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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NewsCosta Book of the Year Award: Category winners announced
The winners of this year's categories in the Costa Book of the Year Awards have been announced, with Kate Atkinson taking home the Novel Award prize for her eighth book, Life After Life Read more »| 06 Jan 2014 -
Book Reviews
The Telling Room: A Tale of Passion, Revenge and the World’s Finest Cheese by Michael Paterniti
For anyone who thinks their attention cannot be held by a book about cheese, think again: The Telling Room is a work of literary non-fiction that is simultan... Read more »| 06 Jan 2014 -
Book ReviewsAsterix and the Picts
The first original Asterix book to be completed by an all new creative team marks a key moment in the series’ history. Will Didier Conrad and Jean-Yves... Read more »| 06 Jan 2014 -
Book ReviewsValve #03: A Literary Journal
Now in its third year, Valve's combination of new and established writers offering poems and stories with an experimental edge is a winning formula. As you t... Read more »| 16 Dec 2013 -
NewsLouis de Bernières to launch StAnza Festival 2014
Taking place in St. Andrews from 5 to 9 March next year, the annual StAnza Poetry Festival will be launched by intenrnationally acclaimed novelist Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin Read more »| 10 Dec 2013 -
Features
Books Christmas Gift Guide
As a child, you probably thought books were only marginally less boring than socks, as Christmas presents go. Pick one from this list, however, and you'll be laughing Read more »| 09 Dec 2013
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News
R.I.P. Nelson Mandela: The World Reacts
Nelson Mandela, the former South African President and civil rights campaigner who led South Africa out of the apartheid era, passed away last night after an... Read more »| 06 Dec 2013 -
Features
Darren Cullen: Unto the Breach
No stranger to controversy, we ask Darren Cullen some probing questions about Join the Army, his inevitably divisive concertina comic on the horrors of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the shameless recruitment drives making them possible Read more »| 05 Dec 2013 -
Features
Unholy Night: Emma Jane Unsworth, Richard Hirst and the Christmas ghost story
As they prepare to publish an anthology of ghost stories for Christmas, Emma Jane Unsworth and Richard Hirst discuss the format's unique license to chill Read more »| 04 Dec 2013 -
Book Reviews
Join the Army by Darren Cullen
Join the Army has the capacity to offend a lot of people. A pull-out concertina-style jumble of adverts and comics, parodying recruitment materials of the ar... Read more »| 03 Dec 2013 -
Book Reviews
Pilgrim's Flower by Rachael Boast
Rachael Boast’s first collection, Sidereal, won the Forward Prize for best debut and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize, so her second has a lot... Read more »| 02 Dec 2013 -
Book Reviews
Letters of Note by Shaun Usher
Based on the website of the same name, Letters of Note is a compilation of 125 letters that truly runs the epistolary gamut. There are, of course, a fair few... Read more »| 02 Dec 2013 -
Book Reviews
The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble
Anna is a girl with a sunny temperament, trusts strangers without hesitation, and wins medals for her doggy paddling: ‘Anna was born happy, a pure gold... Read more »| 02 Dec 2013 -
Book Reviews
The Mile by Craig A. Smith
Craig A. Smith’s debut novel follows three friends on a pub crawl down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Ian is a happy family man, Euan is in a crumb... Read more »| 28 Nov 2013 -
Book ReviewsIn Rude Health by Robbie Guillory
Humans are a kinky, sexually dysfunctional and - above all - stupid species; just ask any of our frontline healthcare professionals, especially after a drunk... Read more »| 28 Nov 2013