One of the fringe benefits of the MA course has been the discovery of new writers, and not just those who sat next to me in class. Roberto Bolaño, Italo Calvino, James Robertson, David Foster Wallace, John Burnside and Junot Diaz to name a few have all been an absolute joy to meet. The down side to these new friends is their sheer number. For the first time in my life I have more than one book on the go at the same time: 17 to be precise. This has never happened to me before. I may be flighty, even flaky on occasion, but if … Continue reading Book Cheat

We had a very interesting afternoon in the company of Hugh Andrew, MD at Birlinn Ltd. Aside from a conversation about e-book publishing, which I would love to follow up with him at some point, Mr. Andrew spoke about a brilliant and well written book that despite several resurrections by several different publishers, has never been successful. Is a good book one that is successful or one that is well written? The book in question was Peter Fleming’s (yes, brother of Ian) News from Tartary. I checked out Amazon this evening and although they don’t carry the book, it is … Continue reading Good = Profit?