Valerie Shanley asks some well-known people what turned their heads this year

MARK MULQUEEN
Director, Irish Film Institute Politics Lost, by Joe Klein (Doubleday)

"I devoured this book. It was only published in September but it records how politics and politicians have been transformed, willingly, by the introduction of marketing and the influence of communications and election strategists. It is a well-written lament for the ideals of the '60s generation.

"My other selection was Philip Roth's Everyman (Jonathan Cape), a simple take on modern life from the perspective of an old man . . .quite raw in places but believable."

IVANA BACIK
Reid Professor of Criminal Law, TCD Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl (Penguin)

"I hadn't heard of this book, until a friend gave it to me. It's quirky, with an off-beat humour, and very similar in style to another favourite, A Confederacy of Dunces.

BRENT POPE
Rugby pundit and marketing manager for Platinum Developments International Paul McGrath: Back from the Brink, with Vincent Hogan (Century 2000)

"I am a sucker for good sporting autobiographies, mainly because I can relate them to my own life.

Paul McGrath is a kind of tortured genius, a bit like George Best. A man who was adored by the public yet had so many personal demons to overcome . . . and the battle continues.

"McGrath is brave enough to tell his story without glamourising his footballing life; he comes across a shy, humble sport star who you felt would have been just as happy kicking a ball around the backyard in a happier private life. I admire McGrath's frankness and also his strength in admitting his failings."

GAVIN MALONEY
Assistant conductor, RTE National Symphony Orchestra Shooting History, by Jon Snow (Harper)

"Jon Snow (presenter of Channel Four News), joined ITN as a reporter and subsequently became the Washington correspondent and then the diplomatic editor. In his memoirs, Shooting History, he recounts the history of the past 30 years through his experience of reporting, and gives stimulating accounts of his meetings with some of the world's most notorious leaders.

"His views on the new 'world disorder' culminate in informed and forthright criticism of the 'drivers of the adventure' in Iraq.

Snow describes his book as 'a cry to provoke people to think about, and understand anew, the world we live in'. I found his book candid, opinionated and eloquent."

SONIA REYNOLDS
PR consultant The Beautiful Fall, by Alicia Drake (Bloomsbury)

"I got through several books during the year, but I'm currently engrossed in The Beautiful Fall . . . a fashion insight on Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfield. This was given to me by a friend and I have to admit I'm taking my time as it's easy to get lost in the times and glamour of the industry. It is also funny and so camp. It gives an insight to the other side of the fashion industry that has changed so much over the past decade."

CAMILLE O'SULLIVAN
Singer Bob Dylan Chronicles Volume 1 (Pocket)

"Being a huge fan of Bob Dylan's music for years I was really interested in what inspired and helped to mould such a great talent. Even if you're not into Dylan's music, you'll be converted by reading this unconventional autobiography.

"I know it came out last year, but it is so beautifully written, a fascinating read, recapturing its author's first stirrings of creativity with amazing urgency and describes in detail his early musical influences. 'You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs, ' he says.

Instead, he remembers feeling the need to 'convert something . . .something that exists into something that didn't yet."

RICHARD LEWIS
Fashion designer Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, by Steven Bach (Doubleday)

"I started this book, first published six years ago, as part of research into Berlin in the 1930s (the theme for the my autumn/ winter collection), but became totally engrossed by this fascinating woman, and couldn't leave the book down.

"The Master, and Mothers and Sons (Picador), both by Colm Toibin, was kind of a natural follow-on. I love short stories to delve in and out of, and this last book was pure relaxation and escapism, but beautifully written. Toibin is a master storyteller and paints a great picture of his characters . . .you feel you really know them."

FIONA O'MALLEY
PD TD for Dun Laoghaire Mother's Milk, by Edward St Aubyn (Picador)

"I heard someone speak about Mother's Milk on the radio, referring in glowing terms to the poetry of the language and that is what drew me to the book. It didn't disappoint. The story opens with an arresting description of the trauma perpetrated on an infant as he endures the violent separation from his mother at birth. Feelings of both tenderness and terror are evoked lucidly and simultaneously, but the whole episode and indeed the book is enriched by the humorous tone the author has captured by recounting many events from the perspective of an erudite fiveyear old, Robert.

"The troubled and difficult relationships between the characters through the generations have a common source: motherhood. The failed or fraught maternal relationships are the backdrop to the unfolding drama.

"Motherhood does not come out well. The two grannies are really unpleasant people who are cold and indifferent to their own children and grandchildren. Mary . . .Robert and Thomas's mother, anxious not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother . . . throws herself into the role with a ferocious dedication that has detrimental consequences for her marriage.

"The book begins with birth and ends with looking at extinguishing life. In between we get a brutally honest portrayal of family life. The real success is in the piercing wisdom of the children which never fails to entertain."

DAVE FANNING
Radio presenter An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore (Bloomsbury)

"Bizarrely, I haven't seen the movie, but I've read the book. It was kind of entertaining, which was strange coming from someone who I thought was a very boring man. The only other one I really read was Pat McCabe's Winter Wood (Bloomsbury) which was pretty dark. Apart from that I'm not the best book reader, but I'd recommend both of those."

DERMOT BOLGER
Writer Founded on Fear, by Peter Tyrell, edited by Diarmuid Whelan (Academic Press)

"The cover of Peter Tyrrell's profoundly disturbing and important memoir deliberately displays his signature and photograph.

Both seem miraculous, because only one picture of Peter Tyrrell exists and, until recently, any examples of his handwriting were locked away in vaults in the form of ignored letters.

"Like thousands who passed through the Irish industrial school system he was quite literally forgotten. They left behind no records because they were warned on release to forget everything that happened inside torture camps like Letterfrack and discovered that nobody outside wanted to know.

"It was a miracle that Peter Tyrrell's charred remains were even identified after he burnt himself to death on Hampstead Heath in 1967. He possessed the naive belief that Irish people wanted to actually know what was going on in such places and that his testament, if published, could change the sweatshop terror of Irish institutionalised childhood. The fact that nobody would listen, except Owen Sheehy Skeffington, led to him taking what he may have felt was his final outlet for protest, when (echoing the Vietnam protesters) he torched himself.

"His manuscript lay forgotten among Skeffington's papers until Diarmuid Whelan did a superb job in recovering this major historical testament from the heart of the horror of Letterfrack in the early 1930s. It is written with guile, a factual account of insane beatings seen through a child's bewildered eyes, who . . . amidst that horror . . .still yearns for the good, with Tyrrell full of praise for the smallest act of kindness. This harrowingly honest book could not be published in his lifetime. The least we owe his memory is not to ignore it now."

Dermot Bolger's The Family on Paradise Pierwas published in paperback in 2006

KATRIONA MCFADDEN
Presenter of RTE Television's Community Challenge The Black Angel, by John Connolly (Atria Books)

"The Black Angel is the latest offering in the Charlie Parker detective series. Parker goes looking for his friend Louis's missing prostitute cousin, only to discover that her disappearance is linked to a church of bones in eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944 and to a mysterious legend known as The Black Angel.

"Although The Black Angel was technically released at the end of last year I only got around to reading it this year. It was my first John Connolly novel, unputdownable, and the first book I have ever read where I connected with the author so much that I wanted to write to him immediately afterwards to tell him what a wonderful gift he has."

PIP SIDES
Photographer Beatrice, by Noelle Harrison (Pan)

"Beatrice is a beautiful novel. It's about a search for truth on a missing loved one. I love a book that you become aquainted with, something that you almost feel is like sharing time with a friend. Beatrice is such a book. It takes you on each of its characters' personal journeys and into their psyches.

"Every page leads one along a journey of discovery into a tragic world: I was in Eithne's family kitchen; walking with her among the Meath boglands; I could see Beatrice in the artist's paintings. I could feel the powerful energy of youth, two young hippies on their way back from Slane.

"Every step in this book is memorable, sometimes sad, with moments of joy. When I finished I felt that my friend had gone away."

CHARLOTTE CARR
Manager of Rosso Restaurant, Dundalk and winner of the Rosemount Young Restaurant Manager of the Year Award 2006 Yours, Faithfully, by Sheila O'Flanagan (Headline)/ A Place Called Here by Cecilia Ahern (HarperCollins)

"My favourite authors at the moment are Cecilia Ahern and Sheila O'Flanagan, whose novel Yours, Faithfully I've just finished. I like books that are girlie; some easy reading as a way of relaxing after a busy day in the restaurant.

Cecilia Ahern is great in the way that she brings everything together, but manages to ensure the story isn't predictable. As far as I'm concerned, if you laugh out loud when you're reading a book you're doing okay!"

MICHAEL D HIGGINS
Labour party president and spokesperson on foreign affairs In Search of Iraq: Baghdad to Ballylon, by Richard Downes (New Island)

"I was really impressed by this book. What is outstanding, and indeed exceptional, in a book of this kind is the resonance with Iraqi culture and history that Downes achieves in his account of interviews and relationships.

There is a refreshing capacity too in the account of events where cold calculation had to give way to emotion and even fear. En passant he provides an insightful account of the devastating effects of US sanctions on the Iraqi people. His anecdotes also give the reader a window into the lives and memories of the educated, goodhumoured Iraqi people.

"Colin Mooer's book The New Imperialists: Ideologies of Empire is worth reading for David McNally's chapter alone on Michael Ignatieff 's reinvention of himself as an apologist for empire. Literature scholars too will welcome the devastating critique of Ignatieff 's misuse of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a case for empire as the sole alternative to chaos. Paul Cammack writes of the ingress of the neo-liberal model into developing countries and is one of several of the contributors, all writing in relevant, fresh, and accessible style."

Michael D Higgins' new book, Causes for Concern: Irish Politics, Culture, and Society, has just been published by Liberties Press

TERRY PRONE
Communications consultant Unstoppable Brilliance: Irish Geniuses and Asperger's Syndrome, by Antoinette Walker and Michael Fitzgerald (Liberties Press )

"An Austrian paediatrician, Hans Asberger, working back in the '40s, first identified the syndrome that was named after him. In Ireland, arguably the top expert on the syndrome at the present time is Professor Michael Fitzgerald at Trinity College Dublin. Fitzgerald believes that many of the pivotal geniuses in Irish history and literature, including Padraig Pearse and WB Yeats, had Asperger's.

"'Genius is not a mantle that someone with Asperger's syndrome readily adopts, ' he points out. 'It is innate. Once unleashed in the right conditions, its brilliance is unstoppable.'

"Unstoppable Genius, written with Antoinette Walker, is controversial. Some would argue that Fitzgerald casts the Asperger's net too wide. However, even read with scepticism regarding the diagnosis, this account of the life, correspondence and achievements of people like Beckett, Robert Boyle, Daisy Bates and Robert Emmet was one of the most fascinating books published in 2006."