Most of you, I assume, have a to be read pile of books.  I’m not wanting to boast, but I’ve actually got two: one lives on my bedside table and is the stuff I want to read next.  The second is all the books that look interesting and I’ll have to get back to one day and these books have found homes on the bookshelves downstairs.  Gradually they’ll make their way upstairs to my primary to be read stash.  Now for the bit that was going so well: I was down to two books in the must be read next pile: my bedside table was looking uncluttered, I could open the drawer without danger of an avalanche of books, Teaga could swing round without her tail causing devastation (actually that’s never likely to happen).  Then it all went wrong.

The penultimate book in the pile was In Cold Ink by David Robinson.  David is the books editor for The Scotsman newspaper and he’s put together this collection of essays and interviews, based on his newspaper articles. I don’t usually read much literary criticism, as I find it can often taint my opinion of a book or author. That probably explains why it languished towards the bottom of my to be read pile for quite so long.  However, David’s enthusiasm for books simply shines from each page.  Each piece is loosely related through some link or possible contrast to the adjoining chapters, which provides a lovely flow to the book and adds further insight to each of the essays.  So, beware of reading this book if you have a book habit, because it has already added books by Truman Capote, AL Kennedy, Zoe Wicomb, Ali Smith and Jackie Kay to my to be read pile.

The last book was  Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography by Rodge Glass.  I’ve been a great admirer of Gray’s work for a number of years (Five Letters From An Eastern Empire easily makes it to my fantasy anthology of short stories – somtimes my thinking time isn’t very productive) but I didn’t actually know that much about him.  I knew he was Glaswegian, an artist and writer, and famously eccentric, but that was about it. As Alasdair’s secretary for a number of years, Rodge promises an insiders view of his life with a unique access to his personal archives, and we certainly get a comprehensive review of his life.  This biography is cleverly interspersed with contemporary interviews, reviews of his work and modern diary entries. I was previously unaware of the very strong influence of Alasdair’s background to his work and how much of his material is autobiographical.  Unfortunately, I found that sometimes the reviews of Gray’s work dipped into an academic critique, especially when compared to the enthusiasm of David Robinson’s reviews.  Nevertheless, the upshot is that The Book of Prefaces; McGrotty and Ludmilla; 1982, Janine and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lanark have all made it onto my now creaking again bedside table.

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