Books
The Skinny book guide – bringing you book reviews, features, events, reviews and author interviews. Find previews and on the ground reporting from festivals of literature and poetry in Scotland and beyond.
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FeaturesMills & Boon: 'I Read These, So You Don't Have To'
Valentine's Day is coming up, so why don't you read one of Mills and Boon's romance novels? Because of everything that follows, that's why not Read more »| 01 Feb 2011 -
Book ReviewsProust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer’s exploration into that old Science vs. Art debate throws up some refreshing and thought-provoking messages. Lehrer takes his mode... Read more »| 28 Jan 2011 -
Book ReviewsThe Liberation of Celia Kahn by J. David Simons
Set against the background of rent strikes, anti-war sentiment and a revolution brewing in Russia, a young Jewish woman from the Gorbals gains her first tast... Read more »| 27 Jan 2011 -
Book ReviewsWartime Notebooks by Marguerite Duras
The posthumous publication of a writer’s early notebooks and drafts can often feel like a cynical opportunity, or a desk-clearing exercise of little in... Read more »| 26 Jan 2011 -
Book Reviews
Treblinka by Chil Rajchman
Chil Rajchman’s memoir of mass extermination in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka is unhysterical in tone, but harrowing in effect. Its spare, unsensati... Read more »| 25 Jan 2011 -
Book Reviews
The Breakers by Claudie Gallay
Villages at the end of the earth share a degree of uniformity in that through their inhospitable settings and eccentric communities, they have an ability to ... Read more »| 25 Jan 2011
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Book Reviews
The Legacy by Kirsten Tranter
A literary novel that borrows elements from Portrait of a Lady and The Big Sleep sounds a bit too literary and not very novel. But The Legacy isn&rs... Read more »| 05 Jan 2011 -
Book Reviews
The Passages of Herman Melville by Jay Parini
Jay Parini's last novel was The Last Station, about the final days of Tolstoy. How to follow up a novel about the writer of War and Peace? With a novel about... Read more »| 05 Jan 2011 -
Book Reviews
The One O'Clock Gun
The One O'Clock Gun, which regularly startles unwary tourists and is an instinctive time-check for the locals, is a well-established institution at t... Read more »| 21 Dec 2010 -
Features
Ryan Van Winkle: A Work In Progress
Ryan Van Winkle, reader in residence at The Scottish Poetry Library, Editor of The Edinburgh Review, and used to write reviews for The Skinny. So when he said his first book of poems was being published, our Reading Editor was so sure it’d be great that he thought it be best to get him to critique it himself… Read more »| 20 Dec 2010 -
Book Reviews
Stramash by Daniel Gray
Somewhat unusually, Daniel Gray has followed up Homage To Caledonia, his book about the Scots who fought in the Spanish Civil War, with a book about lower di... Read more »| 14 Dec 2010 -
Book Reviews
Drive! by Andrew McCallum Crawford
A debut novel with a lot of good things in it, Drive! is not only the name of the book, but the name of a band that main character, Terry, joins. Well, joins... Read more »| 13 Dec 2010 -
Features
Have You Met metaphrog Yet?
Five years in the making (well, sort of), metaphrog's new book Louis: Night Salad is out just in time for Christmas. What is it? Read on... Read more »| 30 Nov 2010 -
Book Reviews
101 Whiskies To Try Before You Die by Ian Buxton
Rather like a drop or two of water in a dram of single malt, Ian Buxton’s lively guide opens the subject of whisky up and lets it breath. Designed to a... Read more »| 29 Nov 2010 -
Book Reviews
Sunset Park by Paul Auster
Miles Heller is a one-man gloomfest. He’s haunted by the death of his stepbrother, estranged from his family and facing blackmail for conductin... Read more »| 24 Nov 2010