Irish interests mingle with literary culture, eclectic ideas, music folk- blurred- rock & my exile in this vale of tears a.k.a. Los Angeles.







About Me John L. Murphy / "Fionnchú" Los Angeles, California, United States Medievalist turned humanities professor; unrepentant but not unskeptical Fenian; overconfident accumulator of books & music; overcurious seeker of trivia, quadrivia, esoterica. Born in Los Angeles but should have been born in my parental Ireland. Eclectic music, reading, ideas-- often Celtic and/or medievally oriented. Tá Gaeilge a chuid feín dom faoi láthair, ach nílim cainteoir líofacht fós! Dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg tipyn nefa'. View my complete profile

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"Not the L.A. Times Book Review"

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Loughglynn, Co Roscommon



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Glencolmcille, Co Donegal



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Eric Gill



Favorite Books ten prose masters , apart from my top 20 (compiled separately farther down):

J.F. Powers' fiction;

Jorge Luis Borges;

Flannery O'Connor;

Primo Levi's memoirs;

Flann O'Brien's 'At Swim-Two-Birds';

Shulamith Hareven's 'Thirst' trilogy;

Ernie O'Malley's 'On Another Man's Wound';

Tim Robinson's Aran & Connemara travels;

Alexander Theroux's 'Laura Warholic, or the Sexual Intellectual.'

Henry Glassie's 'Passing the Time in Ballymenone' exemplifies passion wedded to scholarship.



Not to forget Michel Faber's ambitious fables, or Michel Houellebecq's infuriatingly thoughtful, misanthropic pisstakes-as-prose.



Plus requisite egghead tomes : Chaucer, Shakespeare, Torah, Gospels, Dante (I hover between the more literal Durling and Kirkpatrick's looser translation);

Pali texts attributed to the Buddha (tr. Wallis);

the Welsh Mabinogi (tr. Ford or Davies);

Field Day & David Pierce's anthologies of Irish literature;

Old English poems (Crossley-Holland's Oxford anthology in a pinch for you non-medievalists!);

Book of Job/ Psalms (Stephen Mitchell's translations).



Recent reads I liked: Julian Barnes' memento mori 'Nothing to be Frightened Of'

Alexander Berkman's 'Life of an Anarchist' (ed. Clay Fellner);

William T. Vollmann's unfolding 'Seven Dreams' chronicles;

Niall Griffiths' Liverpudlian-Cambrian clashes & cock-ups;

James Blish's novel about Roger Bacon, 'Doctor Mirabilis';

Céline's 'Journey to the End of Night' & 'Death on the Installment Plan';

William Golding's unnerving 'The Inheritors';

Alan Moore's debut novel 'A Voice in the Fire';

Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Muslim travelogues;

John Wehrheim's Bhutan + Kaua'i photo-narratives;

Bruce Seymour's 'Lola Montez: A Life';

Vladimir Nabokov's 'Bend Sinister' and as read by Jeremy Irons, 'Lolita';

David Mitchell's conceptual fiction;

Hugo Hamilton's fiction & memoirs;

Ken Bruen's Galway noir;

George Saunders' fiction;

Seán Ó Riordáin's Gaelic & Ciaran Carson's Belfast poems.

Pascal's Pensées (edited, outlined, explained as Peter Kreeft's 'Christianity for Modern Pagans')Book of Job/ Psalms (Stephen Mitchell's translations).I liked: On a short shelf of, apart from my top 20 (compiled separately farther down):J.F. Powers' fiction;Jorge Luis Borges;Flannery O'Connor;Primo Levi's memoirs;Flann O'Brien's 'At Swim-Two-Birds';Shulamith Hareven's 'Thirst' trilogy;Ernie O'Malley's 'On Another Man's Wound';Tim Robinson's Aran & Connemara travels;Alexander Theroux's 'Laura Warholic, or the Sexual Intellectual.'Henry Glassie's 'Passing the Time in Ballymenone' exemplifies passion wedded to scholarship.Not to forget Michel Faber's ambitious fables, or Michel Houellebecq's infuriatingly thoughtful, misanthropic pisstakes-as-prose.Plus requisite: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Torah, Gospels, Dante (I hover between the more literal Durling and Kirkpatrick's looser translation);Pali texts attributed to the Buddha (tr. Wallis);the Welsh Mabinogi (tr. Ford or Davies);Field Day & David Pierce's anthologies of Irish literature;Old English poems (Crossley-Holland's Oxford anthology in a pinch for you non-medievalists!);

Rockwell Kent



Desert Island Reading List: Top Twenty Black List, Section H: Francis Stuart

Book of Genesis (ed. Nahum Sarna)

Book of Psalms (tr. Stephen Mitchell)

Commedia: Dante (tr. Robin Fitzpatrick/ Sandow Birk, illust.)

Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire: Edward Gibbon (ed. David Wormersley)

English-Irish Dictionary: Tómas de Bhaldraithe

Everything Must Change: Grahame Davies

Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature

Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla: Niall Ó Dónaill

Lanark: Alasdair Gray

Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable: Samuel Beckett

Nine Rivers from Jordan: Denis Johnston

Oxford English Dictionary

The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien

The Magic Mountain: Thomas Mann (tr. John E. Woods)

Times Atlas of the World

To A Mountain in Tibet: Colin Thubron

U.S.A.: John Dos Passos

Ulysses: James Joyce

Vanity Fair: William Thackeray

Alasdair Gray



Desert Island Discs: Top Twenty Andy Irvine & Paul Brady: s/t

Another Music from a Different Kitchen: Buzzcocks

Days for Days: The Loud Family

If I Should Fall from Grace with God: The Pogues

May I Sing with Me: Yo La Tengo

Murmur: R.E.M.

Perverted by Language: The Fall

Please to See the King: Steeleye Span

Porcupine: Echo & the Bunnymen

Roxy Music: s/t

Sell Out: The Who

Slanted & Enchanted: Pavement

Space Ritual: Hawkwind

Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy): Brian Eno

The Book of Invasions: Horslips

The Notorious Byrd Brothers: The Byrds

The Scottish Play: Wire

The Scream: Siouxsie & the Banshees

Village Green Preservation Society: The Kinks

What We Did on Our Holidays: Fairport Convention

Peter Blake



Music The Fall;

Buzzcocks;

Loud Family;

Pavement;

older REM;

much of what passed for alternative/college/ postpunk a generation ago;

same goes for much punk/pop/new wave subtract five to ten years prior;

shoegazers;

old and neo-psychedelia;

Joy Division and the earliest New Order;

Roxy Music, most of, and Steely Dan, some of--made my mid-70's adolescence endurable, but why, why revive its "fake thrift-store" hirsute, grubby fashions?;

The Who & Kinks late 60's;

Yardbirds post-Clapton;

early Fairport & Steeleye Span;

Hawkwind's pre-'75 phase;

Spacemen 3 when they droned rather than channelled gospel;

Velvet Underground when Mo isn't singing;

New Zealand 80s-90s' "Dunedin Sound" on Flying Nun (Xpressway's "crumbling guitar" honorably mentioned) indie-label rock;

lots of Wire & Husker Du;

Horslips;

Irish folk & sean-nós;

droning, pipes and tin-whistles (the last of which I try to play, "mediocre" in elder son's opinion.)

1000s of cd's/lp's more.





Jack B. Yeats



Movies (For content): 'Decalogue.'

(For form): 4 classic faves: 'Citizen Kane', 'Sunset Blvd.', 'Some Like It Hot'. 'M'.

For brave if flawed attempts to combine form & content: Terry Malick's films 'Badlands,' "Days of Heaven,' 'Thin Red Line,' 'The New World,' 'Tree of Life,' 'Into the Wonder'; Philip Gröning's documentary meditation on time's silent experience: 'Die Große Stille,' {Into Great Silence}, Gasper Noe's 'Into the Void'





David Jones



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Samuel Geregniyan



Listmania: Learning Irish



Amazon Listmania: Learning Irish Gaelic



I've studied Irish off and on, living in the U.S., from books and tapes. While I have attended an immersion course in Ireland (Oideas Gael, Glencolmcille in Donegal), most of my learning has been on a self-taught basis. Irish does not come easily to me, but the pleasures from self-disciplined study make the halting ability for me to read the language of my ancestors utterly rewarding. Therefore, my recommendations tend towards the materials that will help the independent learner of the Irish language; many of these have been reviewed in more detail by me at their specific entries on Amazon. Furthermore, my emphasis may be more towards a reading knowledge rather than spoken fluency. For the latter, attend classes, preferably in Ireland!

Margaret Clarke



Andrew Dickson



What I'm Into (for now) Books: (both dipping into for the long haul to dip in and out of, among shorter reads) Emma Goldman's Living My Life. Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers (Ignet Avsey, tr.) .

Music: Bedhead, The Fall, The Gun Club, Hawkwind, High on Fire, Pavement, Roxy Music, Uncle Tupelo, White Fence, Wire.

Screen: Black Mirror, Game of Thrones.



John Luke



What I May Read Next "Autobiography" J.C. Powys; "Black Robe" Brian Moore; "Chaos + Night" Henry de Motherlant; "The Human Age" Wyndham Lewis; "Icelandic Journals" William Morris; "The Man Without Qualities" Robert Musil; "The Prague Cemetery" Umberto Eco; "Prophets of the Eternal Fjord" Kim Leine; "The Red and the Black" Stendhal; "Time Must Have a Stop" Aldous Huxley.



Anselm Kiefer



Miscellanea Lifelong learner of Irish, fascinated by languages--Old/Middle English and Latin of course; Spanish too, at it in French now; shards of Italian, Welsh + Hebrew: if never that skilled at retaining more than scattered nouns and cognates. Certainly dazes and confuses my family, friends, students.



Food: fish & chips; oatmeal; mince or my wife's from scratch blackbottom pie (even if she only made it once). Digestive biscuits, with or without currants. Bavarian pretzels. My wife's homemade chocolate chip or my oatmeal-raisin cookies.



Drink: Murphy's dry stout (not merely for its name--it's less bitter than Guinness) or Mackeson's sweeter stout. Or, a heady Belgian brew. Organic reds: syrahs, hardy blends, Spanish or Italian varietals I never heard of. Tea with milk & sugar, long brewed with loose leaves. Ballygowan sparkling water (which is not exported to the U.S., unfortunately).





John Kindness



Molly Crabapple



George Yepes



Augustus John

