The first 9 days of the EIBF have been busy – very busy, if you consider that I travelled into Edinburgh 6 times, attended 15 events and spent 2 days decorating the hall. Also read 2 books. No wonder the blog has been unable to keep up. In fact, put into context, my 3 posts to date look like a sterling effort.
The final 8 days are going to be even busier. So busy that when I drive in tomorrow morning, I’m not going to go home until Thursday evening! I will have mobile technology with me so I may post in the meantime. Most likely I shall be tweeting, technology permitting. (Let’s not talk about that embarrassing moment during Thursday’s story shop ….) The blog will catch up in more detail when time permits.
In the meantime, here are 5 6 top memories and associated pictures from Week One.
6) Release of Elsewhere – an anthology in 4 volumes of short stories written especially for Edinburgh Book Festival. OK – so the stories were first published on the Edinburgh Book Festival Site but I’ve been hankering after the printed page since forever. I hanker no longer.
5) Laughing till I cried at A L Kennedy’s event as she read an essay of the trials of writing in a wooden summerhouse with only demented woodpeckers for company. She has written a series of essays about the writing life which will be published next year. Something to look forward to. And it was so good to see her looking well again after a period of ill health.
4) The Classics theme. I had some good teachers but none of them made literature as much fun as did Simon Callow (Dickens), John Mullan (Austen) and Alexandra Harris (Virginia Woolf).
3) The Edinburgh Book Festival Mindmap (I need to find the person who designed this. It is a work of genius.)
1) The Sunshine! It has rained but only on what were supposed to be my rest days. In the main, however, umbrellas were used as sunshades this week! Herewith may I put in an order for more of the same during the next 8 days at least.
Imperium - Christian Kracht
My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
Summerhouse, Later - Judith Hermann
When the Professor Who Got Stuck in the Snow - Dan Rhodes
Passenger 23
The Book of St Andrews
Pure - Andrew Miller
The Man in the High Castle - Philipp K Dick
A Doppelganger with Aquis Submersus - Theodor Storm
Confusion - Stefan Zweig
The Rain Maiden and Other Fairy Tales - Theodor Storm
The Last Bear - Mandy Haggith
Faust - A Tragedy in Two Parts - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Emperor of Ice-Cream - Dan Gunn
Whispering Shadows - Jan Philipp Sendker
The Vegetarian - Han Kang
The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin - Georges Simenon
On Glasgow and Edinburgh - Robert Crawford
Jellyfish - Janice Galloway
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Alice In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh
Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
The Dark Heart of the Night - Leonora Miano
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
Viper Wine - Hermione Eyre
The Girl on The Train - Paula Hawkins
Wallenstein - Friedrich Schiller
In the Beginning was the Sea -Thomas Gonzalez
Munich Airport - Greg Baxter
Rise - Karen Campbell
The Lie - Helen Dunmore
Crime Novel - Petri Tamminen
A Tabby Cat's Tale - Han Dong 
Family Heirlooms - Zulmira Ribeiro Tavares 
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey 
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen 
Glass - Alex Christoffi 
The Miniaturist - Jesse Burton 
The Temporary Gentleman - Sebastian Barry 
Under The Tripoli Sky - Kamal Ben Hamada
The Blue Room - Hanne Orstavik 
Greenbanks - Dorothy Whipple 
Losing It! - Helen Lederer (2015)
The Pierced Heart - Lynn Shepherd (2014)
The Sound of Things Falling - Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Mr Mac and Me - Esther Freud
The Monogram Murders - Sophie Hannah
The Death of Lomond Friel - Sue Peebles
The Unknown Unknown - Mark Forsyth
The Bookshop Strikes Back - Ann Patchett
The Leipzig Affair - Fiona Rintoul
A Child's Garden of Verses - R L Stevenson
The Dark Meadow - Andrea Maria Schenkel
The Flying Classroom - Erich Kästner
The Case of The Black Pearl - Lin Anderson
Picnic of The Virtues - Felicitas Hoppe
Little Man, What Now? - Hans Fallada
Look Up Glasgow (Pocket edition) - Adrian Seale (2014)
Absolution - Patrick Flanery (2012)
I Murdered My Library - Linda Grant (2014)
The Yellow Dog - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
The Carter of La Providence - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien - Georges Simenon (1931/2014)
Fair Helen - Andrew Greig (2013)
All The Rage - A L Kennedy (2014)
The Mussel Feast - Birgit Vanderbeke (1990/2013)
Your commentary on the book festival is the next best thing to being there.Thanks for the photos too, now I can attach a face to names I know. Thanks too for having some tech talent so we can follow you about.
Alexandra Harris rang a bell, but I had to look her up and just added her book Romantic Moderns, English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, to my wishlist. Thanks, Lizzie.
Wow, you’re busy with the festival! Glad the weather is good, that really helps to make it a good festival. I like your pictures – hope to read more about your next adventures at the festival.
wow, quite impressed (and envious) by the big names you managed to catch – enjoying your impressions and infos and keen for more.
May I recommend an event on Tuesday on BEST European Fiction 2012
2pm, time and energy permitting.
keep up the good work.
Glad to see you’re having fun🙂
The mind map really looks good!!! Anyway you can share the entire map? I tried Googling it, but could not find it anywhere.
Many thanks for your kind words about the festival, and specifically about the mind map.
It was an incredibly time consuming piece of conceptual design work, but to see it in-situ with so many people interacting with our work makes it all worthwhile. We are all very proud of the mind map and it’s role in this year’s brand identity.
Here’s to another week of fantastic events!
Tangent Graphic
Love reading the blog -enjoy the rest of the book festival!
hope you’ve had fun ,all the best stu