Rebel

This month sees the Scottish Book Trust's Book Week Scotland Rebel celebrations, running from the 19th - 25th November. With hundreds of events in bookshops, libraries, schools and other venues across Scotland, as well as publications, a digital festival, and writing campaigns, it's the ideal time to take a literary walk on the wild side. So, we have decided to bring you a rabble-rousing issue of BooksfromScotland too, to showcase the best of Scottish subversion, from all walks of life; from history to the present day. We'll be posting more features onto the BooksfromScotland website throughout the month - keep your eyes peeled!

And if you want to get involved in Book Week Scotland yourself, visit the website: www.scottishbooktrust.com.

For The Good Times

Now That You've Joined The Gang

David Keenan’s debut novel This is Memorial Device was one of BooksfromScotland’s favourite reads of 2017, so we are thrilled that he has followed it up so quickly with another cracking book, For The Good Times, which will be released in January 2019. It’s a novel that follows Sammy and his three friends as they come of age in 1970s Belfast, where the usual concerns—music, clothes, girls, comic books, drinking—clash with the criminal and terrorist violence around them. We hope you enjoy this exclusive pre-publication taster.

Extract taken from For The Good Times By David Keenan Published by Faber

Longhairs came late to Belfast. It was 1972 before I ever clapped eyes on a hippy, but there he was right enough, sitting on the ground at a bus stop on the Lisburn Road in the blazing sunshine, with his bare feet and an acoustic guitar round his neck with a piece of string; I could barely believe my lamps.

So as some longhairs turn up at the wedding, some hippy bastards, and they stand out like plums. Tommy starts to making jokes. Look at these fucking women, he says, and he’s doing this comedy walk, mincing up and down. I’m sure I recognise one of them but I can’t place him. At this point I don’t know any of the boys with the long hair. Then this guy who I nearly almost recognise comes over with some of his longhair pals and he walks up to Tommy. Are you Tommy Kentigern? he says to him. Tommy says to him, who wants to know, fucking Bob Marley? and he turns round to us and he’s all laughing and winking. The guy is just looking at him. What are you talking about? he says to him. Bob Marley is a Rastafarian. I don’t give a fuck what you are, Tommy says to him. Tommy’s confused, Pat says, he means Bob Dylan. Don’t fucking correct me, Tommy says to Pat, and he turns on him. I mean fucking Bob Marley, he says. ...

For Every One

Every adventure has to begin with a dream, and in For Every One, Jason Reynolds has written a beautiful and inspirational clarion call to dreamers everywhere.

Extract taken from For Every One by Jason Reynolds Published by 404 Ink and Knights Of

THIS LETTER ISN’T

for any specific

kind of dream.

It isn’t intended

for a certain genre,

medium,

trade, or

denomination.

It is only intended

FOR THE COURAGEOUS.

Maybe you are a dancer

moving to the sound of your own future;

or a musician

banging strumming bowing plucking

blowing into,

creating soundtracks

for dream trains chugging along

through thick night;

or a painter

spilling and splattering confessions

across the f...

Harlem 69: The Music Behind the Politics

‘The Revolution will be live . . .’

Why We Should Still Pay Attention to John Maclean

‘I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot’

Scotland’s Rebellious Poets: David Robinson Interviews Alexander McCall Smith

‘We’ll mak siccar! Against the bashing cudgel, against the contemptuous triumphs of the big battalions…’

The Women who Shaped Scotland’s History

Who was ‘the Red Harlot of Infidelity’?

The Scottish Clearances: The Galloway Levellers

‘I saw them yesterday between the hours of 8 and 12 in the morning coming in bodies from all quarters . . . making in all a body upwards of 2000’

Three Kinds of Kissing

‘So far I haven’t told a lie.’

Catalonia Reborn

‘The constitution of the Republic is a hand held out to dialogue…’

It’s Only the End of the World

‘“I owe you an explanation?” The boy’s eyes were like saucers. “When did my mum turn into Jackie Chan?”’

Between Daylight and Hell: Scotland’s Villains

Blunderers, killers, conmen, scandalmongers, slave owners and more of Scotland’s ne’er do wells . . .

NEVER MISS AN ISSUE!

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