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The 2022 programme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival is available Home | Edinburgh International Book Festival (edbookfest.co.uk)
A lot of the events will be broadcast online (there’s an online-only option to help search them) with ticket prices ‘pay what you can afford.’ I enjoyed several events last year. If you miss the live broadcast you can watch on replay for a while afterwards. I think last year it was two weeks.
Quick count says I’ve bookmarked 19, but I don’t know if all are online, which they need to be because I’ll not be there in person :-(.
I’ll sign up for Sarah Hall, and Graham Macrae Burnet – among others.
Also Mrs Dalloway for whom I seem to have limitless capacity though others may groan 🙂
I confess I’ve never read Mrs Dalloway, but have ‘Burntcoat on my tbr pile. Fell heavily for Sarah Hall having picked up ‘How to paint a dead man’ in a charity shop, some years ago.
I loved ‘How to Paint a Dead Man.’ Also ‘Haweswater’. I find her short stories a hard read – often grisly or too troubling.
Same here, with stories, although ‘Butcher’s perfume’ in ‘The Beautiful Indifference’ blew me away.
Ditto Benjamin Myers?* I’ve just finished his ‘Male Tears’ which is short stories and much less impactful (to me) than his novels.
*not at the Festival!
‘Butcher’s Perfume’ – I could see it was really could but I’m a wimp and I’m not sure I finished it.
Benjamin Myers – I tried The Offing. Historical fiction (which I write), lots of scenery and countryside (fab) and set in beautiful Yorkshire. What wasn’t to like? But I couldn’t get far with it.
In my notebook I put, ‘Gave up page 82. So many adjectives. Characters insufficiently interesting.’
I don’t know what was wrong with p 82 but I don’t think anything gruesome had happened yet.
Sounds super critical and a bit rich coming from someone so keen on Mrs Dalloway. I think basically it wasn’t my cup of tea, otherwise the adjectives would have been fine and the characters failings not mattered.
A quick glance at p.82, and I suspect it was the brutal blowjob (but more subtly described). I am aware of a degree of wariness with each book of hers I buy but she always does it for me in the end. I am also very aware (in a science-minded family) I lack analytical skills, so can’t always justify my reasons to like or dislike (and hence am crap at analysing my own writing)
I don’t remember a sex scene in The Offing though if I sense something – anything – which seems a clunky effort to suddenly heighten the drama, I start to disengage. If the author has a crisis of confidence, so do I.
I find it easier to explain why I dislike something than why I like it. Though I very rarely ‘dislike’ anything, I just get bored.
Really liking a book or story so often means simply enjoying its mood regardless of the author’s skills. That takes me into the wishy-washy territory of, ‘Oh, well, it was just nice.’
Know what you mean about ‘just nice’. Sarah Winman’s ‘Still life’ had that effect – a thoroughly ‘feel good’ effect, in part for location. Which is no bad thing, since I do re-read for comfort. And also find that writing that takes my breath away one day, might not have the same effect on another. No wonder this writing lark is so hard!
How long have you got? btw, I re-read your story for ‘Bump in the night’ yesterday, and was much impressed , all over again. Good stuff.
Thank you!! I keep thinking I must submit that story somewhere.
If you’re in the mood for another, CafeLit published one of mine earlier this month CafeLitMagazine: A Horse, A Queen, Some Crockery by Elizabeth Leyland, homemade lemonade
But honestly only read it if you feel like it.
CafeLit asks writers to name a suitable favourite drink – hence the lemonade.
Read, enjoyed and commented, but comment didn’t appear. I thought it very well captured the claustrophobia of village life. I haven’t got into the habit of submitting any of my stories; just self-published a collection so as not to lose them.
Thank you, Sandra. I haven’t tried commenting so I don’t know if the link works or not, but thank you for attempting it.
The admin side of writing stories is boring. Looking for submission sites, keeping track of submissions and rejections and keeping my stories filed in an easy-to-find order — it’s all time consuming, and I don’t even write many stories. I submit even fewer.
And now that Edinburgh’s book festival is over, I need to thank you again for the heads up – so many hours of pleasure, not to say inspiration.
That’s brilliant, Sandra. I still have a couple of books on my TBR list from last year’s festival.
In the end I didn’t sign up for this year’s Edinburgh events as I diverted my money to doing the School — Galley Beggar Press critical reading course.
A ‘critical reading course’ sounds exactly what I need, (and I’ve a couple of books on the course list) but despite several books on ‘How to’, and the Future Learn course using the James Tait Black shortlists, I’ve realised my brain doesn’t work that way. Hope you get what you want from it. I’ve several books from the Festival added to my wish-list, including giving Maggie O’Farrell a second chance (having disliked ‘Hamnet’) and spent ~£130 on tickets. Can say that listening to writers discuss the ‘How’ of their writing was insightful.
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