100 books like Docherty

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.

The various Scots dictionaries produced by Scottish Language Dictionaries and also available online are a veritable treasure trove of Scottish culture and the go-to place for anyone who writes Scots or wants to know about Scots. With quotations going back hundreds of years it gives you instant access to the rich literature and prose in a language still spoken by over 1.5 million Scots. 

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.

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.

This magnificent book made me realize perhaps more than any other by a Scottish female writer that the lives of working-class Scottish women are unique, important, and worth writing/reading about.

The book tells the story of Joy, a woman whose mental health is slowly crumbling before our eyes. Galloway masterfully tells this story in the first person so that we are right inside Joy’s mind. We discover a background of abuse and recent bereavement, leading to issues with alcohol abuse and anorexia.

That should all make for a depressing read, and it is of course heart-breaking at times but it is also ultimately about one woman’s search for what it takes ‘to keep breathing’. Utterly spellbinding writing from one of Scotland’s greatest writers. 

This is the debut novel by Ely Percy, and tells the story of Kirsty Campbell, an ordinary Scottish girl as she navigates her way through high school in Renfrewshire.

An extremely relatable novel, it is told in short, buzzy chapters, and I love it for relating the best of what a Scottish working-class childhood can give you – resilience, humour, and the will to succeed. The book covers issues like teen pregnancy, drugs, and violence, but it does so without lecturing; rather, it celebrates what it means to be brought up in contemporary, working-class Scotland.

This beautifully written novel tells the story of Kelly, as she makes her way home to Galloway from Glasgow.

Homeless and with addiction problems, Kelly experiences some of the problems that Glasgow is sadly well-known for, but what I really love about Paper Cup is that we see these issues from a middle-aged woman’s perspective so there is no glorifying of violence and excess.

Instead we are drawn into the precarious world of a vulnerable and damaged woman, and made to consider just how easy it would be for any one of us to slip through the cracks and tread the same path as Kelly. A truly thought-provoking read.

A day in the life of two inseparable friends in an impoverished Scottish town where everything seems challenging. They learn what friendship truly means in the face of certain dangers. Dillon’s award-winning debut depicts the vitality and intensity of boyhood friendship, as well as painting a vivid picture of contemporary working-class Scotland.

Shuggie Bain invades the senses: You smell the sour breath of Shuggie’s mum as she snores, open-mouthed, in a drunken stupor; you feel the stiffness of the rug where endless spilled drinks were left to dry. Just as important, you feel the push-and-pull of love and despair, hope and anger, as Shuggie grows up, the youngest child of an alcoholic who is ultimately abandoned by the rest of their family. The final chapters, as Shuggie moves into adolescence and struggles to break from the burden of becoming caretaker to the woman who should have been taking care of him, are exceptional.

The novel tells the story of a group of friends who have taken it upon themselves to carry out the “last orders” of their drinking partner, Jack Dodds, to deliver his ashes to the grey seas of Margate. As they drive to the coast, their errand becomes a poignant journey into their collective pasts.

Swift described it as an homage to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and it follows a similar narrative structure, with chapters titled with the names of the seven key characters, with a shifting narrative perspective to follow the story from each of their eyes.

As a reader, you naturally find your favourite narrative viewpoint. For me, it was Ray, “Lucky Ray,” the obsessive gambler, which for me was the real centre of the novel.