www.list.co.uk/books

Events

Events are listed by date, then city. Submit listings at least ten days before publication to suzanne.black@list.co.ulr. Listings are compiled by Suzanne Black.

Thursday 18

Glasgow Conversation Pieces: lan Hamilton 00 Royal Concert Hall. 2 Sauchiehall Street. 353 8000. lprn. £5 (£4 in advance). ()ne of the student scamps who stole the Stone of Destiny from beneath the Coronation Chair in 1950. Hamilton talks about his book on the subject and the forthcoming Hollywood film. FREE Liz Macintyre Borders Books. 98 Buchanan Street. 222 7700. 6.30pm. Macintyre signs copies of her debut, Love Letters from a Desert Rat, which was created from 300 letters written to her mother by her father during his army years. Nardeep Singh Kohli Mitchell Theatre. 6 Granville Street. 287 2999. 7pm. £5. He reports for BBC 1 ‘s The One Show. was runner-up on Celebrity Masterehef and now launches his new book. an attempt to bring British food to Indians. entitled Indian Takeaway: One Man 's Attempt to Cook His Way Home. David Simon Glasgow Film Theatre. 12 Rose Street. 332 8128. 8.15—l().l5pm. £6 (£4.50). The creator of ardently-loved. gritty cop show The Wire is in town for a talk about his creation. to launch his forthcoming true crime novel Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. and for a screening of the show.

Edinburgh

FREE Mike Nicholson Blackwells. 53—59 South Bridge. 622 8222. 6.30—8pm. Ticketed. Grimm is the new novel from the winner of the Kelpies Prize 2005 for new Scottish writing for children.

FREE Barbara Ehrenreich and Joe Bageant University of Edinburgh. Chrystal Macmillan Building. School of Social and Political Studies. l5a George Square. 7.30pm. An insight into the American election from these political commentators.

Edinburgh

FREE JustaLookat...Edwin Morgan Scottish Poetry Library. 5 Crichton‘s Close. Canongate. 557 2876. 6.30—8pm. Ticketed. Ken Cockbum. Project Coordinator of the newly acquired Edwin Morgan Archive at the SPL sifts through the contents in three sessions. Writers of the World: EIBF in September Traverse Theatre. Cambridge Street. 0845 373 5888. 7pm. £9 (£7). The Book Festival isn‘t just an August thing with an event featuring Australian writer David Malouf. whose latest collection of stories is called Every More You Make.

Wednesday 24

Park Theatre. Eastwood Park. Rouken Glen Road. Giffnock. 577 4970. 7.30pm. £5 (£3.50). The multi-award winning and bestselling author talks about his latest thrilling satire. A Snowball in Hell.

Thursday 25

Glasgow

* An Evening with Jackie Kay 8. Suzanne Bonnar Glasgow

Women‘s Library. 2nd Floor. 81 Pamie

Street. 552 8345. 7pm. Donations

(ticketed). Kay launches The Lamplighter. in which four women and one man tell the story of slavery and industrial revolution. The evening includes readings. a Q&A session and music front Suzanne Bonnar. Booking required.

FREE Jack Blade Borders Books. 98 Buchanan Street. 222 7700. 7.30pm. Costa Book Awards 2008 nominee Blade. talks about his debut novel. Revolutionaries.

Edinburgh

Tony Black and Allan Guthrie

Waterstone’s. I28 Princes Street. 226 2666. 6pm. £2 (redeemable against purchase). A crime fiction panel with Black and Guthrie in conversation with bookseller Andrew .larnieson to promote Paying for It and Savage Night. FREE Jonathan Falla Scottish Poetry Library. 5 Crichton‘s Close. Canongate. 557 2876. 7pm. Falla reads from and signs his new novel. Glenfarmn. which charts the impact of three generations of incomers to a remote Highland glen. Email glenduckie@hotmail.corn to book.

Glasgow

Conversation Pieces: lan

Rankin Royal Concert Hall. 2 Sauchiehall Street. 353 8000. lprn. £5 (£4 in advance). The crime author opens up about his first stand-alone novel for over ten years. Doors Open. See review page 32.

Edinburgh

Guid Crack Club Waverley Bar. 1 St Mary‘s Street. 556 9579. 7.30pm. £3 suggested donation. Edinburgh‘s monthly storytelling club welcomes all to listen or contribute to the spinning of yarns.

Saturday 27

Glasgow

FREE Under Your Covers: The First-Annual Merchant City Festival Writers’ Conference Arta. 62 Albion Street. 552 210i. Noon—5pm. A conference for all writers. poets. musicians. readers and thinkers. See www.lam()NE.co.uk for more details.

Edinburgh

FREE By Leaves We Live Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close. Canongate. 557 2876. l lam—6pm. A unique and exciting one-day fair with stalls. displays. short talks and events on poetry and art magazine publishing taking place throughout the day.

Monday 29

Edinburgh

Reading Group: Nothing But the Poem Scottish Poetry Library. 5 Crichton‘s Close, Canongate. 557 2876. 6.30pm. £5 (£3). This gentle reading group led by Julie Johnstone focuses on the reader‘s response to the text. For booking and more details please phone or email reception @spl.org.uk.

Tuesday 30

Edinburgh

FREE Just a Look at . . . Edwin Morgan Scottish Poetry Library. 5 Crichton‘s Close. Canongate. 557 2876. 6.30—8pm. Ticketed. See Tue 23.

FREE An Oil-Centre Centre of the Universe National Library of Scotland. George [V Bridge. 623 4675. 7pm. Find out about 500 years of the book trade in Scotland with Alastair Mann.

Comics

ANTHOLOGY VARIOUS (ED: PAUL GRAVE'IT) The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics (Robinson) ooo

Lead by Frank Miller's nightmare-noir Sin City series, crime comics are enjoying a resurgence in creativity and popularity the like of which hasn't been seen since the genre dominated the American newspaper ‘funnies’ in the 1930s Which makes this ‘best of’ anthology very timely. Except, the 25 strips curated by comics aficionado Paul Gravett

hardly constitute the best i the genre has to offer. While there are some

classics - Will Eisner's groundbreaking The

Spirit, Max Allan Collins' femme dick Ms Tree - and a few gems Jack Cole's bonkers ‘Murder, Morphine and Me'. EC Comics supreme Johnny Craig's ‘The Sewer' there are plenty of obvious omissions. among them David Lapham's Stray Bullets. Brian Michael Bendis' Torso and Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's 700 Bullets. all of those titles easily rivalling Miller's work (also not included herein). Still. the collection remains a useful introduction to what's currently a trailblazing genre.

(Miles Fielder)

DRAMA

MAT JOHNSON 8. WARREN PLEECE

lncognegro (Vertigo/DC) oooo

Comics of course can tackle any subject matter it‘s a medium not a genre after all (despite the predominance of superhero titles). and Vertigo at DC has been pushing leftfield stories into the mainstream since its inception in 1993.

Set during the 19508. lncognegro is the code name of a pale-skinned African American reporter who can pass as white, infiltrating Iynchings and helping to prosecute those involved. Based on true events, Johnson takes us into the heart of the Deep South for a murder mystery where the facts are muddled or ignored by racism. It brings up some interesting points but never discards story and pacing for politics. (Henry Northmore)

COLLECTION ADRIAN TOMINE Sleepwalk and Other

Stories (Faber) oooo

SLEEPWALK

There is a lightness of touch and simplicity that is both brave and endearing in the work of Adrian Tomine. He created Optic Nerve, an outlet for his stories and art from his university dorm in the mid 90s and was picked up by underground publishing house Drawn and Quarterly in the US. who saw something special in his singular vein of graphic introspection. His characters enjoy distinct but sometimes all too familiar brands of personal inertia as they struggle with love, dead- end jobs. self-image issues or just good old- fashioned paranoia. Beneath the deep melancholy that permeates Tomine's work is an elegant, controlled art; something spare and considered. This collection of brief

encounters is sad but beautiful the graphic novel equivalent of a Todd Solondz movie

where toes curl and

hearts ache. Pale and interesting. hopelessly romantic. but never sentimental, Tomine's work is incisive and even painfully real. For the geek in all of us.

(Mark Robertson)

BIOGRAPHY ART SPIEGELMAN

Breakdowns (Viking) ooooo

Subtitled ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@'!'. this was the first collected book of comic art which the Jewish- American Spiegelman had published. Created between 1972 and 1977, the volume is reissued with an illustrated 20-page introduction, which like the works that follow pretty much redefines what might be

considered as a typical

comic book narrative.

Grounded in the countercultural comix of the 603 and a youthful obsession with MAD magazine and the EC horror comics of the late SOS. Spiegelman's work reflects on his mother's suicide and his own nervous breakdown- caused hospitalisation in detail which is often heartbreaking, and yet bleakly satirical. The question over whether it was illness or psychedelic

experimentation which

allowed him to invent

daring explorations of

form in sequential art like ‘Cracking Jokes‘, ‘The Malpractice Suite' and the televisual imitation of ‘As the Mind Reels‘. or an early three- page version of his Pulitzer-winning Holocaust masterpiece Maus is ultimately irrelevant in the face of such spell-binding innovation.

(David Pollock)

18 Sep—2 Oct 2008 THE LIST 33