Here’s to the Scottish publishing community!Īnother good chunk of this list can be attributed to another project of mine: co-hosting the Teenage Scream podcast with most excellent pal Kirsty Logan. A shoutout also has to go to Haunted Voices (by various authors), a great collection of Scottish gothic storytelling (from the past and the present)-the Haunted team was fundraising at the same time as us, and we’ve been able to support each other along the way. I won’t gush for too long but you can read more about it (and buy it!) right here. Turning this energy into a beautiful first issue, packed with some truly phenomenal writers, has been the highlight of my year. I didn’t start this year expecting to be a publisher by the end of a it, but a meeting over wine with the brilliant Jules Danskin changed the course of 2019 and in July we raised £10,000 to Kickstart a new Scottish literary magazine with the help of hundreds of generous benefactors.

Individual comic issues do not.įirst, a confession: I’m incredibly biased in putting Extra Teeth Issue One(by various authors) on this list, and perhaps I shouldn’t have, because a) it’s a magazine and b) I published it. So do poetry collections, and collected volumes of comics. YA counts, and longer kids’ books do too. To be counted, a book has to be over 50 pages and has to be something worthwhile. The rules for my reading list, as ever, are simple. So I’ll write instead about the unexpectedly brilliant books, or the ones that changed the way I think, or read, or live my life. If I wrote about every book I loved this blog would be in volumes, and quite frankly I don’t have the energy for that. And I know where I want to do better next year. I remember who lent me poetry books because I know almost nothing about what poets I should be reading I think back to the gifts of good paperbacks from friends who’ve found a Hot New Writer and want to share I see the re-reads of books that shaped who am I as a writer.

I recognise the research I was doing for novels or short stories, or-as of this year-non-fiction books. In the list I always see the year unfolding. It’s become a habit of mine to sit down at the end of every year and look over what I’ve read to take stock, a little. And where better to start than with books? But today, right now, sitting with a coffee and the last of the mince pies, I want to celebrate the good things about 2019, because there have been some, buried deep down in the midst of everything awful, and we need to start out 2020 determined and inspired. I could start this blog by reiterating quite how shit this year has been, socially and politically, and in fact every instinct tell me to do so.

Drawn to Change by Paul M. Buhle