Sport
Tom Humphries
I'm not at all sure if golf is something to be generally approved of (all those bad sweaters and exclusionary attitudes) but the essential drama of the sport is undeniable and fascinating. It also attracts a great deal of good writers.
I have been reading Curt Sampson's fascinating biography of one of the greatest golfers of all time, Ben Hogan (Hill Press, £16.95), and it confirms a theory I've had for a while about many great sports people having odd, unhealthily or unrealised relationships with their fathers.
When Ben Hogan was nine years old his father took a heavy duty .38 pistol, put it to his chest and shot himself dead, while young Ben was watching. And people wondered afterwards why Hogan never appeared nervous at the prospect of sinking a putt to win a tournament.
Sampson's biography is full of fascinating insight into the forces which turned Hogan into a man who practised golf until his "hands bled."
Ben Hogan's pomp happened long ago. Today professional sport controls what is written about it almost as effectively as an army at war. Writers see what they are allowed to see, ask what they are allowed to ask, and get access when the sport needs publicity.
Much of the best writing comes from out on the edges. Or Everest. Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer's astonishing account of an ill-fated expedition to Everest in May 1996, when a gaggle of amateur climbers and enthusiasts each paid $65,000 for the privilege were to be guided to the roof of the world (Villard Books, £17.95). Storm hit and nine people died.
Krakauer, a journalist on assignment to ascertain whether people rich enough and idle enough should be allowed tackle such danger, survived. Into Thin Air is a story, told first hand of life and death, and the quality of character a person shows in the face of such things.
Krakauer has been bitterly criticised, firstly for publishing his story at all and secondly for publishing it so quickly, he was into hardcover before his jangled emotions had settled into a perspective. Yet it is the raw honesty of this brilliant book which makes it what it is. Krakauer hasn't made himself into a hero, anything but, and he uses his frank and harsh judgment of his own actions to be equally unsparing about both living and dead.
Krakauer's original magazine account of the ordeal is the first and longest piece in this year's Best American Sports Writing Collection 1997 (Mariner Books, £12.99), a typically wonderful anthology of the top writing from the top writers with a classically elegant introduction from one of the best of them all, George Plimpton.
Tom Humphries is an Irish Times sports writer.
Music
John Kelly
I hate to give away trade secrets but here are a few recommendations for anybody who might occasionally need to sound like they know what they're talking about. Books on music, particularly on jazz and blues, are often long-winded on detail and shortwinded on entertainment and so, with that in mind, try Miles The Autobiography (Picador, £9.99 in UK). The faint-hearted may be disturbed by the constant use of a certain compound word popular in the United States, but it's a great read.
For an altogether different autobiography, The Trouble With Cinder- ella (Da Capo) tells the story of band leader Artie Shaw and is also a wise examination of the cult of celebrity. You may find this hard to get, however (Hodges Figgis could not trace it. Try secondhand bookshops). For the full story of soul music, the required text is Nowhere To Run by Gerri Hirshey (Pan Books, £13.90). Equally indispensable is Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music (Penguin, £12.40). In fact anything by Guralnick is worth reading, especially Lost Highway (Penguin, currently out of print), Feel Like Going Home (Penguin, £12 in UK) and Searching For Robert Johnson (Secker and Warburg, £8 in UK).
My own constant companion, however, and the book which taught me most is The Unsung Heroes Of Rock 'n' Roll by Nick Tosches (Secker and Warburg, currently out of print). This tells the story of many of the figures who immediately preceded Elvis Presley and who were the true inventors and pioneers of rock 'n' roll. The discography at the back is also a highly recommended record collection. By the time you've got through all of this you'll sound like you know it all.
John Kelly is a writer and broadcaster
Biography
John Horgan
At the end of the day, it's not the length of a life that matters, but its texture. I have chosen three very different biographies, all of which show master craftsmen at work.
Che Guevara, Jon Lee Anderson's study of that rebel's tempestuous, often star-crossed life (Bantam Press, £25), was written with the co-operation of Guevara's widow, but eschews the resultant temptation to hagiography. There are times when it stands back and takes a cool look at its subject, in the end leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind, which is the proper thing to do. The approach is sure-footed, the detail absorbing, the overview impressive.
Older, but losing nothing by comparison, is Orwell, Michael Shelden's authorised biography (Heinemann, £18.50). It also serves to show what a broad church the Left is. Orwell has suffered from the fame - and the misunderstanding - of 1984 to the point where he appears in the folk memory almost as a caricature. This exacting portrait of a complex and often troubled writer and political thinker allows him to escape from many a later stereotype.
T.M. Healy (Cork University Press, £14.50) is the paperback edition of Frank Callanan's panoramic, rumbustious life of one of the most extraordinary - and until now neglected - figures in Irish political life, whose career stretched from Butt to De Valera. As a value-formoney biography, its 754 pages are unbeatable, and its sheer enthusiasm for its subject sweeps the reader along like an autumn leaf in a gale.
John Horgan is the author of Sean Lemass: The Enigmatic Patriot (Gill and Macmillan, £19.99).
Poetry
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
Sometimes it takes me a while to catch up on all the books that have been published recently, so some of the best books of poetry that I have read in the last year were not published this year.
They are Peter Sirr's The Ledger Of Fruitful Exchange (Gallery Books, £6.95), a marvellous fourth volume, where he really makes an enormous psychic jump. Here you have the culmination of all his technical expertise, which he had been developing in his previous volumes, but this time cum corde, with a great infusion of heart. His style is very cool and almost American, and he does what the Americans do, but so much better than most of them.
My other great discovery has been Kerry Hardie, who has erupted on the poetry scene, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, full-grown and fully-armed. Her A Furious Place (Gallery Books, £5.95) is the best first collection I have read in ages.
John Montague's Collected Poems (Gallery Books, £13.95) is a very handsome and really indispensable book. As regards books in Irish, Biddie Jenkinson's new volume Amhras Neimh (Coisceim, £4), is a great book because she takes some extraordinary chances, technically and emotionally, in some of the longer poems, especially the poem `Tuireamh Marie Antoinette'.
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill is a poet and currently Writer in Residence at Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown.
Cookery
Conrad Gallagher
I have a really good collection of cookbooks from all over the world. My favourite bookshop is Books For Cooks in London, and I've often spent the whole day there on one of the big chairs, reading books from Australia, America and France. The type of books that I would go for has superb photography as I rarely read the recipes - I generally just gawp at the photos!
I have very strong ideas and philosophies about the way I want to cook and present food, and am also quite fussy about the ingredients I would use. I always have about a million dishes and ideas for new ones going through my head and find that books remind me of certain foods that I haven't used in a while. For instance I could flick through one of Charlie Trotter's beautiful books and see dishes that have Jerusalem artichokes, or salsify or mission figs in them and it would remind me of a favourite dish.
Favourite books include three by Charlie Trotter, his Cookbook; Vege- tables; and Seafood (all published by Pen Speed Press and £40 in UK). There's also The Bread Book, by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake (Conran Octopus Limited, £19.99). Another much-thumbed book is Cooking With Daniel Boulud (Random House, $40 in US).
Conrad Gallagher is a chef and the author of New Irish Cooking; Recipes from Dublin's Peacock Alley (Farmar, £19.99).
Irish
Alan Titley
Time was when books in Irish were relatively scarce, but this year produced several books that are there for the very long haul. Diarmuid Breathnach and Maire Ni Mhurchu brought a relative respite to their massive biographical project with 1882-1982: Beathaisneis A Cuig (An Clochomhar, £15), an easily-readable who's who of the most important people in our cultural history for most of this century.
Breandan O Buachalla's formidable Aisling Ghear (An Clochomhar, £25) rewrites Irish cultural and intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries, and puts it up to our historians and literary dilettantes to answer his challenge. Dante has been well served by his Irish translator Padraig de Brun, who in his turn has been as equally well-served by Ciaran O Coigligh in his meticulous editing of An Choimeide Dhiaga (An Clochomhar, £13).
Irish prose fiction received a boost with Micheal O Conghaile's recent Hennessy awards. This can only highlight the value of the stories in An Fear A Phleasc (Clo IarChonnachta, £10), which interfuses mad fantasy with gritty realism through ironic humour.
Robert Welch's Tearmann (Coisceim, £5) mixes the high literary novel with grotty low-life forms.
There's great reading in both Gearoid Denvir's Litriocht Agus Pobal (Clo Iar-Chonnachta, £15) and Liam O Muirthile's second collection of An Peann Coitianta (Cois Life, £6.99). I'd also recommend the bilingual anthologies of poetry, Sean O Tuama's Rogha Danta: Death In The Land Of Youth (Clo Ollscoile Chorcai, £7.95) and Cathal O Searcaigh's Out In The Open (Clo Iar-Chonnachta, £14).
Because of the year that's in it, Sean O Cuirrin's translation of Dracula (An Gum, £6.95), must be recommended as a neck-biting read.
Alan Titley is a writer and critic