

TPQ: First book to really own you?

BG: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. Gave me a perspective on the Spanish Civil War that I had not been aware off and opened my eyes on the monstrousness of Stalinism from a leftist but libertarian perspective.

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

BG: Christopher Hitchens and Val MacDiarmid.

A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

BG: Fact, but the literary mind must always be open to stretching the imagination which good fiction reading entails.

TPQ: Any book you steadfastly refuse to read?

BG: None. Self-censorship never works. To understand the evil that Adolf Hitler did and personified, it may be necessary to read Mein Kampf for example.

TPQ: Any author you point blank refuse to read?

BG: None for the same reason as in the last question. I find the ideas of Gilad Atzmon repellent but I had to read his book The Wandering Who to understand why and the forces impelled in his ideological and philosophical journey.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would fully understand you?

BG: A difficult one this. But as somebody on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum I will nominate Neurotribes. The Legacy of Autism and how to Think Smarter about People who Think Differently by Steve Silberman.

TPQ: The last book you gave as a present?

BG: I cannot remember the last one but I did send my father a book on the Dundalk part of the Great Northern Railway Line (sorry I cannot recall the exact title as it is not in my possession now obviously) where he worked during the war. It was given to me in a chance encounter with a railway enthusiast when I was out doing a conservation task in Colchester.

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

BG: Catch and Kill. Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow. We need a signature film for the #MeeToo era.

TPQ: A “must read” you intend chalking up before you die?

BG: War and Peace by Tolstoy.

Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter seeking the Promised Land of the Premiership!

Booker's Dozen @ Barry Gilheany

Barry Gilheany answers 13 questions in a Booker's Dozen.


TPQ: What are you currently reading?

BG: Jumping between book as is my wont but I will pick out The Age of Surveillance. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Required reading for all those who need to know about the dynamics of digital capitalism and the rapacious pursuit of the raw material of behavioural surplus by the robber barons of our age – the tech giants; Google, Facebook, Microsoft and the rest.

TPQ: Best book you ever read?

BG: How long have we got? Like asking me who my favourite pop artist is! I will say Germinal by Emile Zola. Describes the human decay that alcoholism involves in excruciating, degrading but compulsive (dare I say addictive) style.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

BG: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

BG: Enid Blyton

TPQ: First book to really own you?

BG: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. Gave me a perspective on the Spanish Civil War that I had not been aware off and opened my eyes on the monstrousness of Stalinism from a leftist but libertarian perspective.

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

BG: Christopher Hitchens and Val MacDiarmid.

A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

BG: Fact, but the literary mind must always be open to stretching the imagination which good fiction reading entails.

TPQ: Any book you steadfastly refuse to read?

BG: None. Self-censorship never works. To understand the evil that Adolf Hitler did and personified, it may be necessary to read Mein Kampf for example.

TPQ: Any author you point blank refuse to read?

BG: None for the same reason as in the last question. I find the ideas of Gilad Atzmon repellent but I had to read his book The Wandering Who to understand why and the forces impelled in his ideological and philosophical journey.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would fully understand you?

BG: A difficult one this. But as somebody on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum I will nominate Neurotribes. The Legacy of Autism and how to Think Smarter about People who Think Differently by Steve Silberman.

TPQ: The last book you gave as a present?

BG: I cannot remember the last one but I did send my father a book on the Dundalk part of the Great Northern Railway Line (sorry I cannot recall the exact title as it is not in my possession now obviously) where he worked during the war. It was given to me in a chance encounter with a railway enthusiast when I was out doing a conservation task in Colchester.

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

BG: Catch and Kill. Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow. We need a signature film for the #MeeToo era.

TPQ: A “must read” you intend chalking up before you die?

BG: War and Peace by Tolstoy.

Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter seeking the Promised Land of the Premiership!

11 comments:

  1. Barry,
    This is very interesting.

    At first glance it would appear that you and I have something in common. Zola, Orwell, surveillance capitalism ( I intend to read more on this) and railways, but as has been discussed in the comments following Anthony's piece, 'Book Police', we can't fathom the person by their reading list.
    There is also a certain subject on which our views are so different that I'm convinced that our individual understanding of the difference between right and wrong is so at odds that this renders any discussion of that subject unproductive.

    Could you elaborate on your comment about Germinal, as that certainly isn't the picture which comes to my mind?

    Mike

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    1. Mike

      It is 30 years since I read it and that is the most powerful memory I took from it. So perhaps I am not best placed to elaborate on my comment. But I also recall that it was a very powerful commnentary on working class conditions in fin-de-siecle Paris.

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  2. I find it interesting many of those who contributed to the bookers dozen claim Enid Blyton's as the books they read as a child. I have never read her books we didn't have them about the house, but I asked some one who has and she said the kids all went to public school and uncle Quentin who appears in the stories owned and island. Me thinks there is ruling class indoctrination going on here��

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    1. We had them in our house in the Grosvenor Road (certainly not ruling class). They're regarded as classic children's stories, like The Toad at Toad Hall or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

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    2. I read a lot of her books growing up in the 70’s in small town Ireland.
      We never had them in the house but the one library in town was only place we got anything to read and I enjoyed them at the time. Looking back at all the blonde children and her noddy books she was regarded as a bit racist but we never understood that then, anything was better that Rte 1 and 2 on the telly😂

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    3. Peter - she is not someone whose books we ever had about the house. But there were Just William, Pocomoto and Biggles. I remember finding a lot of kids books boring and thinking it would be great when I was older given that the shelves in the local library always seemed filled with good books.

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  3. Nice work Barry, especially the shoutout to 'Homage to Catalonia.' A lot of people cite Orwell but seemingly never take the time to go beyond 1984 or Animal Farm, missing 'Homage...' as well as 'Down and Out...'

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    1. Christopher - Coming Up For Air was another good one, the central character being Tubby Bowling. Down And Out was a fantastic read. I first did Animal Farm at primary school and I guess have been a reader of Orwell ever since. Back then I really did think it was about animals!

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  4. Barry,

    What a coincidence!

    Two of my favorite books are also The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (the unabridged & uncensored version) and Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. The character Finn was thinly veiled Twain living Bob Marley’s truism: “None but ourselves can free our minds.”

    And although my standard school indoctrination had me reading Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, as well as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it wasn’t until I got to graduate school in Dublin that I inadvertently discovered Orwell’s other books in the library. In fact, I didn’t know until then that Orwell had written other essays and books or that he was a Left-Libertarian. So, you see, Bob Marley was right again.

    But it takes good books!

    Like this book I recommend you read (if you haven’t already):

    Parallel Play by Tim Page (former NY Times music critic)

    https://www.amazon.com/Parallel-Play-Tim-Page/dp/0767929691

    Because it’s well written & he gives good advice for people like him.

    Here is a bit of it published in the New Yorker magazine:

    Parallel Play - A lifetime of restless isolation explained.

    By Tim Page

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/20/parallel-play

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  5. If my memory serves me correctly the villains in Enid Blyton's books tended to be the foreigners. A bit like the villains in Father Brown stories being the non-believers, with Chesterton being the zealous convert.

    "Fighting in Spain" is a large extract of "Homage to Catalonia". I would hesitate to even call it abridged. The scenes of Barcelona with the flags and working clothes were very vivid in my mind, more so in Fighting, maybe because I read it first or because of the way the story was framed in the excerpt. Orwell could definitely paint a picture. Coincidentally, I have Down and Out in Paris and London beside me, I bought it just before the lockdown with a Penguin Classic on The Suffragettes.

    Reading a little Elmore Leonard at the moment and taking it easy. Planning on building up my reading stamina again to tackle The Brothers Karamazov. War and Peace is worth spending the time on, plenty of life lessons of epic proportions. The main thing I got from it was not to judge the present as if it was carefully planned from a moment in the past. That helped me understand current Irish politics better. I also enjoyed it so much it inspired me to read Anna Karenina which is the best thing I believe I have read.

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