BookRambler

Ramshackle, by Elizabeth Reeder (Freight Books) ISBN 978 0 9566135 7 8, 161pp In Ramshackle, Elizabeth Reeder captures perfectly the see-saw sensibilities of teenage years in this tender tale of becoming. On a cold, wintry Friday night in a house on the shores of Lake Michigan, fifteen-year old Roe

I’m pleased to announce that I recently took up the role of Events Co-ordinator at the Scottish Writers’ Centre and joined the Board who’ve been working hard to turn an idea of a dedicated Scottish literature venue for writers into a reality. At present the SWC has accommodation in the CCA - Glasgow

‘Every Town’, the near-mythical setting of Gavin James Bower’s post-industrial landscape in Made in Britain, is peopled with dysfunctional families, suffused with social disengagement, law-breaking and public disorder. It’s a bad but normal British town. A bit too bad. It’s as if an evil giant has g

Out and About [the official end to BookRambler's  hibernation] The Sins of the Father book launch With experienced journalist/producer/writer George Rosie chairing, this could have been an hours’ love-in of light banter with knowing questions and in-jokes and ‘friendly’ planted questions from kent f

What can you say about a rock in 62 words? That was the challenge set by the 26 Treasures Scotland project, a collaboration between the National Museum of Scotland and 26, a not-for-profit group that champions the cause of better writing in all areas of life. The creative response was to an object i

Peter Osnos’s recent article in The Atlantic (link below) on books and bookselling flags up the positive results of digital and looks at the publishing world from a reader’s perspective – which makes a refreshing change from all the messages of doom and gloom and ‘death of the book’ that circulate o

Thursday was the launch for this year’s Kelpies Prize-winning book: How to Make a Golem (and Terrify People), by Alette J. Willis (Floris Books)- you might remember, I met Alette at Linlithgow Book Festival. Imaginatively hosted by Floris Books, the launch was quirky, informal and good-humoured. Imp

I was waiting in teen-taxi last night and it was too dark to read so I flicked through the radio stations looking for a distraction, and stumbled across James Daunt spouting forth about bookshops and the physical book. I found myself agreeing with most of what he said.  I started scribbling down wor

So I’m a bit of a Book Festival Obsessive, as you know. It’s a disease. And when there are two on AT THE SAME TIME and teen-taxi is booked out, well, life gets a bit complicated. What’s a girl to do? Lennoxlove or Lithgae? [or Linlithgow to be correct]. I spent Saturday trying to get [...]

I’m tempted by this recent CFP… MISSING TEXTS: A Conference organised by the Material Texts Network at Birkbeck, University of London Saturday June 2, 2012 Call for Papers The Material Texts Network at Birkbeck convenes and encourages innovative work on the materiality of texts. We invite 300-word p