How Irish schools are combating the decline in reading
Boys especially are reading for pleasure less than they used to. It’s a global trend. But there are ways to fight back
No ‘Tolkien’s Epic Pooh’: Top books list is rage bait but it’s of the highest quality
Poem: Keep your friends close and ChatGPT closer
Short story: A pickle and cucumber get married in Vegiland. Then The Blender shows up
30 years since Nuala O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody? ‘Vibrating with hurt. It leaves a mark’
The Help author Kathryn Stockett on being fired by her publisher and feeling like a failure
The Pilgrimage; Stalin’s Apostles; Hello, Limerence - Two novels and a spy thriller
CTRL Essays on Video Games: Reflections on dominant imaginative language of 21st century
SHORT STORIES
Book Club
Sign up to the Irish Times books newsletter for features, podcasts and more
POETRY
Part of the Story by Margaret Busby: a kind of extraordinary autobiography, personal, informed and generous
By Helena Mulkerns
Poem: ‘I feel sorry for those little old machines. They’ll never see the bark of ancient evergreens’
By Robyn Yelverton McKiernan
Other People’s Lives by Kathleen MacMahon: Writing of harried midlife with devastating accuracy
By Catherine Higgins-Moore
‘Frail, dust-coated and desperate’: A soldier cradled the young man, drowning in a sea of concrete
By Líle-Grace Mullan
The art of children’s books: ‘The words and pictures are not necessarily telling you the same thing’
By Sara Keating
International Booker Prize 2026: Yáng Shuang-zi and translator Lin King win for Taiwan Travelogue
By Martin Doyle
Sally Rooney releasing Hebrew translation of latest novel with boycott-compliant publisher
By Alice Speri
New crime fiction: frenemies, foul play and a touch of the supernatural
By Brian Cliff and Elizabeth Mannion
Doireann Ní Ghríofa: ‘In the past someone like me would have been brought to an asylum’
By Martin Doyle
Sue Divin: ‘Character, voice, plot, pace, authenticity – if a writer nails that, I’ll read their novel’
By Martin Doyle
Sarah Gilmartin: ‘Even before relationships and infidelity, desire is a great driver’
By Martin Doyle
