Slanting of the Sun
Donal Ryan
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Finished this. Outstanding. 20 stories 5 or 6 pages each on average. Relentless niggling at the dark side of life in Ireland. Very grim in places.
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There are some good laughs in there too in fairness to him
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Are the stories in the book real?
No its fiction. If you are a muldoon like I am you will see plenty realism in them though
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I left my Muldoon past behind me and moved to the city
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Does that invalidate Muldoon status? I’m a born again Muldoon so
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No one leaves their muldoon past fully behind. Were Waterford to win an All Ireland, you’d be hooping, hollering and throwing your straw hat in the air like the best of them
Best collection of short stories I’ve ever read, Kevin Barry runs him close but unlike Ryan he’s a terrible novelist.
What was your favourite?
We don’t throw straw hats, we fist pump and badge kiss
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Ah City of Bohane is terrific.
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I read it a while back. Thought it did not keep the quality. Clever at the end but did not sustain through the 2nd half.
Tried and failed to get into it twice. Had heard great thinns about it
Maybe the story called Tommy and the Moon I think. Or else the one about the barman and his past girlfriend
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Tim Ferris - Tools of Titans
“What might you do to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, if you had a gun against your head?”
#Now, let’s pause. Do I expect you to take 10 seconds to ponder this and then magically accomplish 10 years’ worth of dreams in the next few months? No, I don’t. But I do expect that the question will productively break your mind, like a butterfly shattering a chrysalis to emerge with new capabilities. The “normal” systems you have in place, the social rules you’ve forced upon yourself, the standard frameworks—they don’t work when answering a question like this. You are forced to shed artificial constraints, like shedding a skin, to realize that you had the ability to renegotiate your reality all along. It just takes practice.#
Tim is a gas man. I see he has jumped on the depresssion train in this book too… though he makes a very good point on why he included it.
Interesting read all the same id say.
For fans of Irish fiction let me say that Sebastian Barry’s latest book ‘Days without end’ is a cracking read, set in America and spanning a few decades from the Indian wars through the civil war it’s a great story brilliantly told.
I’m also enjoying dipping in and out of Bill Bryson’s road to little dribbling, a contemporary jaunt through England and a follow up to a similar book (Notes from a small Island??) that came out many years ago.
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That Barry one sounds great, I’ll put that on my list for the Christmas.
Good man, steamers and trannys as well, you won’t be dissapointed 