As many of you know, the Edinburgh International Book Festival kicked off on Saturday.  If you’re in the book trade in Scotland the year can pretty much be divided into pre- and post-EIBF.  Once it’s over, the Christmas season starts with ordering stock, gearing up for the rush etc and this year, the end of the book festival will mean that it’s only a few days until the new bookshop opens its doors on the 5th September (oh goodness, breathe, breathe!).  The book festival is also one of the most sociable times of the year as all the major publishers are here and often invite us out for dinner to show their appreciation of the sterling effort we put in all year selling their books and to introduce us to some of their authors who are doing events at the festival.

The festival social scene got off to a cracking start on Saturday with the launch of Sue Lawrence’s new book, Taste Ye Back, one of the first books to be commissioned by Hachette Scotland.  She has interviewed 70 prominent Scots (Gordon Brown, Ian Rankin, Andy Murray and the other usual suspects) about the food they remember from their childhoods and she has refined the recipes into something we can all enjoy cooking and eating.  The launch was at Charlotte Square in the beautifully restored Georgian townhouse that is the HQ of the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust. 

After an all-too-brief stop there, it was off to Abstract for the Puffin dinner.  This was great fun with delicious food (much better than when I was there last summer) and I met some of their lovely authors such as Suzanne Butterworth, Chris Bradford and Maggi Gibson as well as having the treat of sitting next to Joan Lingard over dinner – Joan’s The Twelfth of July was a great favourite of mine when I was a teenager and her new book, What To Do About Holly is just out.  It was a lovely supper and thanks very much to Puffin for inviting me.

After that, it was to the EIBF opening night party where I got to catch up with masses of friends and generally had a great time and talked lots about the new bookshop – so far only two people have told us that we’re mad and I’m pretty certain one of them was joking -  It was a later night than we planned and I was pleased to find when the alarm went off the following morning that I felt fairly fresh as I was chairing Alexander MCall Smith’s children’s event at 10.30am.  More on that later… his events are so different to everyone else’s that they probably deserve a blog post of their own!

Overall, a lovely evening of Puffins, books, friends, wine, a discussion about Kenny Logan’s hairline, the use of Guildford Cathedral as a location in the horror film The Omen and whether that might or might not bode well when choosing it as a wedding venue, Nicola Morgan’s shoes and what possessed one of Edinburgh’s publishers to dress up as the Scot’s Porridge Oats man.  Eclectic then.

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