Lunch Break Reads

Colm Kavanagh

@colmreads

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Books I've smuggled into forty-five-minute lunch breaks in Dublin 2, usually with a coffee going cold beside the laptop. No spreadsheets made the cut, mercifully. Some of these got read cover to cover on the DART, others got dog-eared at my actual desk pretending to be market research.

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Lunch Break Reads — 10 items
Name	Comment	Book	Author	Genre
1Skippy Dies	Funnier and sadder than any quarterly review I've written. Read it in three lunch breaks flat.	Skippy Dies	Paul Murray	Tragicomedy
2Normal People	Everyone in Dublin has an opinion on this one, like a ref decision in the 79th minute.	Normal People	Sally Rooney	Literary fiction
3The Gathering	Bleak in the way a wet Tuesday in Donnybrook is bleak. Booker winner for good reason.	The Gathering	Anne Enright	Family drama
4Milkman	Dense prose, no proper names anywhere. Took me longer than a Leinster away trip to Toulouse.	Milkman	Anna Burns	Literary fiction
5A Star Called Henry	Rebellion-era Dublin with proper swagger. Doyle writes dialogue like he's been eavesdropping on my office.	A Star Called Henry	Roddy Doyle	Historical fiction
6The Butcher Boy	Dark as a January balance sheet. Not one for the sunny lunch spot outside.	The Butcher Boy	Patrick McCabe	Gothic fiction
7Small Things Like These	Short enough for one sitting, heavy enough to sit with you all afternoon.	Small Things Like These	Claire Keegan	Novella
8At Swim-Two-Birds	Structured like a spreadsheet with circular references. Somehow it works.	At Swim-Two-Birds	Flann O'Brien	Absurdist fiction
9Open Season	Easy company for a Friday lunch when the market's been dull all week.	Open Season	Cathy Kelly	Contemporary fiction
10The Spinning Heart	Recession-era Ireland told in a dozen voices. Hit closer to home than most audit reports.	The Spinning Heart	Donal Ryan	Literary fiction