Tim Robinson: Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and Labyrinth — Robinson spent decades mapping and writing about the Aran Islands and Connemara with obsessive geographical and human detail. The two-volume Connemara series (2006 and 2011) is the definitive work on this landscape: every townland, every lake, every family that ever farmed the bog. Dense reading but irreplaceable.
J.M. Synge: The Aran Islands — Synge's account of his time on the islands at the turn of the 20th century is short, luminous, and essential context for understanding the western seaboard. The Connemara coast is visible throughout, and the world he describes — Irish-speaking, isolated, ancient — was continuous with the mainland.
Heinrich Böll: Irish Journal — the German Nobel laureate bought a cottage on Achill Island, not Connemara, but this short book captures something permanent about the west of Ireland — the emptiness, the poverty, the extraordinary hospitality, the weather — that applies equally here. A book that genuinely made Germany love Ireland.
Sebastian Barry: The Secret Scripture — a fictional account set partly in the west of Ireland, exploring memory, mental illness, and the violence done to Irish women in the 20th century. Not Connemara specifically, but the Atlantic west is woven through it.