After a record breaking spell of bad summer weather (49 consecutive days of rain from June 11th - July 29th), ‘NewsFour’ took advantage of a welcome break in the clouds and spent some time outside Hampton Books in Donnybrook to ask some passers-by what they were reading.

With the weather as it is there must be nothing better than to stay indoors with a good book.

John Keane
“At the moment I’m reading ‘On Chesil Beach’. It’s by Ian McEwan. The book is basically about human relationships. A husband and wife have just got married and they’re going on their honeymoon and they are both looking back over their lives. I’m also reading Conrad Black’s biography. It’s a business book. He was charged with fraud so he’s in the news at the moment. There’s a big court case in America. I choose books if they appeal to me and I’ll probably read Alistar Cooke’s biography next.”

Kelly Mason
“I’m reading a book called ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’. I don’t know the name of the author but she’s Ukrainian I think. It’s about this woman’s father who’s in his seventies who marries a woman who is forty years younger so she can stay in America and it’s about what happens in their relationship, which is a big, big mess. He’s a widower and he wants to help her out. Right now he’s trying to divorce her and she’s contesting it. I’ll read a book if it’s recommended. My sister is good at that. My next book is going to be Harry Potter.”

Leo Weida
“I’m reading a Chinese novel. I don’t know how to say it in English. I think maybe ‘Blood Romantics’. It’s about people in China thirty years ago from now. It’s about the history of those people from thirty years ago to now. The people in the story are a factory worker and an army solider and young people loving. It is about a revolution. I sometimes read foreign novels in Chinese. The last book by a foreign author I read was James Bond, 007. It was about a terrorist on an island, a doctor. I think the name of it was ‘Doctor No’.”

Charmaine McGing
“I’m reading ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ by Arthur Golden. It’s the story of a geisha girl and what she went through. How she eventually becomes a madam and has to take care of other geisha. It’s about how traditionally the geisha was a normal way of living for them. While we might look at it from a different point of view, you know, we might condemn it or criticise it, the attitude was that it was actually an art. There was tradition and a different culture behind it, therefore it was not just mere prostitution. Geisha are still part of today’s society in Japan.”

Garda Daly
“I wouldn’t be a big reader, but I’ve just finished the new book from Ross O’Carroll Kelly, ‘I Shouldn’t Have Got Off At Sydney Parade’. It’s about a fella from the Dublin 4 area, a rugby guy, a young fella and what he gets up to. I have Dan Brown’s ‘Deception Point’ at home so I’ll probably read that next. I read his other two, ‘Angels and Demons’ and ‘The DaVinci Code’. I thought ‘Angels and Demons’ was better than ‘The Da Vinci Code’. I read books that interest me or books that I hear good reports about.”

Sarah Dowd
“I’m reading ‘Gulliver Lilliput’ in ‘Favourite Fairytales’. It’s this boy, he ate a lot and then he grew into a strong boy and he grew fat and he liked to sail in ships and go to islands and lands and then one day he went on a ship and there was a big storm and the ship blew and he was holding on a piece of wood and then he blew into a tiny land with little people and he was big so they had to tie him up and the king said you have to help us because there are pirates trying to attack us and then he helped them. He killed the pirates and then sunk the ship and then the king made him a ship and then he sailed back.”

Short Story Competition Win €100!
‘NewsFour’ invites readers to write a short story to be in with a chance of winning €100. The winner will also get their winning story published in the next issue of ‘NewsFour’ due out in October.
All entries should be no more than 1500 words and be sent to the following address by 1st October.
Short Story Competition
NewsFour
15 Fitzwilliam Street
Ringsend
Dublin 4
Or by email to: newsfourscs@eircom.net