Reading recommendations for National Library's 100th birthday

Edinburgh Reporter

20 hours ago

Well known Scots have shared the books that shaped them as part of a project to celebrate the National Library of Scotland's 100th birthday.
Writers Sir Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, actor Alan Cumming, musician Lauren Mayberry and former footballer, Pat Nevin, are among those whose recommendations will be included in a special centenary exhibition opening on 20 June at the library on George IV Bridge.
The 'Dear Library' event will be a 'love letter to libraries', curated in partnership with people across Scotland.
The building's exhibition spaces will be transformed into an open reading room, featuring bookshelves filled with recommendations from over 200 members of the public as well as famous figures.
Rankin, 65, named The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, the gothic novel written by James Hogg and published in 1824, among his recommendations.
Crime queen Val McDermid said The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame had played a part in her childhood love of books.
2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival at Edinburgh University's Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place. Val McDermid author and PHOTO ©2021 J.L.Preece
Mayberry, singer with synth-pop act Chvrches, nominated The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, and Cumming recommended The Foghorn Echoes by Syrian-Canadian novelist Danny Ramadan.
Ian Rankin, explaining his choice, said: 'This is another complex Scottish novel about good and evil. It's also one of the earliest novels to feature what would become known as a serial killer…
'Its central themes of good and evil and morality can still be found in contemporary Scottish Literature — and are always at the back of my mind when I start work on a new book.'
Val McDermid revealed how she was enthralled by The Wind in the Willows when it was read to her as a child.
She said: 'When I was five, I had the measles and was forced to lie in a darkened room to prevent damage to my eyesight.
'My mother sat in the hallway outside my bedroom and read me The Wind in the Willows. I was completely captivated by the all too human characteristics given to the animals, and charmed by the excitement and the unexpected turns the story takes.'
Val also highlighted The whole story and Other Stories by Ali Smith, adding: 'Ali Smith never fails to dazzle me. Her novels are miracles of invention and the way she uses language is revelatory and imaginative…
'She moves me to tears and to laughter, she provokes rage and pity and she makes me think.'
'The Mother We Share' singer Mayberry, 37, said she had discovered The Edible Woman in a charity book shop when she was a student.
She said: 'I found a copy in Oxfam Books on Byres Road in Glasgow when I was at university and read it cover to cover in a couple of days.
'It's a book I have thought about a lot since, in terms of the way women are commodified or consumed. It feels as relevant now as it did when Atwood wrote it in the 1960s.'
Alan Cumming, 60, said Ramadan's award-winning The Foghorn Echoes was a 'sweeping, mesmerising story that spans time and mortal space so expertly and elegantly'.
He added: 'There's a quote that I just love in it. A ghost says this, 'Treat your thoughts like hurt children, they haven't yet learned how to handle pain'. I think that's beautiful, and I think it's very wise.'
Other famous faces who have recommended a book for the exhibition include novelist and broadcaster Damian Barr and former Chelsea and Scotland footballer turned pundit and writer, Pat Nevin.
Damian Barr said the Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin had 'helped liberate teenage gay me'.
And Pat Nevin said Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin 'could be the perfect novel'.
Amina Shah, the National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland, said the 'book that shaped her' was Midnight's Children, the second novel by Salman Rushdie, published in 1981.
She said: 'I read this as a teenager. It was the first book I read that used magical realism and also the first to cover Partition which impacted my family but I knew little about.
'I also read it right before the fatwa on Rushdie and it brought home to me the power of literature and the value of freedom of expression.'
Opened in 1925, the National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland. It holds over 24 million items including books, annotated manuscripts and first-drafts, postcards, photographs and newspapers. The library is also home to Scotland's Moving Image Archive, including over 46,000 videos and films.
The National Library of Scotland announced plans to mark its 100th birthday.
Pic caption: National Librarian Amina Shah (centre) was joined by authors and Centenary Champions Damian Barr and Val McDermid at the unveiling of the National Library Centenary Programme.
PHOTO Neil Hanna
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