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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FestivalsSimon Crump & Ewan Morrison @ EIBF
When the chair, Aly Barr, tells you that he has been given the ‘young bloke’ strand of events and you sit in a room disturbingly close to... Read more »| 29 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
John Simpson @ EIBF
Who among us wouldn’t covet John Simpson’s air miles? His destinations we might not relish quite so much. Just back from Afghanistan and ... Read more »| 29 Aug 2010 -
FestivalsSteve Bloomfield @ EIBF
Steve Bloomfield is the author of Africa United, a book subtitled ‘How Football Explains Africa’ and was a journalist in Africa from 2006... Read more »| 27 Aug 2010 -
FestivalsHanif Kureishi @ EIBF
Hanif Kureishi appeared in the largest tent, the RBS Tent, and drew a large crowd for this event, promoting his new volume of collected short stories... Read more »| 27 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
David Mitchell @ EIBF
I wasn’t prepared for quite how funny David Mitchell would be. Reading from his new novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, to a packed cr... Read more »| 27 Aug 2010 -
FestivalsJonathan Bate and Kathleen Jamie: Poetry and Landscape @ EIBF
The two writers here were each qualified to talk about poetry and landscape in a different way. The poet Kathleen Jamie is, of course, a very accompl... Read more »| 27 Aug 2010
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Festivals
Alan Moore @ EIBF
Alan Moore was interviewed by the Guardian’s political cartoonist Steve Bell, who said that he’d interviewed the master of the graphic st... Read more »| 26 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
Seamus Heaney @ EIBF
Have you ever been spellbound? It was only when I emerged from the Book Festival tent after listening to Seamus Heaney read poems from his latest col... Read more »| 26 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
Lydia Davis @ EIBF
Lydia Davis made her Charlotte Square debut on a particularly inclement Edinburgh evening, the rain pattering on the marquee roof as though it wanted... Read more »| 25 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
Sara Wheeler @ EIBF
What’s the difference between the Antarctic and the Arctic, aside from their opposing polar locations? For Sara Wheeler, it’s life. The f... Read more »| 25 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
Best of European Fiction 2010 @ EIBF
This event was based around one book, with multiple authors, The Best of European Fiction 2010. The book is a fantastic idea – it has contribut... Read more »| 24 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
James Shapiro @ EIBF
James Shapiro is a Professor of English Literature at Columbia University in New York, and a Shakespeare scholar. His book 1599: A Year in the Life o... Read more »| 24 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
Andrea Levy @ EIBF
Andrea Levy came across as a very pleasant, very normal person in her event, which was largely concerned with her (Booker longlisted) novel The Long ... Read more »| 23 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
The Future of Books @ EIBF
The big sea-change may be upon us; apparently e-books are now outselling hardbacks on Amazon whilst Barnes and Nobel is up for sale. The panel (Nicho... Read more »| 23 Aug 2010 -
Festivals
The James Tait Black Memorial Prize @ EIBF
The James Tait Black Memorial Prize is the oldest literary award given in Britain, and host Ian Rankin here was keen to point out the fact that the s... Read more »| 22 Aug 2010