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The past year provided the opportunity to read thirty-three titles and interview nine authors, but the real highlight was being invited to moderate an Irish crime panel discussion called "Forty Shades of Grey: Real Fiction, Real Ireland" at the Sunday Independent's Books 2008 event in September. Meeting Gene Kerrigan, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Brian McGilloway, Arlene Hunt, and Declan Burke was an honor. The missus swears I didn't make too big of an eejit of myself, but she is just being kind.
I am also grateful for an opportunity that passed me by. For some daft reason, RTE screen-tested me for a weekly book critic slot on their afternoon television program. I took a day off work and drove down to Donnybrook. Shaking hands with producers! Getting wired up for sound! Being told to stop looking into the very expensive-looking camera! Auditioning was a thrill that lasted the whole next week of waiting. Media celebrity was not for me in 2008, alas. I didn't even get to bonk anyone famous. But I did get the chance to stop and actually put into words why I wanted the job of telling people about stories.
Rather than my usual annual "what I read," lemme share those answers with you. What would your own responses have been? It's harder than it seems to boil it down in to clear answers.
Tell us, why are you a bookworm?
Books are a conversation that can't be stopped by borders and years: characters, settings, topics, ideas. You can make a connection with someone who lived centuries ago, be more informed by their position, their observations and consequences. You can fill your own head with their thoughts, decide who you are by whether you agree or choose to make your own decision. You can be down and alone, pick up a book and discover- there's someone who was there before you. There's someone who has felt just the same.
Besides, reading's a great escape. Lord of the Rings was the Fantasy that got me through my difficult years at school. There's millions who are in my same boots, well-adjusted adult veterans who stood facing the armies of Mordor. Where we were teenaged outcasts, we're now united.
It's a big, absurd lonely world we all live in. Who wouldn't want to be informed and connected as possible?
What is the best book you've ever read?
Ever read? What's the best breath you've ever breathed? Let me narrow it down to a question more manageable, if you don't mind.
So far this year the best book I have read is Black Swan Green. It's by an English writer named David Mitchell, about the same age as me, who's also now living here in Ireland I understand. He was short-listed for the Booker Prize twice, most recently for that book Cloud Atlas that everyone's raving about. But I wanted to go in to a novel that I knew absolutely nil about, no preconceived notions. From the very first chapter, this kid Jason Taylor living in the fictional midlands town of Black Swan Green, just knocked me out. In thirteen chapters that covered thirteen months of Taylor's life, Mitchell captured exactly what it's like to be twelve years old. This novel brings the truth and power of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha into a time that I did not realize how well I remembered until seeing afresh. Damn.
I maintain a list of the best books that I've read each year on my website, criticalmick.com. I even give out an annual award for the best one. It's called an "Oo," as in "book" or "unrooly." You know, the sound made when impressed?
What genre/type of books do you like best and why?
I'm loving this explosion in Irish crime fiction, the last several of years. The talent coming out of Ireland has been winning Edgar and Shaymus awards on the worldwide stage: Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, Tana French.
It's not only that I like seeing the goodies and baddies of the place I live- Ireland is the perfect location for crime. Unarmed cops, heavily armed baddies - Good booze, pub strangers who appear friendly - Caches of buried arms - Doorway to Europe, strong connections to... everywhere - New prosperity across the road from old poverty - Emigrants returning home... bringing what back? - Political fun! - Drop-dead gorgeous women - Savage tempers - Celtic heritage - Small island where chance meetings, wanted and unwanted, are a certainty - Major drug route into the UK - Poets, musicians, comedians and other lyrical, colorful bastards - Majestic backdrops - Rich history of injustices to dredge up - It's a place you thought you knew, but you're guaranteed to be surprised.
Where and when do you like to read best?
Bedtimes and beaches, but also cool mornings. Kevin Stevens wrote Song for Katya, a cold war romance that took place in Moscow. I would get up early, brew a big mug of scalding black coffee, and read it on the swing in my back garden. October in Ireland is not exactly Moscow, but the chill really fit. It really connected.
And I remember, when I was new to this city, I'd take books on tape out of the Ilac Centre library. I'd have Brian Moore in my head and just walk for hours.
I've always got a book in my hand and twenty or more tottering on my night table. There's few things better than sitting down, talking about them with any old body. Finding what you're read in common. Plugging the ones you've liked. Seeing what new perspectives th,Dan offer.
What was the first book that made an impact on you?
There was this short story making the rounds at my high school lunch table. "Oh! You've got to read this!" one of my buds came in saying, and passing on this battered copy of one of those Best American Short Stories anthologies from the 1980's. The next day, the friend who took it would come in raving, "There's this story about a mad teacher by Charles Baxter, this story called Gryphon. You've got to read it!"
My turn came. I did more that sit down at the lunch table the next day saying "You've got to read this," After college I taught school for three years in one of the poorest parishes of Louisiana, in part because of that story.
Peace
Yer Friend Mick Halpin
...click to see who's in the running for 
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and the year's winner gets to tattoo it on their foot.
