Seamas O'Reilly

Not sure of working towards it, but it was definitely something I knew I was going to, you know, get to eventually.

A voracious reader my entire life, but always, you know, fitted between fiction and non-fiction, so...

What do you read?

Mostly, I would say at the moment, I read a lot of old stuff that I haven't gotten around to reading before.

And occasionally, obviously, I have to read stuff for work in terms of like reviewing books or interviewing authors.

But most recently, I'd say a lot more nonfiction.

I think when you're writing fiction as well, you kind of, or I do anyway, a few authors I've spoken to have said this, you avoid reading too much contemporary fiction because you might magpie some details or start to feel like you're copying other trends or whatever.

So just to make sure that you're original.

Just to make sure that, yeah, because I'm probably, yeah, I'm a bit of a magpie.

I remember I had to read four Evelyn Waugh novels for a piece and I could see on the page when I was trying to, you know, accent it a little bit with, you know, one of the great literary prose stylists of the 20th century.

And I thought, that's probably, that's enough of the Evelyn Waugh in the middle of writing my memoir, which has very little to do with the themes of Evelyn Waugh.

So I think most of the time I'm probably reading about two or three books at once.

Usually two non-fiction, one fiction.

I do.

I read them very slowly.

And also audiobook is a lot.

So if I'm going out running and, you know, kind of bantering around.

Yes, well, I mean, I'm always very eager to shout out the audiobook because there is a sort of a, what would you call, a sort of a hinge character that goes throughout the book named Dermot.

He's a screenwriter who's tackling this titular Prestige Drama about the Troubles, which is set in his hometown of Derry.

And so he's there and he's kind of back in Derry and you see in his version of events, you know, what's going through, the sort of doubts he has, the sort of influences he's had over his life in terms of, you know, this story and maybe where the story came from.