John O'Mahony has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 2.5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is The Age of Absurdity.
The Age of Absurdity
Summary
The good news is that the great thinkers from history have proposed the same strategies for happiness and fulfilment. The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. This knotty dilemma is the subject of The Age of Absurdity - a wry and accessible investigation into how the desirable states of well-being and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life. Michael Foley examines the elusive condition of happiness common to philosophy, spiritual teachings and contemporary psychology, then shows how these are becoming increasingly difficult to apply in a world of high expectations. The common challenges of earning a living, maintaining a relationship and ageing are becoming battlegrounds of existential angst and self-loathing in a culture that demands conspicuous consumption, high-octane partnerships and perpetual youth. In conclusion, rather than denouncing and rejecting the age, Foley presents an entertaining strategy of not just accepting but embracing today's world - finding happiness in its absurdity. Cover credit: The Caravan Gallery.
©2011 Michael Foley (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
Isn't This Fun
Summary
Michael Foley wants to understand why he doesn't appear to be experiencing as much fun as everyone else. So, with characteristic wit and humour, he sets out to understand what fun really means, examining its heritage, its cultural significance and the various activities we associate with fun. He investigates pursuits such as dancing, sex, holidays, sport, gaming and comedy and concludes that fun is not easy, simple and fixed, as many seem to believe, but elusive, complex and constantly changing. In fact fun is a profoundly serious business - a range of new group rituals evolving in response to cultural developments, often motivated as much by spirituality as hedonism. Also, while fun is a modern phenomenon, it turns out to have re-created many of the elements of early ritual. His findings will invigorate you with insights, make you laugh at life and quite possibly help you to understand why the post-postmodern is actually the pre-premodern. Michael Foley was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, but has lived most of his adult life in London, working for 23 years as a lecturer in information technology at the University of Westminster before retiring in 2007 to concentrate on full-time writing. He has published critically acclaimed poetry, novels and nonfiction, including New and Selected Poems (Blackstaff Press, 2011). His first nonfiction book, The Age of Absurdity (Simon & Schuster, 2010), was a best seller and has been translated into seven languages.
©2016 Michael Foley (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
Vagabond
Summary
Danny Curnow, known in the army family by his call sign, Vagabond, ran agents, informers. Now he lives in quiet isolation and works as a guide to tourists visiting the Normandy's D-Day beaches. But violence in Northern Ireland is on the rise again. The covert world was close to destroying Danny. Fifteen years later the stakes are higher, the risks greater, and Danny will have to prove that he is as hard and ruthless as before.
©2014 Gerald Seymour (P)2014 W F Howes Ltd
Harry's Game
Summary
A British cabinet minister is gunned down on a London street by an IRA assassin. In the wake of national outcry, the authorities must find the hitman. But the trail is long cold, the killer gone to ground in Belfast, and they must resort to more unorthodox methods to unearth him. Ill prepared and poorly briefed, undercover agent Harry Brown is sent into the heart of enemy territory to infiltrate the terrorists. But when it is a race against the clock, mistakes are made and corners cut. For Harry Brown, alone in a city of strangers, where an intruder is the subject of immediate gossip and rumour, one false move is enough to leave him fatally isolated....
©1975 Gerald Seymour (P)2013 Hodder & Stoughton