Books

The Beano

27 Nov 2008

As a wee nipper there wasn’t a more exciting day of the week than ‘Beano day’, when your local newsagent would drop a copy of the cartoon compendium onto your doormat alongside your parent’s newspaper. Often rapidly devoured before heading to school…

Also Published - 5 Auto-Biographies

27 Nov 2008

Ted Turner - Call Me Ted The media mogul and ex-husband of Jane Fonda talks about family tragedy, CNN, the America’s Cup and his controversial former missus. Sphere . Diahann Carroll - The Legs are the Last to Go Subtitled ‘Ageing, Acting…

Charlie Owen - Bravo Jubilee

27 Nov 2008

SOCIAL DRAMA Copper-turned-crime writer Charlie Owen’s third novel is another retro-fitted 1970s police procedural set in a grim Manchester overspill named Handstead aka Horse’s Arse. Picking up the year after the previous book, Foxtrot Oscar, this…

Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon - The Punisher: Welcome Back Frank

27 Nov 2008

CRIME There couldn’t be a better marriage of writer and character than Irish bad boy Garth Ennis and lone vigilante Frank Castle, teaming up with regular artistic partner Steve Dillon for an often irreverent but always brutal and bloody reboot. This…

Matt Fraction & Ariel Olivetti - Punisher War Journal: Civil War

27 Nov 2008

CRIME The latest incarnation of the Punisher throws him back into the middle of Marvel continuity. Castle usually operates on the fringes of society but the scale of the Superhero Registration Act is too big for even the Punisher to ignore. Never one…

Neil Rafferty and Paul Stokes - Halfwit Nation

27 Nov 2008

HUMOUR While Private Eye and The Onion remain the cornerstones of written news satire in print and online respectively, and Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You keep our square eyes tearing, the joyous silliness of spoofing website The Daily…

Nick Brownlee - Bait

27 Nov 2008

CRIME NOVEL In the opening scene of this high-octane crime debut, a victim is eviscerated on a boat while still alive, his steaming innards and gutted body tossed overboard. Welcome to the flipside of African crime fiction where instead of Precious…

Pat Mills & Various - Punisher: Eternal War

27 Nov 2008

CRIME During the 80s the Punisher was one of Marvel’s biggest stars, with multiple tiles and a 1989 movie (starring Dolph Lundgren). In Eternal War we get more tales from the archives as The Punisher hits his stride in terms of popularity. The main…

Rod Stoneman - Chávez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

27 Nov 2008

POLITICAL STUDY On its release in 2003, a documentary that fortuitously caught the coup ousting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez for all of a weekend, caused a furore in that country and elsewhere for its apparent bias. Rod Stoneman was the executive…

The big picture: Tattoos

27 Nov 2008

Robots, Hello Kittys, an Etch A Sketch screen, skulls covering an entire back … this fortnight, we’ve mostly been ogling Tattoo Soup, a new compendium of the world’s most unique tattoos. This comic strip was inked by tattoo artist Louis Molloy, from the…

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

27 Nov 2008

Prepare for some bleary eyed school kids on the morning of 4 December, as they recover from a rather special shopping trip the night before. At 12.01am the previous night, the book which helped Harry, Ron and Hermione defeat Lord Voldemort will finally…

United Press poetry competition

27 Nov 2008

Poets are being asked to lift their pens in a bid to pocket a £1000 prize, as part of an initiative by United Press. ‘It’s free to enter, and the aim of the competition is to encourage more people to try writing poetry,’ said Peter Quinn, managing…

Various - The Essential Punisher Volume 1

27 Nov 2008

CRIME With The Punisher: War Zone being released on the big screen in early 2009 now is the perfect time to look back on one of comics darkest heroes. Frank Castle has no superpowers, just sheer grit, a high pain threshold, a formidable arsenal and…

Judge Dredd star Big Tam McNutter gets his own T-shirt

19 Nov 2008

A character from Judge Dredd has earned himself the right to be emblazoned across your chest on a T-shirt. Big Tam McNutter, who made an unforgettable appearance in the 1992 2000 AD Yearbook, is the creation of Scottish 2000 AD legends John Wagner and…

New venue brings downtown New York to Edinburgh

19 Nov 2008

Edinburgh’s art scene has another new addition. The Bowery on Roxburgh Place in the Southside, opened last Saturday and takes its name from one of the famous city's hippest streets. The venue aims to replicate the quirky and semi mod attitude of the…

A quiet life

13 Nov 2008

It would seem that we’ve all become a little wary of silence. The sizeable majority of British society who own mobile phones may agree. Plug in, jump online, talk in libraries, and you’re doing OK. Withdraw however, and you have issues. Accomplished…

Lost in Fiction

13 Nov 2008

It’s been eight years since the much-missed John Smith’s bookshop on Byres Road closed its doors and turned into a branch of Starbucks. At the time, many residents of Glasgow’s West End saw it as another, depressing, sign of the times. John Smith’s…

Last word: Mark Gatiss

13 Nov 2008

Actor, screenwriter and novelist Mark Gatiss is best known for his role in The League of Gentlemen and acting in Doctor Who. Here he talks trousers, baked beans and sheds.

Noam Chomsky - The Essential Chomsky

13 Nov 2008

(Bodley Head) For over 40 years, ‘the world’s greatest public intellectual’ has been not so much a thorn in the side of the West’s establishment structures as a battering ram to everything held dear by liberals and conservatives alike. Now fast…

Alan Grant, John Wagner and Massimo Belardinelli & Ian Gibson - Ace Trucking Co. Vol.1

13 Nov 2008

Born out of the 70s and 80s-mired misapprehension that CB radio talk was the vernacular of the future (let’s blame Burt Reynolds for that), this weekly 2000AD serial nevertheless became one of the British comic’s best for a while. That’s partly down to…

Also released - 5 Poetry Books

13 Nov 2008

● Vera Brittain Because You Died A collection of poems and prose from the author of Testament of Youth, all about the men she loved who perished in the First World War. Virago . ● Dennis O’Donnell Stepping Stones This one features interviews with…

Boris Artzybasheff - As I See

13 Nov 2008

On a trajectory from the surreal to the satirical Russian-born New Yorker lies somewhere between Man Ray and Gerald Scarfe. First published in 1954, As I See is a collection of striking illustrations reflecting, among other things, the burgeoning…

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

Gillian Slovo - Black Orchids

13 Nov 2008

Evelyn wishes to be ‘rescued from the boredom of her life’ and it’s in Emil, the beneficiary of a rich Ceylon family, that she finds her non-white knight in shining armour. What seems like an exotic fairy tale in 40s Ceylon, however, is an altogether…

Hitlist-Books

13 Nov 2008

● Alastair Campbell New Labour’s arch doctor of spin tackles matters concerning real health with his debut novel, All in the Mind, based on his own mental breakdown back in the 1980s. Waterstone’s, Glasgow, Wed 19 Nov. ● Alexei Sayle In the not too…

Jack Kilborn - Afraid

13 Nov 2008

Starting with a plane crash and ending with a coyote-on-human chow down, Afraid is a rattling good read for those who have the stomach for it. When a mutant military force turns up unannounced at the friendly law-abiding town of Safe Haven (population…

Toni Morrison - A Mercy

13 Nov 2008

In 1993, Toni Morrison became the first (still only) African American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her ninth novel A Mercy, which addresses the cruel genesis of slavery in early colonial America, arrives as an African American strides…

Michel Faber

Baptism of fire

30 Oct 2008

Michel Faber is a tough act to follow, especially when you're Michel Faber. The chameleonic author has built an impressive back catalogue that flips between postmodern memoirs of a Victorian prostitute, ghostly love stories or a sci-fi thriller about a…

John Updike - The Widows of Eastwick

30 Oct 2008

For almost half a century, novelist, poet and New Yorker writer John Updike has chronicled the concerns, thoughts and sexual foibles of the American middle class. Not always successfully though, as can be forgiven amidst a career which embraces almost…

Alexander McCall Smith - La's Orchestra Saves the World

30 Oct 2008

When a master of storytelling such as Alexander McCall Smith puts pen to paper, we have come to expect great things. And he doesn't disappoint with this latest stand-alone title, a warm and captivating tale of strength, passion and friendship set in…

Also published

5 crime paperbacks

30 Oct 2008

Natasha Cooper - A Poisoned Mind Lee Weeks - The Trafficked Xavier Marie Bonnot - The First Fingerprint David Stone - The Orpheus Deception Gavin Esler - A Scandalous Man

Avengers: The Sentinels Strike

Roy Thomas, Steve Engleheart & various

30 Oct 2008

More reprints from the Marvel archives as the Avengers go up against the Sentinels, the Beast Brood, Magneto and more in these adventures from 1972-73. The Avengers are Marvel's premiere super team, as famed for their relationships as their daring and…

Dag Solstad - Novel 11, Book 18

30 Oct 2008

The only three-time winner of the Norwegian Literary Critics Award, Dag Solstad follows up 2006's much praised Shyness and Dignity with this sophisticated, sometimes claustrophobic, representation of a mid-life crisis coming to an extreme end. The plot…

Dave Gibbons - Watching the Watchmen

30 Oct 2008

If pushed to name the greatest comic ever, most would say The Watchmen. Aimed at an adults, when writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a hugely detailed world where heroes did exist, they made it so realistic it was almost another genre of…

Jesse Reklaw - The Night of Your Life

30 Oct 2008

Since 1995 American cartoonist Jesse Reklaw has invited readers of his website to submit synopses of their dreams, then adapts the best into four-panel comic strips. Reklaw's second compilation (after 2000's Dreamtoons) features a surreal discount…

Jim Holt - Stop Me If You've Heard This

30 Oct 2008

If there is one art form often deemed to be beyond analysis, it's comedy. You hear, see or read something funny and then you laugh. End of. Right? Anyone who seeks to go beneath the skin of stand-up and explain the mechanics only succeeds in killing the…

Laura Dockrill - Mistakes in the Background

30 Oct 2008

The emergence of a sassy-tongued poet who can relate to the yoof should be a good thing. And Laura Dockrill, aka MC Dockers, truly does seem to be articulating, in her unaffected, unchecked, stream of consciousness way, the existence of the Facebook…

Will Eisner - Textbooks

30 Oct 2008

Undoubtedly what editor Denis Kitchen calls the 'primary treatise on the theory and mechanics of modern comics', Eisner's influential textbook Comics and Sequential Art and its two companion guides get a makeover for the digital age. Honed from lectures…

Pat Mills

16 Oct 2008

If you have even a passing interest in British comics, chances are you’ll have read some work by Pat Mills. Despite his legendary status inventing characters like Slaine the Barbarian, Nemesis the Warlock and ABC Warriors, he actually started out…

Andrew Anthony - The Fallout

16 Oct 2008

SOCIAL MEMOIR In 2001, Andrew Anthony was just another member of the liberal-left intelligentsia, dutifully filing his anti-conservative copy to The Observer and Guardian. Then a pair of planes swung into the World Trade Center and the belief systems…

Cosmo Landesman - Starstruck

16 Oct 2008

SHOWBIZ MEMOIR Fran and Jay Landesman sound like a tough set of parents. She a poet and jazz singer, he a producer and comedian. Together they fled the US due to a perceived lack of success, viewing Swinging 60s London as a kinder, less competitive…

Lemn Sissay - Listener

16 Oct 2008

POETRY COLLECTION Lemn Sissay’s latest poetry collection is not exciting fare. The main problem is that it simply lacks freshness with little that is striking or exceptional, largely because he borrows so heavily from idiom, cliché, and adage. There…

Scottish Book Trust - Days Like This

16 Oct 2008

Refining that old platitude that everyone’s got a novel in them, the Scottish Book Trust launched their Days Like This project earlier this year, looking for ordinary people’s stories of their extraordinary days. ‘Days Like This is really about…

Also Published - 5 Biographies

16 Oct 2008

Susie Boyt - My Judy Garland Life The daughter of Lucien Freud embarks on a journey following in her showbiz idol’s footsteps to discover what her life could teach us about love, loss and fame. Virago . Jonathan Bate - Soul of the Age This one…

Chris Priestley - Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

16 Oct 2008

GHOST STORIES The great English chiller writer MR James observed that one of the key facets of a good, nerve-shredding ghost story is ‘a pleasing terror’. Chris Priestley’s follow-up to the imaginative Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror similarly aims…

Jamie Hewlett & Alan Martin - The Cream of Tank Girl

16 Oct 2008

ART For Tank Girl fans, this is the book you’ve been waiting for; a glossy retrospective covering her anarchic antics from 1988 until today, including an honest account of her Hollywood hell (neither writer Alan Martin or artist Jamie Hewlett liked…

Lisa Myhre - Nemi 2

16 Oct 2008

COMIC STRIP She may be an unpredictable little goth, but you can be damned sure you’d never catch Nemi letting the alternative side down. While real life misfits inevitably do (John Lydon is at it again on the telly, this time with Country Life…

Marvel Masters: The Tales of Chris Claremont

16 Oct 2008

SUPERHERO Chris Claremont is perhaps the main reason for the international success of the X-Men during the 80s and 90s when they outsold pretty much every other title on the shelves. He wrote Uncanny X-Men for a staggering 16 years (from 1975-1991)…

Patrick Richardson - Reports from Beyond

16 Oct 2008

TRAVEL BOOK The best travel writing is much more than just writing about travel, something this hugely experienced journeyman doesn’t seem to realise despite a lifetime of wanderlust. This glossy coffee table effort is subtitled ‘A Journey Through…

The Lost World Read 2009 to celebrate Darwin and Conan Doyle

16 Oct 2008

Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bristol will join forces as part of a reading campaign in February next year. The Lost World Read 2009 will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, and the bicentenary of the birth of Charles…