Bookworm

Published on Friday 14 August 2009 14:12

IN THE HOT SEAT

IMAGINING an Edinburgh book festival without Catherine Lockerbie is hard enough, but from next year we might also have to imagine one without Ian Rankin. That, at least, is if he sticks to his resolution to take a whole year, starting next month, away from everything to do with the world of books.

Already Rankin seems to be easing himself out of the interviewer's chair. Whereas last year he was in the main tent chatting to Gordon Brown, Rick Wakeman and Alexander McCall Smith, this year the only event he is chairing is for chef Tom Kitchin on Monday.

He hadn't, he says, intended even doing that. But after a particularly fine meal with fellow crime writer Harlan Coben at Kitchin's Leith restaurant, the chef had come round to ask about how to handle his book festival appearance. "Don't worry," Rankin told him in a flush of post-prandial bonhomie, "I'll chair it for you." Rankin's many fans will be hoping that he can be just as easily persuaded to change his mind about participating in next year's festival.

INSPIRATIONAL SCOTS

WE'VE written elsewhere about the gratifying way in which The Scotsman's "daily novel" 44 Scotland Street, written by Alexander McCall Smith, has infiltrated the best-seller charts in the oddest of places. What we didn't realise until now is the extent to which it has also influenced other bestseller writers.

Irish author Marian Keyes is, however, quite open about the extent to which she is indebted to 44 Scotland Street for providing the inspiration for her new novel The Brightest Star in the Sky, due out in October from Michael Joseph.

"I loved the way in which he wrote about a massive cast of characters and the way in which we all intersect, and the impact we have on other people's lives without knowing it." Absolutely.

OUT OF THIS WORLD

Finally, what's all this I hear about an exhibition of Scotland's neglected history of space exploration at Transreal Fiction in Edinburgh? Surely a spoof by those SF merry pranksters at Writers' Bloc? But no – the photos for the Alba ad Astra exhibition (until 31 August) put together by Madeleine Shepherd have not been retouched or altered. And if you're suitably intrigued, go along to exhibition contributor Andrew Wilson's similarly free and otherworldly event at Fingers Piano Bar, Edinburgh at 7.50pm on Tuesday