The Main Point

Next to pub crawling, the most popular Edinburghian time-whittler is reading.

Rare and used bookstores are all over. Readers with paperbacks are scattered across the parks in summer. Add to that the Edinburgh Book Festival which is held in August concurrently with the other Edinburgh festivals. This is a town that loves to read. Everywhere. All the time.

Where in the US can you find a monument to an author? Here in Edinburgh, the largest, most ornate, and easiest-to-spot-from-anywhere monument is to Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe and the Waverly novels (which gives the Waverly train station its name - the only train station in the world named after a fictional place).

I can dig it. I love to read. Have loved it since I was a little kid. In high school, I spent more time reading novels than doing actual schoolwork.

But somewhere along the line, I lost the art of reading in excess. You know, that kind of reading where you look up and ... crap, it's 5:30 and I missed my haircut appointment. Oh well. That kind of reading.

I am rediscovering that side of me in Edinburgh. Without a car, I find many hours to read on the trains, busses and ferries. Amy has caught it too. She has a little travel backpack that holds her raincoat and a book. This, to me, is ideal Edinburgh attire.

Here's what I have read in Scotland so far. I think it's a good approximation of where my head's at these days.

Fiction

• The Heart of a Goof by P.G. Wodehouse - Better known for his Jeeves and Wooster books in the U.S., I had never read Wodehouse, but he's fall-of-out-your-chair funny. He was born in the UK, and he's got that precise politeness that skewers subjects mercilessly. I picked this one out because it's all golf stories, and I guess that's the thing to do in Scotland. I don't play golf, but I gotta admit ... it is a pretty apt metaphor for life.
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Yeah, yeah, I know. I've been a little busy for the last 59 years. Did it live up to the press? Yes, ma'am.
• Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - If there's a modern Scottish novel, this is it. This book has no virtues. None. The language, which is transliterated Edinburgh accent, is difficult to read. The characters are constantly being evil to one another. It's about drug use and it's horribly graphic. And ... I couldn't stop reading it. Highly recommended!
• Poverty Castle by Robin Jenkins - Another modern Scottish novel, and about 180° from Trainspotting. The title alone grabs you, and this story of a family who tries to be perfect in the middle of the 1960's gnaws at you. If you like old Victorian novels like I do, this will scratch your itch. Don't know if you can even get it in America though.
• Dreams and Reality by Muriel Spark - A novella by the Edinburgh-born author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It's emblematic Scottish: short, yet full of barbed humor, skewering rich people, but floating in and out of consciousness. I won't say anything more.
• Whisky Galore by Compton MacKenzie - A Scottish town is hit buy World War 2 whisky rationing. Woe is rampant, weddings are scuttled. Then a schooner shipwrecks with 50,000 cases of whisky aboard. This novel is based on a true story ... which could only happen in Scotland.
• The Antiquary by Sir Walter Scott - According to the tour guide at the Museum of Scotland, no one reads Sir Walter Scott these days because he's wordy. I actually like that - I could use some lyrical dawdling. And he's funny, so he gets a pass from me. This novel is Scott's personal favorite, and is about a history buff who gets caught in discovering a stranger's tangled backstory. It is all full of Edinburgh lore too.

Essays

I have a soft spot for essays - writing them is a hobby of mine. In bookstores they tend to be lumped in with fiction, but I'm giving them their own section.

• Writing in Restaurants by David Mamet - Mamet is my favorite playwright, and he's a great film director to boot (The Spanish Prisoner is worth checking out - a Steve Martin outlier). In this book of essays, he talks about why theater is still relevant and important, even in the movie and TV era.
• The Cycling Anthology, Volume 1 - This was a fascinating book of cycling articles written in 2012, the year after the Lance Armstrong blood doping findings had surfaced. At that point, cyclists had to recover the entire sport from mistrust. They did it through being authentically themselves, the weird way in which cyclists are.
• Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen by Rebecca May Johnson - A beautiful concoction of nonfiction and poetry, this book is about making the perfect Italian tomato sauce.
• Nasty, Brutish and Short: Adventures in Philosophy With Kids by Scott Hershovitz - When I visit peoples' homes, and they're off in the kitchen making dinner or something, I rifle through their bookshelves. This book was on the shel of my brother Jon in his Manhattan apartment. It is a wickedly funny book on philosophy. If life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel, this is definitely the former.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni - My boss made me read this one. But I really love business-essays-disguised-as-novels (The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is the best of the genre). If they're good, like this one is, you really don't know who will prevail, even when the virtues are spelled out for you. In other words ... reality.
• How to Eat Out by Giles Coran - I'm a big fan of the Supersizers, a TV show where Giles and former Great British Bake Off star Sue Perkins attempt eating the same things eaten in various historical periods (Ancient Rome, World War 2 Era Britain, etc.). This book is just as entertaining, hitting restaurant-themed subjects like Dim Sum, the horrors of being served as Tasting Menu against your will, and washroom Automatic Hand Dryers.

Non-Fiction

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - When I write, I tend to siphon off the style and language of whomever I'm reading. My ideal state would be to sound like Bill Bryson all the time. He is funny and thoughtful, and he strings disparate ideas together effortlessly. Here he tackles all of science, no less, from the impossibly large (like the universe) to the impossibly small (like quantum mechanics). "How do we know the earth is 4.3 billion years old?" is the type of question he's after. It's all very accessible.
• Family Business: An Intimate History of the John Lewis Partnership by Victoria Glendinning - You might remember the John Lewis and Partners department store from Amy's blog: https://amys-blog-dont-even-get-me-started.ghost.io/settling-in/. It's all true. John Lewis is the best department store on planet Earth. The backstory is interesting as well - it's the first store where employees are paid in stock options.
• Rip it Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-84 by Simon Reynolds - I am a sucker for music history, and this book basically set the sound track for many a jaunt through Edinburgh. Orange Juice, ABC, The Blue Orchids, New Order, The Au Pairs, Haircut 100, Japan, Teardrop Explodes ... if punk knocked over the music Jenga, this was the rebuilding of it into something beautiful and unrecognizable.

The Book Store

This is my bookstore in Edinburgh. It's called The Main Point. It's on Bread Street, just down the block from the Cameo Art Cinema.

It has books shoved into the empty spaces above other books. Piled onto the floor. Random subjects, haphazardly cut into vague sections. Filed by author ... hopefully.

It looks suspiciously like an MRI of my brain.