81 books like Ink & Sigil

A bit of a cheat, I confess, as this is a play. But what a play. Stories within stories. Characters so real, they are flesh and blood. And so much magic, real magic, delivered by a fairy queen and king, fairies, and a hobgoblin called Puck. As an author I learn so much from Shakespeare’s plots. He is able to describe human behaviour so well. I enjoy losing myself in magic or fantasy, suspending reality. (I just thought of Harry Potter). 

There is a world of difference between the fairies of folk-lore and the ‘airy-fairy’s’ to use one of Katherine Brigg’s descriptions that infest popular media. Disney’s depiction of Peter Pan & Tinkerbelle as ordinary kids who happen to have wings bears no relation to the fairies of folklore. The moment a fairy character is absorbed into capitalist entertainment, their magic is lost. The unsurpassable fairy lore of Katherine Briggs 1898-1980, takes up an entire shelf on my bookcase and includes The Anatomy of Puck, The Fairies in Tradition and Literature, The Vanishing People, and A Dictionary of Fairies. The one-time president of the English Folklore Society, her books are so authoritative and imaginative, they bring to life the incredible inhabitants of the otherworldly realm. All the best books on the subject were written before 1970, the later ones tending to be cribbed from Briggs and that other great… show more.

For me, the widely varying folklore and myths of England covered in this book help to reveal the rich, unique history that the country possesses. One worry I have is that such traditions are already disappearing from the fields and squares of the land, and indeed the minds of the people. This is due in no small part to the homogenisation of individual cultures by the mainstream mass media, something which unfortunately shows no signs of abating. 

Katharine Briggs spent her whole life learning every single thing about every fairy, goblin, bogie, and sprite, and she put it all in one book.

Now, fairies are famous for their dislike of being talked about—cautious people refer to them as “the fair folk” or “the people of peace” so as not to offend. But Briggs put it right in the title! An Encyclopedia of Fairies! That was a very dangerous thing to do.

If your parents know anything about anything, they will object to your reading a book so dangerous. Still, you’ve got to learn these things sometime, don’t you?

The most “please don’t do it” I have felt in response to a story is as Gray’s protagonist Thaw empties his pockets and throws his life documents and identifying possessions from a moving train on his way to his moment of madness. This will transpose or transform or, I suppose we must, translate Thaw into Lanark.

Critics have noted the many madcap imaginative moments in Gray’s large (in every sense) debut novel. The sequencing of the parts alone (Part 3, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4) is enough to signal we are in no realist story of a boy and man’s life in Glasgow – more, think surrealist – and yet the book is also just that, and Glasgow is a hell called Unthank in the imagination of an artist who lived all his life in Glasgow.

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 Trocchi renaissance, including a film of Young Adam starring A-Listers Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, and Emily Mortimer, added to a growing reappraisal of Trocchi as a great Scottish writer, his reputation having been tarnished, fairly or unfairly, with drug use, indolence, and writer’s block.

Young Adam is a Scots crime novel the way James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is a high-jinx picaresque, which is to say only technically, and on the understanding that Hogg and Trocchi sit head, shoulders and in fact a full body length above these genres. But moment of madness there is, and arrest, trial, judgment, and condemnation. But the twist is that Trocchi’s own judgment and condemnation of society is what matters.

The Long Drop is a Scottish crime book like no other. 

It features an imagined night featuring two key figures in the terrible world of one of Scotland’s most notorious murderers Peter Manuel.

In this long night of the soul Peter Manuel and William Watt wander through Glasgow and its underbelly as Manuel leads Watt on a journey of lies, drink, and trickery.

It is Tartan Noir at its most terrifying. A Jekyll and Hyde story of a night based on true events.

I still have my treasured original copy of Laidlaw by Willie McIlvanney, and also the more recently published edition. Laidlaw, as Willie said, is first and foremost a man, who just happens to be a policeman. My father was a detective, working on the front line, and we often saw the effect that had on him. So Laidlaw rang true to me, in its questioning, Who is the true monster among us? In its voice and rhythm, which sounded undeniably Scottish, and most of all, in its humanity. 

Laidlaw inspired me to write my book. It also inspired me to help set up Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival Bloody Scotland and the annual McIlvanney award for the best Scottish crime book.

Another story of dark, hidden family secrets. I read this book a long time ago but it’s stuck with me and I need to re-read it soon. The story centres on a troubled auctioneer who discovers a collection of old family photos which catch his eye. But as he examines the photos deeper, he realises their content is a snuff movie before there was such a thing, leading him to delve into their owner's past.