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Bookish Soundbites

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Aye Write

I love books, and I really enjoy attending book-related events.

Some events I regularly attend include Aye Write in Glasgow, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and various book launches.

Over the years, I’ve been recording a lot of these events. Not for any real purpose – either for my own amusement, or for looking back on, or that perhaps they’d become useful eventually. Occasionally I’d put one on Dropbox and send a link to friends so they could listen later. That was about it.

This week, with the same lack of foresight, I began uploading the clips to my SoundCloud account to share with the rest of you. (Legally, anything said publicly at an event like this is public domain, so I assume my personal recordings are too. But if you have any better legal advice, fire away.)

So, here are a couple of highlights to get you started:

Janice Galloway at Aye Write
This event with Janice Galloway took place only a few nights ago, on 29 September. Aye Write takes place in April, but they also host a handful of events throughout the year. This time Freight Books hosted and Galloway discussed her new short story collection, Jellyfish. Honestly it’s one of the odder book events I’ve ever been to – you’ll see what I mean when you reach the Q&A session – but she’s always a fantastic source of insight.
 

Yuri Herrera at Edinburgh International Book Festival
I’ve been remiss in blogging about the Edinburgh Book Festival this year – so here’s a recording of one of my favourite sessions to make up for it. The festival often pairs up authors for events, and I find it’s an excellent way to discover new authors whose work fits your tastes, or a new book that chimes with a recent release that you’ve already read. This year their pairing power was on another level. Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of my favourite books I’ve read this year, and here the festival put him in conversation with Julie Rochester.

Want to hear more? Pay my Soundcloud a visit.

Letters Live – An Evening at Edinburgh Book Festival

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Photo by Rose Godard (http://twitter.com/roseesmeralda/)
Shaun Usher & Simon Garfield introduce Letters Live.
Photo by Rose Godard (http://twitter.com/roseesmeralda/)

 

Last night I attended the fifth Letters Live event at Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The event is a celebration of the written word – particularly the almost lost art of letter writing.

Run by Canongate, the event features stories from two of the publisher’s recent books, Letters of Note compiled by Shaun Usher, and To The Letter by Simon Garfield.

In essence, it comprises of a handful of actors and writers taking turns to read their favourite books from the Letters of Note collection, as well as performances of a series of correspondence that’s reproduced in To The Letter, between an infantryman and his girlfriend – Christopher and Bessie – during WWII.

Though I must admit I was at odds with the tone at times – mourning the losing the art of letter writing seems a little over-romaticised to me – the bulk of these letters were incredible in their own ways, from the profound to the indignant to the downright hilarious.

Major kudos in particular to Patrick Kennedy and Lisa Dwan for bringing Christopher and Bessie to life with their heartfelt readings. Some would have made great movie monologues in the wartime-set films of Powell and Pressburger (think A Matter of Life and Death and you’re most of the way there). The selection of the pair’s letters feature in To The Letter and another book of their correspondence is coming soon. (Haud me back!)

Jackie Kay made some excellent selections, notably the copywriter-turned-screenwriter Robert Pirosh’s memorable I Like Words letter, and Robert Burns’ incensed letter to a critic – “thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom” – our Bard’s answer to Shakespeare’s insults.

Also hurling abuse was Mark Twain in a letter to a quack doctor – an idiot of the 33rd degree.

Meanwhile laughs were served by him, Matt Stone, and British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, whose cheering letter to his pal Lord Reginald Pembroke is thoroughly incongruously and unexpectedly hilarious.

It was a wonderful night. Keep an eye on the Canongate website for updates and if you plan to buy one of the books please consider using the affiliate links above.

More about Letters of Note coming soon.

Meantime, do you have a favourite piece of correspondence?

Nate Silver at Edinburgh International Book Festival

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On Tuesday morning, the day of his sold-out event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Nate Silver was on the front page of the Scotsman newspaper. A demonstration of his influences as a political commentator, the event’s chair seemed to suggest. A coup for his PR company, I mumbled cynically.

Unfortunately Nate Silver doesn’t see much hope for the Yes campaigners in the Independence Referendum. And he tends to be right about these things, having correctly predicted the outcome of the 2008 American election in 49 States in 2008, and in all 50 States in 2012.

Silver’s success has largely come around in the political sphere, particularly with the 2012 election and the addition of his blog, fivethirtyeight.com, to the New York Times. He has since, very recently, moved on to ESPN where he can grow the brand and cover topics including politics and sport, and beyond.

The event took the usual form – a Q&A with the chair followed by some audience questions. He spoke about people’s trouble with thinking probabilistically, measuring sentiment through polls and how to reduce the noise, some typical outcomes from particular types of political moments (elections vs referendums, for example), and how data tells a story.

He also spoke about the partisan nature of politics in the US and one important caveat for finding out someone’s true feelings about the data that disproves their notions: asking them to put their money where their mouth is.

It was an insightful event, particularly having not yet read his book The Signal and the Noise. His success is in many ways surprising, but a welcome antidote to the current media trends towards soundbites and lack of grey area in media reporting.

Silver’s ability to speak plainly about the media’s stake in a close race, polemics, and tendency to over-represent anomalies could be instrumental in increasing media literacy – and that, for my money, is far more valuable than calling the election first.