Showing results by narrator "Conor MacNeill" in All Categories

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does everything he's supposed to do. He works hard, he studies, and he—mostly—stays out of trouble. The thirty-year conflict is over, he's told, and his future is lit with promise. But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same—the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost brothers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day.

Sean's brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble but you can't say anything to Anto. Sean was supposed to be different. He was supposed to leave and never come back. But Sean does come back. Arriving home after university, he finds Anthony's drinking is worse than ever. Meanwhile the jobs in Belfast have vanished, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on and no one will give him the time of day. One night he loses control and assaults a stranger at a party, and everything is tipped into chaos.

We are trained from the youngest of ages to imagine that love is a force outside ourselves, that if you keep swiping one day your prince will come, that love is something you have to look for, you have to work for, you have to diet for. The truth is love is an inside job. We are creators of love not discoverers of love, and until we realise that love that comes out of us, rather than to us, we’ll never really get it or feel it.

Within the staggeringly dangerous and high-pressure sport of professional motorcycling, Jonathan Rea’s achievements are unprecedented. A legendary World Superbike Champion with more race wins than any rider in history, Rea’s trailblazing success shows no sign of slowing down. Now, for the first time, this remarkable sportsman tracks his life and career.

This Is It is a practical meditation guide that uses humour to teach the benefits of mindfulness through a series of accessible techniques. It’s also a hilarious account of one man’s attempt to find peace in a chaotic life, and follows his journey from the bogs of Kildare to the bright lights of LA and on to enlightenment in India. However, despite travelling the world he found that much of the wisdom he discovered had parallels in Irish attitudes to life, that there’s an intersection between ancient wisdom and what Irish people lick off the stones.

Juliet believes girls like her - girls with arthritis - don't get their own love stories. She exists at the edges of her friends' social lives, skipping parties to play online chess under a pseudonym with strangers around the world. There, she isn't just 'the girl with crutches'. Ronan is the new kid: good looking, smart, a bad boy plagued by guilt over what happened to his brother Ciaran. Chesslife is his escape.