Hot lines: Holiday reading

Published on Friday 3 July 2009 16:24

Alex Salmond First Minister

I am looking forward to seeing the publication later this month of Tam O' Shanter by Edinburgh-based writer Lari Don. It is a modern retelling of the Robert Burns classic, which goes back to some of the old legends Burns himself admits to using as an inspiration for his epic narrative poem, giving the tale of Tam and his horse Meg stumbling upon a dark celebration at an old Kirk a modern twist. The book includes a foreword by Sir Jackie Stewart, and it will hopefully succeed in bringing the magic of Burns to a whole new audience.

Ali Smith

Writer

Jen Hadfield's two collections of poetry, Nigh-No-Place and Almanacs, are a good accompaniment to any summer travels. The poems map new roads over old ones, give you back the surface of the known world, but roughed-up and redrawn, vitalised by birth, joy and a kind of stamina that's exciting.

Annabel Goldie

MSP

I recently enjoyed All Our Wordly Goods by Irene Nemirovsky, as thought provoking as Suite Francaise. I'm currently reading Night Train To Lisbon by Pascal Mercier, a literary joy, and The Great Crash – 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith. The latter should be mandatory reading for anyone proposing to work in a bank. Awaiting me during the summer are The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid and Churchill – A Study In Greatness by Geoffrey Best.

Kath Mainland

Chief exec, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

My favourite summer read is, of course, the Fringe programme. But when the mayhem is over, the perfect read would be Kate Atkinson's beautifully written Case Histories – a complex tragi-comic thriller set against the backdrop of a sweltering summer. The perfect place to read it would be by a Norwegian fjord.

Richard Jobson

Filmmaker

I will be re-reading all JG Ballard's novels. He has been a great inspiration to me from teenage years to now. His mixture of contemporary nihilism and science fiction dystopia makes for a turbulent, evocative read. His stories such as Super Cannes and High Rise informed my last movie New Town Killers. I love how he takes the middle classes and turns them into barbarians.

Sandy Stoddart

Sculptor

I'd recommend a biography of Richard Wagner by Guy de Pourtals. This writer has a fine grasp of how to convey the variegated tonalities of the differing parts of his subject's life; from his optimistic years of political leftism, to the art-saturated, silken and scented later years. Guy varies his "tempo" rather wonderfully and can use a "high", fully aesthetic tone when it suits, so this will be a book much maligned, I don't doubt.

Pat Kane

Musician

If you're a West of Scotland based, ideas driven, sci-fi friendly adult male, hovering somewhere around the middle of the Generation X demographic, you could take no better book to the beach than Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia. Some beautiful nostalgia for Seventies Scotland, lots of weird Pynchon-esque fantasy, and a mix of modern anxieties and intricate plotting that's only bettered by Amis or DeLillo. The same male might well wish to explore Simon Reynolds' Totally Wired – interviews with leading lights of the post-punk era. It does your heart good to read tale after tale of cussed creative carnaptiousness.

Janice Galloway

Writer

Summer reading is a bit of a contradiction in terms – heat and thinking don't coincide with me – so books with pictures are a godsend. Anyone brave enough to read something challenging will enjoy the incomparable Jenny Diski's Apology For The Woman Writing, which is just out in paperback – lots of risks, humour, pathos and elegantly crafted research into 18th century France in a prickly telling of the story of Michel de Montaigne's "greatest fan" Marie de Gournay. Terrific book from a much under-rated cracker of a writer.

Tavish Scott

MSP

I should have read J G Ballard's Empire Of The Sun before. But day after day of glorious Shetland sunshine allowed time to devour a masterpiece. A schoolboy's journey from Amherst Avenue, Shanghai, to a Japanese internment camp and back as World War Two ends is impossible to leave. Starvation, death marches, the utter determination to survive and the fragmentation and desolation as families are torn apart never to be reunited sear out of every page. The image that will stay longest is not the end of the war with the Americans in sight, but that the camp becomes "safe". Life behind barbed wire is better, after the years of captivity, than the insecurity of being free. Everyone should read this.

John Burnside

Writer

I've just finished Salley Vickers' marvellous new novel, Dancing Backwards. It's a book about giving and taking and about the kindnesses we are capable of doing one another; it's also shot through with her typical brand of subtle humour and thinking characters who aren't afraid to be fully-formed. I was introduced to the stories of Breece D'J Pancake (yes, that's his real name) by one of my students and I'm reading the handful of stories he wrote before he died (aged 28) along with another great and tragically short-lived 'Southern' writer, Henry Dumas. Perfect fare for muggy summer days.

Iain Gray

MSP

Travels With Herodotus is Ryszard Kapuscinski's last book, a look back on his life. The great Polish writer, who died in 2007, had the wonderful knack of combining journalism and art. As a foreign correspondent he was a witness to 27 revolutions and coups in Asia, Africa and Europe. He was jailed 40 times and survived four death sentences. I'll also be dipping into Paul Krugman's The Return Of The Depression Economics. To whet my appetite for the coming football season, I'll be reading There Is A Bonny Fitba Team by Ted Brack. It's about his 50 years as a Hibs fans. I'm not far behind.

Tam Dean Burn

Actor

I read a definitive biography of Iggy Pop, Open Up And Bleed, by Paul Trynka on holiday recently and emerged in greater awe than ever of the great rock'n'roll survivor. Trynka does the vital job of the biographer of talking at length to those who knew the man through all the phases of his extraordinary life and writes in a hugely entertaining style. I honestly feel that if our band, The Bum-Clocks, pulls off its desired masterstroke and gets Iggy to appear onstage with us this year as part of Homecoming, I will understand him thanks to Trynka.

Alexander McCall Smith

Writer

One of the great delights in life is the discovery of a new novelist of obvious talent. Sam Meeking's debut novel, Under Fishbone Clouds is one such discovery – utterly beautiful and memorable. Set in China the reader is invited to follow the life journey of Jinyi and his wife Yuying, from their youth until old age, always aware of the dramatic events of recent Chinese political history, and with the voice of ancient Chinese mythology firmly at one's shoulder. This is very fine storytelling that handles, with great care, life often at its most raw. Meeking presents us with the gift of a brilliant debut novel.

Aidan Moffat

Musician, ex-Arab Strap

Having recently read all of B S Johnson's novels, I'm finally ready to enjoy Jonathan Coe's lauded biography, Like A Fiery Elephant. Also on the "heavy" pile is Raymond Queneau and Samuel Beckett's Three Novels trilogy, with light relief from Edward Gorey. But to be perfectly honest, my summer belongs to Batman, or more accurately Glasgow's own Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, whose new Batman And Robin monthly excites parts of my anatomy that have lain dormant since my teens.

Lorraine Kelly

GMTV presenter

Having grown up in the Seventies and Eighties, I enjoyed West Coast by Kate Muir. It's the story of Fergus, who becomes a painfully fashionable artist, but who has had a hideous childhood in the port of Burnoch on the west coast of Scotland. Sarah Waters is one of my favourite authors and her new one, The Little Stranger, is very different, set in a decaying old house after the war that may or may not be haunted. Gloriously spine-tingling. When I go on holiday I always take George Mackay Brown's Greenvoe, but what usually happens is that no matter where I am, I always yearn to be in Orkney.

Clare Grogan

Presenter and writer

I just got back from holiday and I couldn't put down The Believers by Zo Heller. Just like Notes On A Scandal, it's brilliantly written and incredibly tense. It makes you squirm with unease. It's about a seriously dysfunctional family who live in New York. When the Dad has a stroke, the whole family unravels in very different but extreme ways. Heller writes about truly challenging people in a very compelling way. They really are all pretty hideous, but you want to know what happens to them.

Denise Mina

Writer

David Peace's Occupied City is amazingly good, but I fear it's going to be overlooked because it's not about Brian Clough. In fact, I actually had a nightmare about that. You should really read the short story by Akutagawa beforehand – it's in the same book as his Rashomon – which explains a lot about Occupied City. It's stylistically complex – if you slightly glaze your eyes you realise that it's really 12 short stories dealing with the same event from different perspectives.