Roddy Lumsden's Review of 2006

Having been writing about books on this site for a year now, and with Christmas approaching, I thought it might be time for an overview of the most interesting books. I have read over 50 books from Scottish authors and/or publishers and have written up my thoughts on 40 of them, often focussing on books which have been overlooked in the press.

Though I have inevitably enthused about my favourite subjects (poetry, social history, true crime, food, more poetry), I have also read books I would never have encountered, mostly with great pleasure, on subjects as far apart as football, islands, clichés and alcoholism. So here is a recap plus a few extras – fuller items on most of these books can be found on the blog.

Could I pick one favourite? Oh yes – easy. That would be Charles Maclean's St Kilda – Island On the Edge of the World (Canongate Classics), simply one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Since I read it last Spring, I have persuaded a few friends to read it, and no doubt they have persuaded others. Aside from the engrossing history of these remote islanders – their seabird driven economy and bizarre customs – there is the writing itself, from a young man evidently in thrall to his own purpose. The last chapter, in which he attempts a psychological analysis of the St Kildans, dates the book (it is over 30 years old) and can be skipped, but this book easily warrants its classic status.

Staying with Scottish landscapes, Seton Gordon's Scotland (Whittles) makes available the best of the hard-to-find writings of the country's first professional naturalist. Gordon wrote many books on the countryside's flora and fauna and was once a popular and weel-kent figure. This book does its bit to keep his name alive and his work read and would make a fine gift for anyone sharing Gordon's interests and concerns.

Travelling further afield, Will Ferguson's Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw (Canongate) would be a good choice for anyone who has enjoyed Bill Bryson's witty travel writing. Previously known for describing his travels in Japan, more recently Ferguson has turned the telescope on his homeland of Canada, travelling the length of this huge country to discover and catalogue idiosyncratic characters, national obsessions and quirky historical anecdotes.

The books I have got through the quickest have been true crime ones – nothing better for a late night read. Reg McKay's books are particularly pacy and suitably grim. For the criminally curious, I'd recommend this year's Murder Capital, which I've yet to write about. Another book I have lined up to review will also be a good gift for the right person – journalist and music promoter Martin Kielty's Big Noise is an overview of sixty years of Scottish popular music, from skiffle days to the present and contains the memories and observations of many Scottish musicians and music business figures.

For children, it has to be The Eejits, Matthew Fitt's Scots version of Roald Dahl's The Twits. There is no better recommendation than giving you a flavour of Fitt's spiky and hilarious prose:

And now for my specialist subject: in Scottish poetry, there have been some interesting new volumes: travel-fuelled books from WN Herbert and Stewart Conn, the redemptive poems of Jackie Kay's Life Mask, while Robin Robertson's Swithering won the Forward Prize for the year's best collection. Two of Scotland's foremost poets released Selected Poems with Cape: Robert Crawford's lively, earthy and detailed poems contrasting with John Burnside 's philosophical landscapes (a fine book, yet blighted by the poet's reluctance to include much from his excellent early books).

Having tackled Antonio Machado a few years ago, Don Paterson turned to another spiritual European poet born in 1875 with Orpheus (Faber), his 'versions' of the 55 sonnets Rilke famously wrote in a three week blaze in the early 1920s. The heightened emotions and spiritual excess of the Sonnets to Orpheus have been ill-served by translation into English, where they can sound purple. But here, Paterson's pragmatism tones down some of Rilke's elation without being untrue to the essence of the sequence.

I'm cheating slightly with my favourite Scottish book of poetry of the past year, in that it appeared a bit more than a year ago, and is not from a Scottish poet or publisher! Yet Jen Hadfield's Almanacs (Bloodaxe), a first book by a poet in her mid-twenties, is imbued with Scottishness nonetheless and is highly recommended. Hadfield studied in Scotland and stayed on to travel the remote parts of the country (she is now a writer-in-residence in Shetland) and the long sequence ('Lorelei's Lore') which makes up over half of the collection is set in various corners of Scotland. Hadfield's poems are rich, charming, in love with language. This little one gives you a flavour:

Thrimilce - Isbister