Edinburgh book festival EIBF Diary 2014

Day One: Edinburgh. The book shelves are stuffed with referendum books - What is Britishness? The Scottish and English Union and Disunion; The Road to Yes. So many questions? Yet also the fact we are asking them is a good thing in itself. I hope after the Referendum that both Scotland and the rUK we are still asking the important questions - challenging and still actively engaged. 

I always feel I have to come back down to earth after the whirlwind that is Edinburgh International Book festival 2014 (EIBF).  For two and a half weeks each August Charlotte Square becomes a haven for book lovers, philosophers, poets, economists, and very much more.  So many creative and artistically challenging people attend - both on the stage and in the audience.

I often think I'd like to photograph those attending also in their low key or laid back, academic or intellectually inclined creamy linen jackets and casual hats. This is a cultured crowd!

Some days there are themes - on one day several strong minded women - Kate Adie, Germaine Greer and Val McDermid. Other days political or economic figures. There is also a big children's section to the festival. The signing tent is lined with today's books and the cafe was full of home baked custard creams, shortbread and layered cakes and queues waiting for the authors signing. The oddest sight was when Huraki Murakami came as he didn't wish for any photos and he signed behind a red curtain.

The festival offers an informed blend of the old and new where the retro and the modern sit side by side here - imaginative fantasy with factual history, romantic poetry and detailed economy, the surreal novel, the researched biography alongside hard hitting political thought. The festival allows all voices a platform to be heard and to exchange ideas and aspirations and celebrates diversity of thought.

 

Irving Finkel

Martin Amos

In Edinburgh the windy weather can be often dramatic - one moment brilliant sunshine the next torrential downpour for an hour. It keeps us alert for sure! I watch the sun on the elegant Georgian new town with the dark skies beyond.

It is my last day now. The girl in front of me has a strange blue skull tatoo on her back. Anything goes. I am both sad and tired too. Sad that's another EIBF and Edinburgh festival over, as festivals are intense by their very nature and they need to come to and end.  It is also a time of reflection for me -  I have visited my usual haunts over the festival, and walked the ancient cobbled streets of my home town memories and I wonder how much the festival effects the authors that attend.

Jim Sillars

Bonnie Greer

EIBF 2014 BOOKS

Authors that caught my attention were mostly poets,  journalist or professors

Lesley Riddoch - Blossom

Tom Devine - The Scottish Nation

Linda Colley - Acts of Union and Disunion

Ian Bell - Time out of Mind (on Bob Dylan)

Kate Adie - Fighting on the Home Front

Paul Henderson Scott - Scotland: A Creative Past, An independent Future

Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki

A Bird is not a Stone - Palestinian poets   

The fringe Edinburgh High Street

 

It's always part of the Edinburgh festival experience to walk from Fringe central near George square down the Bridges to the high street, just to savour the atmosphere and colour and sample some of the shows on offer for another year.

PHOTOS at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2014

Game of Thrones George RR Martin arrives

Kate Adie

Bonnie Greer

Alan Massie

A few images from Edinburgh International Book Festival 2014.

Huruki Murakami at Edinburgh

There was a definite hushed awe over Murakami's rare appearance at a book festival.  Twenty years ago he started the ‘Wind Up Bird Chronicles’.  He usually writes in the first person narrative and he said he was uncomfortable with using the third person - that he didn't want to look down at people, but to rather stand on the same level as his characters; it was more democratic he thought. He said his writing has been a long journey.

His first novel appeared in 1979.  He appeared unassuming and reclusive - he said that he wished to be a quiet person and to live a quiet life. He wrote about extraordinarily strange people and events though!.

He appreciated strong interferences to push the story forward.  He enjoyed irony he said and many of his stories are terrifying and scary.  He spoke of the bloody histories and the collective memories of history and he thought that everybody is cursed and poisoned by the past. The Manchurian history was important for his writing. 

The Well. He spoke of his lifetime dream to be sitting at the bottom of the well where he was super heavy. The water might be coming up. He wrote of nightmares and odd unrealistic coincidences and he said that strange coincidences happened to him.

Questions. He said that the translation of his books were good.

He said that  his stories were not planned and that he had no idea where the story was going. 'It is not fun to know the conclusions. I like to think, what's going to happen today. I like to be spontaneous.

'Imagination is an animal I keep alive.'

He said that once a book is gone, it is gone. 

Why were his characters so sad? I didn't notice he replied, Everybody is sad.

He said he liked to write to music that runs through the novel.' I need music to write on - the harmony and rhythm is important to me to keep the readers reading. I need music.'

I am always looking for the right music to help to me write.,

Murakami is a serene and humble man.