This has been a good year for books with me though I didn’t read much of what I had intended to as first I was distracted by the list of 100 best Scottish Books and then by the threat to local libraries – a threat which has now become a firm decision. As a result the tbr pile has got higher and higher as I continued to buy books and didn’t get round to reading many of them.

My books of the year were (in order of reading):-
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Electric Brae by Andrew Greig
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman
The Affair in Arcady by James Wellard
Flemington and Tales from Angus by Violet Jacob
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi
Song of Time by Ian R MacLeod
The Gowk Storm by Nancy Brysson Morrison
The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andrić
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Fair Helen by Andrew Greig
The Dear, Green Place by Archie Hind
Greenvoe by George Mackay Brown
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
The Cone-Gatherers by Robin Jenkins
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Born Free by Laura Hird
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

If you were counting that’s 25 in all, of which 15 were by male authors and 10 by women, 8 had SF/fantasy elements and 11 were Scottish (in the broadest sense of inclusion.)

A lot of my Scottish reading this year was prompted by the list of 100 best Scottish Books I discovered in February. Those marked below with an asterisk are in that 100 best list. (In the case of Andrew Greig’s Electric Brae I read it before I was aware of the list and for Robert Louis Stevenson his novella was in the book of his shorter fiction that I read.)

Electric Brae by Andrew Greig*
A Sparrow’s Flight by Margaret Elphinstone
The Guinea Stamp by Annie S Swan
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
The White Bird Passes by Jessie Kesson*
Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks by Christopher Brookmyre
Buddha Da by Anne Donovan*
Flemington by Violet Jacob*
Tales From Angus by Violet Jacob
Annals of the Parish by John Galt
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Change and Decay in All Around I See by Allan Massie
The Hangman’s Song by James Oswald
Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay
The Hope That Kills Us Edited by Adrian Searle
Other stories and other stories by Ali Smith
Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi*
The Gowk Storm by Nancy Brysson Morrison*
No Mean City by H McArthur and H Kingsley Long*
Shorter Scottish Fiction by Robert Louis Stevenson*
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett*
Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
Fair Helen by Andrew Greig
The Dear, Green Place by Archie Hind*
Fur Sadie by Archie Hind
Greenvoe by George Mackay Brown*
Stepping Out by Cynthia Rogerson
Open the Door! by Catherine Carswell*
The Silver Darlings by Neil M Gunn*
Scotia Nova edited by Alistair Findlay and Tessa Ransford
After the Dance: selected short stories of Iain Crichton Smith
John Macnab by John Buchan
Another Time, Another Place by Jessie Kesson
Consider the Lilies by Iain Crichton Smith*
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan*
Poems Iain Banks Ken MacLeod
Mistaken by Annie S Swan
Me and Ma Gal by Des Dillon*
Tea with the Taliban: poems by Owen Gallagher
A Choosing by Liz Lochhead
The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins*
Born Free by Laura Hird*
the first person and other stories by Ali Smith

That makes 42 books in all (plus 2 if the Violet Jacob and Archie Hind count double.) None were non-fiction, 3 were poetry, 2 SF/Fantasy, 19 + (4x½ + 3 doublers) by men, 13 + (3 doublers and 1 triple) by women, 2 had various authors/contributors.

One World Classics, 2008, 158 p.

Another from the list of 100 best Scottish Books. This one was first published in 1954 and amended in 1961.

Young Adam is structured in three sections. In the first we find narrator Jim working on a canal barge on the morning he and bargee Leslie fish a woman’s body from the River Clyde. The day’s events help trigger in Jim a desire for Leslie’s wife Ella. The remainder of this part dwells on the course of the resultant affair. Only once does Jim reminisce on a former girlfriend, Cathie, in an account of their first meeting.

Part two throws in a twist at its outset. Jim was present when the girl whose body he had helped retrieve fell into the water. This revelation immediately calls into question Jim’s motives and veracity. Moreover it was in fact Cathie, whom he claims to have met by chance on the fateful night. That he had ever known her is something he does not mention to the police. Plus he had taken pains to remove the fact of his presence from the scene. Later, he recounts a previous incident in which he had attacked Cathie, yet says they drifted apart a few weeks after. Then too there is his casual treatment of Ella who, the affair having been revealed, expects him to marry her. Her sister Gwendoline is more perceptive but still is not averse to having sex with him herself. Jim’s eye for women – he frequently dwells on their states of dress or, quite often, partial undress – thus becomes a signpost to his possible guilt.

Part three sees Jim attend the murder trial of the entirely innocent man the police have arrested in connection with Cathie’s death. (Only Leslie has been called as a witness.) Jim sends the judge a letter stating his knowledge of the facts of the case but knows it will make no difference.

As is usual with these things it is better to leave Stewart Home’s introduction till after reading the novel. In it he says that in his writing Trocchi was forging a new kind of novel and is important as a proto-postmodernist. Irvine Welsh has called Trocchi “the George Best of Scottish literature.” Whether this is because of his talent or that his compulsions undermined it (or both) is not vouchsafed. The introduction also tells us Young Adam was first published under a pseudonym as a “dirty book.” While there are sex scenes in this edition there is little to justify that tag to modern readers, nothing truly graphic (though Trocchi did write pornography for his 1950s publisher.)

Pedant’s corner:- velours is nowadays more often velour, wains (weans) plus four instances of missing punctuation.