Books for Breakfast
Peter Sirr and Enda Wyley
A podcast focussing on fiction and poetry hosted by poets and writers Peter Sirr and Enda Wyley. Also features the Toaster Challenge where guest writers are given the time it takes to make toast to talk about a book that has resonated with them.
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Top 10 Books for Breakfast Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Books for Breakfast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Books for Breakfast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Books for Breakfast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
79: Mall Life: Karin-Lin Greenberg
Books for Breakfast
05/15/25 • 25 min
On this episode we talk about this year's International Literature Festival Dublin which runs from 16-25 May, and where Enda will be interviewing novelists Gethan Dick and Patrick Holloway. We also talk to Karin-Lin Greenberg about Your Are Here, her novel set in a dying mall in upstate New York.
"Lin-Greenberg’s web of characters illustrate the complex lives of ordinary people." —Laura Zornosa, Time
"Like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the charm of Lin-Greenberg’s engaging story lies in the sweetness of the characters’ everyday lives." —Becky Meloan, The Washington Post
"Charming . . . The small lies woven into a lifelong marriage, the petty resentments harbored by polite neighbors and, above all, the comic discrepancy between a character’s outer and inner life—all emerge unforced and unadorned in this multifaceted narrative . . . But the everyday reality that Ms. Lin-Greenberg so memorably creates is not easily eclipsed. Compassion and wry understatement remain her strengths, and in You Are Here she captures not only the frayed texture of suburban existence but also the turbulent emotions, immediate and long buried, of protagonists who are ultimately far more than stereotypes." —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal
"Beautifully written and radically sympathetic . . . Among its achievements, You Are Here is a breathtaking depiction of a community—even one at the mall." —Jeffrey Condran, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Absolutely irresistible." —People
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.
69: The Amergin Step, An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh
Books for Breakfast
12/12/24 • 37 min
This episode sees us back in Books Upstairs in Dublin’s D’Olier Street again. This time we’ve come for a conversation between Paddy Bushe and poet and academic Ben Keatinge on the occasion of the Dublin launch of The Amergin Step: An Exploration in the Imagination of Iveragh. The book is named after the famous poem that Leabhar Gabhála Éireann or The Book of Invasions tells us was recited by the poet and lawmaker of the Gaelic Milesian people, as he stepped ashore in Kerry after their voyage from Galicia and staked an imaginative claim to the island. In a book reminiscent of Tim Robinson’s Aran and Connemara explorations Paddy Bushe investigates contemporary and historical literature, folklore, myth, archaeology and placenames are explored by the author at the same time as he explores the mountains, sea and islands of the tip of the Iveragh peninsula to uncover the stories that have animated them from earliest to present times. Coffee time!
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Incidental music
Goddess of the Sea · Jimena Contreras.
Logo by Freya Sirr
To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.
21: Fiction for 2021; Berryman's letters; African American poetry
Books for Breakfast
01/21/21 • 48 min
Welcome to Books for Breakfast in 2021! We begin the year with a look at some noteworthy fiction from new and familiar writers. Books mentioned are:
The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin
A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion
Words to Shape My Name by Laura McKenna
Pure Gold by John Patrick McHugh
Snowflake by Louise Nealon
We Are Not in the World by Conor O’Callaghan
The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter
The Dark Room by Sam Blake
Life Sentences by Billy O’Callaghan
Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce by Nuala O’Connor
White City by Kevin Power
A Shock by Keith Ridgway
Weirdo by Zadie Smith and Nick Laird
Also mentioned was RTE’s Spoken Stories, Independence, a collection of 12 stories where authors write about what Independence means to them.
Today's Toaster Challenge Guest is Philip Coleman, Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and co -editor of The Selected Letters of John Berryman. We feature a rare recording of John Berryman reading from the Dream Songs and discuss Berryman's life, work and letters. Philip's Toaster Challenge is the groundbreaking new anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle edited by Kevin Young.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Artwork by Freya Sirr
To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.
49: Critic at Large: Kevin Power's The Written World
Books for Breakfast
06/09/22 • 37 min
What’s the state of criticism in Ireland? Who needs reviewers and critics and are they even worth reading in any case? Well, one man who is worth reading is Kevin Power, novelist, whose The Written World, just published by The Lilliput Press, gathers some of the reviews and essays he’s written over the last decade. I’ll be talking to Kevin about his book in this, the last Books for Breakfast of the current season; we hope you’ve enjoyed the journey so far and hopefully we’ll be back with more in the autumn. In the meantime feel free to enjoy the now extensive back catalogue of breakfast bites ...
Kevin Power established his reputation early, with the publication of Bad Day at Blackrock, which told a fictionalised version of a story that had gripped the country, the death of Brian Murphy in Dublin in 2000 as a result of a violent assault outside a nightclub. That novel was subsequently made into the award winning film What Richard Did directed by Lenny Abrahamson in 2012. He was the winner of the 2009 Rooney Prize and last year his much anticipated second novel White City was published and won a lot of attention and praise. A darkly funny book, it revisits the same sort of terrain occupied by Bad Day at Blackrock, set in the word of Celtic Tiger Ireland among the city’s privileged and in this case ruthless upper classes, and it’s in the voice of the seriously shattered son of a South Dublin banker desperately trying to piece his life together.
Praise for The Written World
'Kevin Power’s glorious collection reveals a writer to depend upon.'
Declan Hughes in The Irish Independent
The elegant and intelligent essays in The Written World will appeal to anyone with an interest in literary criticism.
– Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them A Good Time
'The Written World is a testament to Power’s well-deserved status as one of Ireland’s most reliably engaging writers. Oh, and did I mention he’s often hilarious, too?'
– Totally Dublin
'...his book is metropolitan and cosmopolitan in word and spirit, enlightening and amusing, and across its pages art is happening too.;
– drb.ie
42 : Poetry, Memory and the Party: Thomas McCarthy Tells All
Books for Breakfast
02/10/22 • 57 min
Today's show is devoted to an in-depth interview with poet Thomas McCarthy, whose Poetry, Memory and the Party: Journals 1974-2014 has recently been published by Gallery Press. The journals span forty years of Thomas McCarthy’s life lived between a modest background and the ‘Big House’ of West Waterford and his immersion in the literary life of Cork against the troubles of a changing Ireland. It's an intimate portrait of a poet's life with all its attendant excitements and frustrations, as well an engrossing account of the literary and social milieu of Cork, the Anglo-Irish world of the Brigadier whose Victorian garden he replanted, and his travels farther afield.
‘For those interested in literature, this is addictive reading material, offering unparalleled insight into the many joys and sundry frustrations of someone who determined early to devote himself to the pursuit of his literary vocation.’ — Clíona Ní Ríordáin, The Irish Times
Thomas's Toaster Challenge choice is Ethel Mannin's Young in the Twenties.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Artwork by Freya Sirr
To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.
2: Short poems and Spies
Books for Breakfast
07/22/20 • 27 min
On this morning's show a mix of poetry and espionage, and what it's like to qualify as a solicitor and give up law on the same day. Enda Wyley and Peter Sirr discuss collections of short poems such as Short and Sweet: 101 Very Short Poems, edited by Simon Armitage and the newly published The Word Ark, a pocket-sized anthology of poems responding to our fellow creatures, great and small, published at a time when not only the animal kingdom but the world at large is beset by dangers on an unprecedented scale. It is, in the words of its editor Pat Boran, “An invitation to look more intently at the world beyond ourselves, an external balance to our inner turmoil.”
Today's Toaster Challenge guest is singer-songwriter, film maker and advertising man Nick Kelly.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Art work by Freya Sirr
To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or click on the appropriate button above. If you want to be alerted when a new episode is released follow the instructions here for iPhone or iPad. For Spotify notifications follow the instructions here.
71: Keith Payne builds a boat and translates Luisa Castro; 2024 highlights
Books for Breakfast
12/31/24 • 66 min
On today’s show, the last of 2024, we talk to Keith Payne about his recent boat building and poem writing project. Currachs and naomhógs are among the only sea craft built upside down, and the expertise dates back generations. Keith learned all of this and a. lot more when he found himself working on a Dunfanaghy currach over 16 weeks. He was Cork City Library eco-poet in residence from 2022 to 2023 when he was drawn to the work of Meitheal Mara. He learned about carpenters' marks and pigtails and how to row with Naomhóga Chorcaí. His latest work, Building the Boat, records his experiences with Meitheal Mara in verse, and it has just been published by Badly Made Books. He also talks to us about Whales and Whales, his recent translations of a powerful Galician poet, Luisa Castro.
The second half of today’s show is a look back at some highlights from our podcast in 2024, with contributions from Michael Agustin, Dermot Bolger, Kerry Hardie, Aoife Lyall, Victoria Kennefick, Mary Costello, Paul Muldoon, Neil Astley, Gormfhlaith Ní Shíocháin Ní Bheoláin, Noel Monahan and Christine Dwyer Hickey.
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
18: Poems for Winter; Kathleen MacMahon, Helen Garner.
Books for Breakfast
11/19/20 • 45 min
It’s not quite winter yet but we thought we’d begin with some poems to get us in the mood for the approaching season. Thanks to John O’Donnell, Jean O’Brien, Jane Clarke and Mark Granier for reading some of their favourite winter poems.
Today’s Toaster Challenge guest is Kathleen MacMahon, whose new novel Nothing But Blue Sky has recently been published. Kathleen’s choice is The Spare Room by Helen Garner
Poems read:
‘Lines for Winter’ by Mark Strand, read by John O’Donnell
‘Snow’ by Louis MacNeice, read by Jean O’Brien
‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden, read by Enda Wyley
‘Small Cold Poem’ by Sally Purcell, from Collected Poems , edited by Peter Jay, Anvil Press, 2004, read by Peter Sirr
‘Winter Love' by Linda Gregg, read by Peter Sirr
‘River Snow’ Liu Tsung-yuan, read by Peter Sirr
‘Mistaking the season’ by Yosa Buson, read by Peter Sirr
‘To Juan at the Winter Solstice’ by Robert Graves, read by Seán Lysaght
‘February Evening in New York' by Denise Levertov, read by Enda Wyley
‘Encounter' by Czeslaw Miłosz, read by Mark Granier
'Glacier' by Gillian Clarke, read by Jane Clarke
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
1000 Years by fourstones (c) copyright 2005 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/victor/2302
Romance for Piano and Cello by Martijn de Boer (NiGiD) (c) copyright 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/NiGiD/50238 Ft: AT
Artwork by Freya Sirr
To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. If you want to be alerted when a new episode is released follow the instructions here for iPhone or iPad. For Spotify notifications follow the instructions here.
40: Claire Keegan on Small Things Like These
Books for Breakfast
12/09/21 • 43 min
'A single one of Keegan's grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving.'
– Hilary Mantel
'A haunting, hopeful masterpiece'.
– Sinéad Gleeson
'Astonishing ... Claire Keegan makes her moments real – and then makes them matter.'
– Colm Tóibín
'A moral tale that is unsentimental and deeply affecting, because true and right.'
– Andrew O'Hagan
Some of the responses to Claire Keegan's new book. Today on Books for Breakfast, in an extended and wide-ranging interview, Claire talks to us about and reads from Small Things Like These.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Artwork by Freya Sirr
To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.
72: Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter
Books for Breakfast
02/06/25 • 57 min
In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering ...
In this episode we talk to Andrew Miller about his latest novel, which some have called his best yet, The Land in Winter. For his Toaster Challenge Andrew selects Light Years by James Salter.
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.
Andrew Miller's first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and The Slowworm's Song. Andrew Miller's novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.
The Land in Winter was a best book of the year for the Independent, Guardian, and Good Housekeeping.
'Tender, elegant, soulful and perfect. A novel that hits your cells and can be felt there, without your brain really knowing what's happened to it. Superb'
SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital
'Delicate and devastating'
INDEPENDENT, The 20 best books of the year
'Miller may have written his best book yet . . . brilliance that is not to be missed'
GUARDIAN, The best fiction of 2024
'Incredibly satisfying'
FINANCIAL TIMES
'A novel of dazzling humanity and captivating, crystalline prose'
MAIL ON SUNDAY
'Perfect'
RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER
'I loved The Land in Winter . . . There were moments I thought of Penelope Fitzgerald - that moment I have always loved in The Beginning of Spring when the birch trees seem to grow hands - those liminal moments that are kind of beyond words, or explanation, but Miller finds them anyway. It's a thing of rare beauty'
RACHEL JOYCE, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
'Disruptive and graceful beyond anything I've read'
SARAH HALL, author of Burntcoat
December 1962, the West Country.
PRAISE FOR ANDREW MILLER
'Andrew Miller's writing is a source of wonder and delight'
HILARY MANTEL
'One of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind'
SUNDAY TIMES
'A writer of very rare and outstanding gifts'
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
'A highly intelli
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FAQ
How many episodes does Books for Breakfast have?
Books for Breakfast currently has 80 episodes available.
What topics does Books for Breakfast cover?
The podcast is about Poetry, Literature, Novels, Writing, Podcasts, Books and Arts.
What is the most popular episode on Books for Breakfast?
The episode title '63: Neil Astley on Soul Feast and more' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Books for Breakfast?
The average episode length on Books for Breakfast is 43 minutes.
How often are episodes of Books for Breakfast released?
Episodes of Books for Breakfast are typically released every 14 days.
When was the first episode of Books for Breakfast?
The first episode of Books for Breakfast was released on Jul 16, 2020.
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