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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Book ReviewsThis is Scotland: A Country in Words and Pictures by Daniel Gray and Alan McCredie
Photographer Alan McCredie and writer Daniel Gray have merged talents to bring you the travelogue This is Scotland. It’s a flirty glance at a dozen are... Read more »| 03 Nov 2014 -
Book ReviewsBy Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomas Ávila Laurel
This reads a bit like a short story cycle. An episode swells and lapses, another swells in turn. By Night the Mountain Burns is told orally, through some lit... Read more »| 31 Oct 2014 -
Book Reviews
Perfidia by James Ellroy
Corruption, racism, murder, misogyny: Perfidia is a 700 page thrasher of a novel, delivered in Ellroy’s feverish staccato sentences and telegrammatic s... Read more »| 31 Oct 2014 -
Book ReviewsLagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor has previously suggested that Nigerian storytelling requires no separation of the mystical and the mundane, perhaps explaining the potent blen... Read more »| 28 Oct 2014 -
Features
Unto The End: Michel Faber on his last masterpiece
Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things is with us. A haunting imagining of love divided by an endless void, completed in the most unbearable personal circumstances and significantly inscribed – I am with you always, even unto the end of the world Read more »| 27 Oct 2014 -
Book Reviews
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Michel Faber’s latest and, according to the author, last novel – following Under the Skin, which was recently adapted into a celebrated film star... Read more »| 24 Oct 2014
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NewsBook Week Scotland programme unveiled
The Scottish Book Trust has unveiled the programme for this year’s Book Week Scotland, which takes place next month. The programme of events take plac... Read more »| 17 Oct 2014 -
Events
Dundee Literary Festival: An Offering of Strange New Things
The famous city of jute and jam looks at the printed word beyond its famous form of journalism, delivering a literary festival with a broad and ambitious programme - punks, pubs and Picoult. Read more »| 15 Oct 2014 -
Features
Cast Aside: John Updike's posthumous reputation
As John Updike biographer Adam Begley appears at Manchester Literature Festival this month, we consider the posthumous reputation of one of America's best-known writers. It's arguably never been at a lower ebb, but should this be so? Read more »| 07 Oct 2014 -
Features
True Blood: Author’s Fans Bite Back
In what is for her a post-Sookie Stackhouse era, author Charlaine Harris looks past crazed fans and forward to her ongoing Midnight Texas series of novels and the resurrection of Aurora Teagarden for a major new TV series Read more »| 06 Oct 2014 -
Book Reviews
Rogues by George RR Martin & Gardner Dozois
Thanks to Game of Thrones, George RR Martin has leapt from fantasy ghetto to mainstream. The same can’t be said of Gardner Dozois, although the multi-a... Read more »| 03 Oct 2014 -
Book Reviews
Cold City by Cathy McSporran
Do you believe that different realities can intersect? In her debut novel, Cathy McSporran has created two worlds, which protagonist Susan flips between. It&... Read more »| 02 Oct 2014 -
Book Reviews
Furies: A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors edited by Eve Lacey
The Furies are infernal goddesses of justice and vengeance, daughters of Gaia and punishers of wrongs. In For Books’ Sake’s first anthology &ndas... Read more »| 01 Oct 2014 -
Features
Write Here, Write Now: Octavius Magazine
Do you like to write, but find yourself stuck for ways to get your words into print? Samuel Best, editor of new writing magazine Octavius, is here to help Read more »| 01 Oct 2014 -
Features
Visualising Scotland's Future
A collaborative graphic novel – involving the diverse talents of writers and artists from Irvine Welsh to Pat Mills – IDP: 2043 aims to paint a picture of Scotland's future and strike a blow against anyone viewing the form as any sort of literary lesser Read more »| 01 Oct 2014