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Empathy Exams was fantastic. Blown away by the writing.

I don't do e-readers, but this is a nice approach alright

Just started "The Empathy Exams" by Leslie Jamison. Yet another amazing female writer I've come across in the last year or so. Super stuff. They're "essays", but they read like clever short stories to me.

Pretty much! I think there were 3 girls and their brother.

It was grand as far as I remember. I can't remember a huge amount as I read it about 30 years ago! The writing is probably quite dodgy, but that didn't matter at the time - it was all about the story. Sisters were particularly useful at that age - some of the stories in their girls comics/...

Same here! The only other ones I read were Franzen's Corrections - which was grand, and Flowers in the Attic, which I sneaked out of my sister's room when I was a teenager. I really felt like I was reading something forbidden.

Kind of reminds me of an edition of the "Heroes of Greece and Troy" I have somewhere, which my brother got for his 12th birthday. It's fantastic and tells the stories of Heracles, Prometheus and all those lads, in a cool understandable way, with great illustrations throughout. The lads would go...

Looks like good craic.

Hope not - I like my tea and scone to stay down while I'm reading

It's great. Short paragraphs with a lot of cool and engaging observations. You'll fly through it.

Now it's time for a more male "sprawling, fierce, vulgar display".

Been reading a lot of the ladies this year. Just finished Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker - excellent. Up there with Stoner or any of those. Very funny at times too.

Really liking a lot of female short story writers over the last while. Here's another - Laura Van Den Berg

Richard Brautigan: In Watermelon Sugar I really liked this, even though I couldn't quite figure out what, if anything, it was supposed to be symbolising. I expect a lot of people think he was a complete chancer, but I'm going to seek out some more of his books.

Ha! This fella is OK - solid, confident, articulate, slightly hiptser-ish. Persona might be the wrong term - the aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others.

Read The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan yesterday. Bought it for €1 in a charity shop. Pretty good - short paragraphs/ chapters, some just a line or two long. The odd thing was that the narrator reminded me of @7 - No tomorrow - or rather his Thumped persona.

Reading the Bone Clocks. Pretty good, but for some reason, I'm thinking his writing is almost deliberately below par in parts - to suit the given narrator.

Ha! That came out wrong!

Great feature in the Times about the perils of book reviewing in Ireland. Reviewing Irish books: the good, the bad and the ugly truth

So does Rick O'Shea, whose opinion I value Book Review – The Mark And The Void by Paul Murray | Rikipedia Book Review – The Mark And The Void by Paul Murray To start with, Paul Murray gives us a good old-fashioned switcheroo for the two main characters in The Mark And The Void. Paul is a...