Val McDermid is depressed and disappointed. Ian Rankin is disheartened ‘to say the least’. What has upset them both is the threat by Aberdeen Council to close every public library in the city except the central library. If this half-baked plan is given the go ahead, sixteen libraries will...

  The taxi driver, he reveals as we turn off the main road, grew up at Glenacopaig, just up the hill from the house. He’s been meaning, he says, to go along the track and see it again some day. I go a bit quiet at this, because the last time I was along, even more of the roof had fallen in and...

The British Book Awards, or Nibbies, has revealed the regional shortlists for the 2019 Independent Bookshop of the Year, sponsored by Gardners Books. Forty-eight bookshops from nine regions are competing to win in their local area, before vying for the overall prize. The final award will be given out...

  Graeme Hawley is the Head of General Collections at the National Library of Scotland (NLS). In this piece, the first of a regular series from NLS curators, he reflects on a chance encounter with a book in the collection. The occupational hazard in my work is curiosity. You train yourself after...

If I’d thought quicker, I would have started humming Bolero. We don’t often see snow out here, with the influence of sea on three sides, but when it does come it falls with a curious intensity that borders on malice, the way a lapsing alcoholic might fall on a bottle of malt. There is always a...

  January has been far from a month of hibernation in the world of books: we have already seen the awarding and winning of prizes, the announcement of new bookshops, and a sound and light show featuring work by a number of Scotland’s leading writers. Last night saw the annual Scottish Book Trust...

As the book trade continues to face difficult times it appears that Scotland has something to celebrate. A new and fiercely independent LGBT shop opened in Glasgow towards the end of 2018 – Category is Books in Allison Street – and more new independent and chain openings are rumoured and planned...

Alan Windram is the deserving winner of this year’s Bookbug Picture Book Prize. Alan is a much respected author and co-founder (with wife Susan Windram, editor of the Oban Times) of children’s book publisher Little Door Books. His book, One Button Benny, illustrated by Chloe Holwill-Hunter,...

The prestigious Costa Book Prize for Poetry has been scooped-up by a writer from the Scottish Borders. J.O. Morgan, originally from Edinburgh, took the award for his book-length poem, Assurances about the nuclear tensions of the Cold War period. The book, his fifth, is published by Jonathan Cape. Mr...

Members of the Scottish Review of Books team were saddened to hear of the death of Tom Leonard – poet, writer and critic – on the shortest day of winter, 21 December 2018. He was 74 and died after a short period in hospital. A full appreciation of his life and work will follow in the Spring print...