100 books like Concise English-Scots Dictionary

I received this as a prize at school when I was fifteen and passages like this spoke to me: “...you wanted the words they'd known and used, forgotten in the far‑off youngness of their lives, Scots words to tell to your heart, how they wrung it and held it.” My Ayrshire community spoke Scots so it was life changing to read this message by an author from a different time and a different place who was  intensely relevant to my own situation. Being discouraged or even punished for speaking Scots in school, led us to learn English pretty quickly and this bi-lingual tension gave us an advantage learning other languages like French and German which I studied at University. But I will always be grateful to Sunset Song for making me aware of how important the Scots language was to our identity as Scots: “And the next minute that passed… show more.

This is a great anthology of contemporary Scots writing ranging from more classical Scots like my own short story Inrush at Nummer Fower to racy urban Scots like Irvine Welsh’s A Soft Touch. I love it because it showed me that our language is vital, contemporary, and alive today as well as being a brilliant historic literary language. It was like a revelation to me, and it stayed with me too.

I first discovered the author of Trainspotting in this book. James is also a brilliant Scots writer and shows that in novels like The Fanatic and The Land Lay Still. He and Matthew Fitt, also a fine poet and novelist in Scots, also produced the imprint Itchy Coo which has published excellent children's books in Scots, some from new authors, others with Scots translations of famous European collectors of Fairy Tales such as Hans Christian Andersen… show more.

Another fine novel by a great writer who, like me, hailed from Ayrshire. I quote from it in my book. I became aware of William McIlvanney when I attended Kilmarnock Academy between 1967 and 1969 and his first novel Remedy is None was passed around the students in their final year at the school, before heading for University. Having a living, breathing novelist living in the town was really something, and it made us all think that perhaps we could become writers too! All of his books are excellent but Docherty touched me personally because it describes a mining community, similar to the town I grew up in, Galston. It also explores the linguistic tension between Scots and English which is the experience of most people growing up in the Lowlands of Scotland.

I want to reveal to people the superb achievement of the medieval Scots Makars who produced arguably the greatest poetry anywhere in Europe or Britain between roughly 1450 to 1550. John Barbour, William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay are the greatest of them but there are more excellent exponents of Scots in this, one of its golden ages, and they are all represented here. I quote many of them in my book.

Ah, were you ever going to shout the famous question, “Why’d you do it!?”, at a character, it would have to be at Morvern.

Another book that grabbed the filmic imagination, this time of Lynne Ramsay, Morvern has the quietest moment of madness on this list. She finds her boyfriend, whom she never names but gives him a Godlike uppercase H whenever He is mentioned, dead by his own hand on the floor of their flat and coolly accepts the fact.

Then, as a sort of civic duty and not to cause a fuss, she chops him up and buries the pieces of him in a suitably empty Scottish landscape. As you do. The draft novel she steals from him seems obviously hers, as all her actions seem obviously Morvern.

You can’t go wrong with any Rebekah Weatherspoon book frankly, but Xeni has a special place in my heart because of the leads: Xeni, a witchy bi lead with a very complicated family bumping into a favourite romantic trope: the marriage of convenience (only, it’s very much not convenient, thank you); and Mason, a burly, bearded, bi bear who, I cannot express this clearly enough, is so instantly cuddle-worthy. That these bisexual characters are thrown into this marriage by someone they both loved as part of her will just adds to the trope joy. Beyond that, there’s so much steamy sex-positivity in this book, alongside Weatherspoon’s always brilliant supportive friend groups and mix of chosen and biological family that I found myself taking the dog for extra walks just to keep listening. 

I value this book because, since joining the United Kingdom in 1707, much of Scottish history has been disregarded. Even though I studied history in my Scottish school to a high level, the details of our past were replaced with English history. Well-known radio personality, Billy Kay, brings together a wealth of information about Scotland’s outside influence through the ages. Scotland was one of the first countries to see the benefit of an educated working class, and in the countries to which they emigrated, their learning stood them in good stead. Scottish culture, over hundreds of years before it was incorporated into the United Kingdom, had well-established cultural centers throughout Europe and even as far as Russia.

In 2017, Scotsman Iain Maloney and his acerbic Japanese wife Minori decided to buy a house in rural Japan. This was no small decision, as Japan houses begin to depreciate almost as soon as they are built. Nevertheless, the author is resigned to spending the remainder of his days in Japan and is ready to commit. The book is ostensibly about one year in rural Japan, but Maloney veers frequently from the narrative path, flashing back and forth in time, riffing on, among other things, soccer, crowded trains, and tired tropes in memoirs written by foreigners.

While many have written about their experiences in Japan, few have taken readers quite so far off the beaten path – literally. Maloney’s understanding of the Japanese language and his immersion in Japanese culture (he’d first arrived in 2005) add credibility and depth, while his self-deprecation and humor make this an entirely enjoyable read.

I studied with Jane Kamensky while I was working on a MA in American History. Little did I know that she had a wicked historical character hidden inside. Learning that inspired me to write good history inside a realistic and sexy historical plot. This is a story of hidden identity and unexpected love. 

The characters are a portrait artist and his apprentice. The apprentice appears to be a young man, as only young men would take such a position in 18th-century Boston, and the artist is surprised at his yearning for him. 

I will always be grateful to Julias Glass because once upon a time, she was gracious enough to let a journalism graduate student make her the subject of a dissertation: a profile about Glass and the tribulations of creating a sophomore novel after your debut is a ginormous success. 

Three Junes, which won the 2002 National Book Award, is that first novel. 

Glass’s story about the members of the McLeod family and the physical and emotional journeys that take its members to Greece, Scotland, and Greenwich Village is as mesmerizing as everyone says. Truly.