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Kenneth Goldsmith on Uncreative Writing

Kenneth Goldsmith's latest novel is a word for word transcription of the longest game in the history of baseball, adverts and all.

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A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans

Books :: Review 13 Aug 2008

Hannah Brooks-Motl: The devil and all his works have always been fodder for fiction, and now Justin Evans has added George Davies to the playgrounds of the possessed. We meet Davies as a new father seeking help for a peculiar problem: he’s afraid to touch his son. C...

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Books :: Review 11 Aug 2008

Rob Wringham: Haruki Murakami's style is deliberate, economical and has a unique 'sufficiency' which lends itself startlingly well to magical realism. His style somehow succeeds in making everyday non-adventures – say, cooking spaghetti - into engaging portrai...

The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean

The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean

Books :: Review 07 Aug 2008

Katie Gordon: On a dark and stormy night the disreputable Dawson sisters stumble across the dying body of Patrick Davidson, the apothecary’s apprentice. Unwilling to be implicated in his demise, the sisters drag the body to the School House in the hope that th...

St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

Books :: Review 06 Aug 2008

Rebecca Isherwood: This impressive collection of wicked, fantastical fairy-tales has already garnered much praise; at the age of 24, when the book was first published in hardback, author Karen Russell was included in the New York magazine’s “25 under 25 to Wa...

Chuck Palahniuk

The Skinny Event - Chuck Palahniuk @ Charlotte Square Gardens, 16 Aug

Books :: Heads Up :: Preview 31 Jul 2008

Lindsay West: Friends, readers, cult fiction fanciers; you are hereby cordially invited to the union of two fractious, brazen youths of the literary world - prodigious U.S. novelist Chuck Palahniuk, and your humble Skinny magazine. If this were a real wedding, it wo...

Shane Koyczan

The Skinny Event - Shane Koyczan @ Charlotte Square Gardens, 22 Aug

Books :: Feature 31 Jul 2008

Keir Hind: Grab a ticket quick, because the fantastic Master Poetry Slammer Mr Koyczan was one of the hits of the festival on his last appearance in 2005, so they're in demand. What are his poems like, you say? His poems are varied. He can hold an audience spellb...

Irvine Welsh

The Book Festival of Book Festivals...

Books :: Feature 23 Jul 2008

Keir Hind: The Edinburgh International Book Festival is upon us, and it features the usual massive, yet well-judged, selection of famous names including film stars, poets, news reporters and cult novelists, but mostly just some very fine writers. The really big n...

West Port Book Festival Logo

Book Festival Fringe, with strippers

Books :: Preview 21 Jul 2008

Erin McElhinney: In August, anything with the word 'free' in it automatically draws the eye. So much so that companies and publicists have even been known to use the word in their performance titles, just so their events come up top in any uninitiated-to-the-fringe tou...

Elephantina

Elephantina by Andrew Drummond

Books :: Review 17 Jul 2008

Ryan Agee: Elephantina is a cross between a historical novel and a comic one. Drummond invents the journals of one Gilbert Orum, assistant to the very real Dr Patrick Blair, who was the first man in Britain to dissect an Elephant. The book is Orum’s account...

Mio's Hospital Diary

Mio's Hospital Diary

Books :: Feature 16 Jul 2008

Jack Lynch: In 2002, Mio Matsumoto was an art student in London, with an unrequited crush on a classmate. She decided to write and draw a diary in pictures about this, but soon after she developed tongue cancer. So My Diary became a very different book. I wondered...

More About The Songs

More About The Song by Rachel Fox

Books :: Review 09 Jul 2008

Keir Hind: Rachel Fox sets out her stall early in this delightful new poetry collection: “There’s nothing sacred about poetic form / You can get bored of imagery” she writes, “Worry less about the cleverness/ Worry more about the song&rdqu...

Rodge Glass

Rodge Glass: One to Watch

Books :: Feature 29 Jun 2008

Keir Hind: Hope For Newborns is the second book by Rodge Glass, after 2005’s No Fireworks. This was a debut novel which, though never less than a decent read, had a number of excellent passages interspersed throughout, enough to make me want more. Now Gla...

Kenneth Goldsmith

Kenneth Goldsmith on Uncreative Writing

Books :: Heads Up :: Feature 20 Jun 2008

RJ Thomson: Kenneth Goldsmith doesn’t know much about sport. In fact, he tells me 'I know nothing about sport'. So how did he come to be writing an epic tome titled Sports, as part of his ambitiously-titled American Trilogy?(1) The explanation lies in years...

FREDDIE AND ME

Freddie and Me by Mike Dawson

Books :: Review 22 May 2008

Nine: Everybody knows it’s not cool to be a Queen fan. Mike Dawson knows this, and he’s written a whole book about it. Specifically, an autobiographical graphic novel explaining how his lifelong obsession with Queen has tied in with his formative...

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

Books :: Review 22 May 2008

Renée Rowland: A Case of Exploding Mangoes is a ‘factional’ story based around the mysterious 1988 crash of a Hercules, which carried General Zia, Pakistani dictator of 11 years, and the American Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel, to their deaths. Des...

Jackie Kay

The Random Poetry Experiment

Books :: Feature 21 May 2008

Keir Hind: Poetry: it's great. But like music, it comes in many varieties. To explore the form, The Skinny's Books writers were randomly assigned some poetry collections, and asked to try to understand them if nothing else. Here's what happened... Darling by Jac...

NOW IS THE HOUR

Now is the Hour, by Tom Spanbauer

Books :: Review 15 May 2008

Rebecca Isherwood: Creator of the concept of ‘Dangerous Writing’, Tom Spanbauer utilises a brand of literary minimalism, focusing on heavy topics such as race and sexual identity and paying very close attention to language. Never more has this approach been c...

Charles Leadbeater

Charles Leadbeater: We Think Therefore We Are

Books :: Heads Up :: Feature 28 Apr 2008

RJ Thomson: Wikipedia gets a bad rep. It is frequently said to be too inaccurate, too amateur, or simply too easy to be a good encyclopaedia. But Charles Leadbeater, the influential author and thinker behind We-Think, a new book on the collaborative potential of t...

Bad Traffic

Bad Traffic

Books :: Review 25 Apr 2008

Rebecca Isherwood: The birth of Bad Traffic came in response to the real life crimes concerning the deaths of dozens of illegal Chinese immigrants in a lorry container, and the drowning of the cockle pickers on Morecambe Bay. Author Simon Lewis spent a great deal of time...

Bloodshot Monochrome

Bloodshot Monochrome

Books :: Review 25 Apr 2008

Ryan Agee: Bloodshot Monochrome is a collection of poems by one author, all of good quality, but the tone and structure and type of language used varies considerably. Agbabi is a performance poet, and many of these poems were written to be read, so maybe the chan...

Pages:12345 ... 14

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