Award-winning Irish Author and Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick Professor Joseph O’Connor was guest of honour at the launch of the 2014 One Campus One Book initiative as his most recent novel The Thrill of it All was announced as chosen book for the academic year 2014/2015. 

UL One Campus, One Book is a University of Limerick initiative, led by the Regional Writing Centre and the Centre for Teaching and Learning, encouraging all members of the campus community, students and staff, to read the same book and talk to one another about that book during the academic year. 

The Thrill of it All by Professor Joseph O’Connor was published in May 2014 and was nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic novel of the year 2014. 

Speaking at the event Professor O’Connor said "I'm delighted and truly honoured for my novel to have been chosen as UL's One Campus One Book. It's a book about young students who happen to meet in the early weeks of college and embark together on a great adventure. Since I've just started at UL myself, and since my students and new colleagues are the greatest thing about being here, it's particularly touching and meaningful to me that The Thrill of it All has been honoured in this way." 
The event, which was officially launched by Professor Paul McCutcheon, Vice President Academic and Registrar, is the first of a number of campus events involving the book which will take place over the course of the year. 

Professor McCutcheon said: “the promotion of reading and effective writing is central to UL’s strategic commitment to delivering a broader curriculum for UL students, enhancing graduate attributes and competencies and increasing their capacity to adapt and respond to the challenges they face in their professional careers.” 

The inaugural 2013/2014‘One Campus One Book’ was Donal Ryan’ s The Spinning Heart, winner of the Bord Gáis Energy Book of the Year 2012 and the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year. 

Reviews of The Thrill of it All have described the novel as: 
“Intoxicating….a love letter to rock ‘n’ roll…incredibly moving” (Sunday Independent). 
“Occasionally, you read a sentence that you know couldn’t be bettered: Joseph O’Connor’s new novel is jam-packed with such sentences, paragraph after paragraph of brilliance.” (Guardian).