Books

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler

29 Nov 2007

IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…

Charles M Schulz - Small world

15 Nov 2007

It’s the little things that make the difference. In the case of the Charles M Schulz cartoon strips, that could mean the smallest of pen strokes for a raised eyebrow, an extra crease on a forehead, the downward bend on the ends of a mouth. Schulz…

Beano Annual 2007

(DC Thompson)

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL It’s pretty much business as usual in Beano-land, you’ll be glad to hear: we open at the ‘Softies Fashion and Fabric Show’ where Walter and a couple of equally flamboyant chums vie for the lead in The Naked Civil Servant. Inside…

No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums - Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long (1935)

1 Jan 2005

This cutting edge portrait of working-class life in the worst laid scheme in Scotland sticks out like a sore face. Rarely referred to by its subtitle or complimented for its subtlety, when it was first published Glasgow libraries refused to stock it…

Loung Ung

Edinburgh International Book Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Book Festival Surviving the peace Author, campaigner and victim of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, bestselling writer Loung Ung talks to Allan Radcliffe about how she managed to carry on after the hell of the killing fields

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - interview with Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy

14 Feb 2008

Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has spawned countless adaptations since its publication in 1885. The stage play ran for 20 years and there have been numerous film versions, with stars as diverse as Fredric March, Spencer Tracy and…

Horrid Henry Day

27 Mar 2008

The naughtiest boy in children’s fiction has his very own day – 1 April, but Borders is getting in early to capture the weekend crowd. Help celebrate the tomfoolery of Francesca Simon’s most famous character at this fun session of Horrid Henry stories…

Harry Hill

Horsing around

28 Sep 2006

Ricky Gervais, Charlie Higson, Nigel Planer: many a British comedian has deviated into the world of children’s literature. Yet none of them seemed quite so born to it as Harry Hill. The question wasn’t so much if the man who created the ‘Badger Parade…

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…

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway (1989)

1 Jan 2005

Janice Galloway’s debut novel made a considerable impact upon its publication. Winner of the MIND Book of the Year/Allen Lane Award, American Academy EM Forster Award plus a SAC book award, the novel was also shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel…

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…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Batman Black & White Volume 3

(DC/Titan)

9 Aug 2007

Usually at home as a simple back-up slot in the monthly Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Black & White has taken on a life of its own and has quickly become a jewel in the crown of DC’s myriad caped crusader titles. A creative playground for various…

Various, The Book of Boy Trouble - comic review

Various artists

9 Jan 2007

GAY Edited by two of its contributors, Robert Kirby and David Kelly, The Book of Boy Trouble brings together selected highlights of the first ten years of the alternative fanzine of the same title (minus the ‘book’ bit). It’s a collection whose…

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…

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…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

Helen Mirren - In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures

Memoir

4 Oct 2007

‘I have a blissfully forgetful brain,’ Helen Mirren informs us in the opening paragraph of her autobiography, which hardly bodes well for a book which demands total recall. But Mirren has dredged the past up from somewhere, or someone, because In the…

American Literature

Born fighting

24 Apr 2007

At the exact moment Chuck Palahniuk greets me with a hushed ‘Hello?’ his home in south-western Washington State is being invaded by a group of unfamiliar men who are chanting in unison at the author: ‘His name is Robert Paulson!’

Ghost Rider

As the new movie roars onto the big screen,

26 Feb 2007

COMICS IIt’s 1972. Evel Knievel was the most famous man in America; films like Blacula, Deep Throat and Deliverance were topping the box-office; events like Watergate and Vietnam meant there was a darker edge in the air. Marvel were running stories…

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

A Sense of Freedom - Jimmy Boyle (1977)

1 Jan 2005

This is one of the most important books ever published about crime and punishment in Britain. A Sense of Freedom is the autobiographical account of how a boy from the Gorbals grew up in the gang culture of the 60s to become 'Scotland's Most Violent…

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…

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…