Books I reviewed in February (and some I didn’t)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, I’m trying to keep up with this thing of listing the books I’ve reviewed and the ones that I didn’t get to read yet because I was too busy reading books for review. I’m not complaining likes, gotta get paid and all that.

Anyway, here’s the list for February:

Edited by John Brockman, How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (Atlantic) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. Welcome to the future, baby. Bit of a mindfuck, very eye-opening, but also a bit repetitive.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. A different review from my one for The List, obviously. Still the same great comedy novel about a man who finds Anne Frank hiding in his attic.

Louis Barfe, the Trials and Triumphs of Les Dawson (Atlantic) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. A frank account of one of the UK’s most iconic comedians and curmudgeonly bastards.

Paul Watson, Up Pohnpei (Profile) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. A really sweet little book about a random football fan (comedian Mark Watson’s brother) who went to Micronesia and ended up managing the national team of Pohnpei. All about real football.

Colm Toibin, New Ways to Kill Your Mother (Viking) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. An intriguing and always well informed series of essays on writers and their families. Clever man.

Edited by Toby Manhire, The Arab Spring ( Guardian Books) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. Really powerful collection of articles on last year’s remarkable events in the Middle East and North Africa. Also contains a brilliant edited selection of The Guardian’s live blog on the events.

I just noticed only one of these is fiction. Interesting, if you find that sort of thing interesting. I also notice these are all written or edited by men. Also interesting, if you think that’s interesting. These are both probably topics for another blog post. I do try to pitch a balanced list of titles to editors, you just never know what you’re going to get commissioned to cover.

While I was reviewing all of them, there were a few others I really wanted to – that To Be Read pile is getting bigger:

Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker (William Heinemann)
Elmore Leonard, Raylan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Stav Sherez, A Dark Redemption (Faber)

So, that was Feb. Highlights of March could be Dan Rhodes, Chris Pavone and Walter Mosley, but what do I know?

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My tweets are apparently news. Well, really Ian Rankin’s (@beathhigh) tweets.

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

My oh my. Apparently when you post something on Twitter, other people can see it! Wow, who knew?

Anyway, a tiny wee exchange I had with Ian Rankin (@beathhigh) has made it into the heady heights of The Independent on Sunday. OK, it’s not quite hard news, but still. Rebus the dog, what about that?

Actually, the real news in all this is that the newspaper considers me their ‘top reviewer’. Take that, fellow reviewers, I’m number one with a bullet! Only joking. Like at my son’s sports day ‘everyone’s a winner’, even the poor sap stuck in his sack at the start line.

Annoyingly, the paper missed Ian’s later tweet: ‘Just finished Hit and Run. Great slice of noir. Congratulations, that man!’

Now THAT’s news!

Enjoy the nonsense!

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“What is it with you and car crashes?”

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, so had my first ever event based on Hit & Run at the weekend there, a joint event at the Margins Festival in The Arches alongside fantastic writer and pal Helen FitzGerald, hosted by the equally talented Anneliese Mackintosh from Cargo Publishing. Here is a review of the event by Paul Cockburn for the Scottish Review of Books blog.

It was at 2pm in the afternoon, and we had the usual panic about no one turning up beforehand, but in the end there were humans with ears listening and eyes watching, and me and Helen and Anneliese blethering. Me and Helen had done some drinking beforehand on empty stomachs, so we were rather, ahem, ‘frank’ in our opinions. I was informed afterwards I was swearing a lot, to which I replied ‘fuck you’. Or something.

Anyway, was good to pop my Hit & Run cherry, so to speak. After, we sat around drinking some more and talking shite, and the three of us and another mate Ewan Morrison pitched ideas to Helen’s film producer mate Claire, while she rolled her eyes. I look forward to seeing Helen’s ‘Quantum Leap but with a teenager’ on a screen soon.

Good people. Good times.

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Books I read and reviewed in January (and some I didn’t)

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

OK, so one of the things I do to make ends meet is review books. This means that I am always reading shitloads of books. And sometimes it means I’m reading books that aren’t very good, when I could be reading books that are possibly great. Ho hum.

Anyway, I haven’t banged on about that shit here much in the past, but I figure I might as well flag it up, partly because I’ve already read a lot of good stuff this year.

Here’s a list:

Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Holiday (Canongate) – Charming and insightful memoir from the recently deceased musical legend. A bit lopsided in terms of focus, but always interesting.

Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground (Serpent’s Tail) – Reviewed for The Herald. A cracking crime novel set in 1980s Belfast, like Ellroy on craic.

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana (William Heinemann) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. Fantastic debut collection of hillbilly noir stories, some of the most visceral prose I’ve read in ages.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador) – Reviewed for The List magazine. Hilarious novel about a man who finds a decrepit old Anne Frank hiding in his attic.

David Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics (W.W. Norton) – Reviewed for Independent on Sunday. Intriguing but flawed account of leftfield physics dudes in 1970s California.

Ioan Grillo, El Narco (Bloomsbury) – Reviewed for The Scotsman, not online yet. A truly jaw-dropping account of the recent rise of Mexican drug cartels. A staggeringly fucked up situation, brilliantly revealed.

Alex Rosenberg, The Atheists’ Guide to Reality (W.W. Norton) – Reviewed for The Independent on Sunday. A muddled, overwritten and rather pointless look at the finer points of atheism.

William Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor (Viking) – Reviewed for Big Issue magazine, not online. Great and diverse collection of essays and other non-fiction from the man who brought you cyberspace.

Alexander MacLeod, Light Lifting (Jonathan Cape) – Reviewed, for Big Issue magazine, not online. Great debut collection of short stories from Canadian writer. Muscular, precise, resonant and profound.

While I was reviewing all of them, I didn’t (yet) have time to read these, despite really wanting to:

Peter Leonard, Voices of the Dead (Faber)
Peter May, The Lewis Man (Quercus)
Stuart Neville, Stolen Souls (Harvill Secker)
George Pelecanos, What It Was (Orion)

If the to-be-read list keeps stacking up like this, I’m gonna have thirty-six potentially great unread books by the end of the year to add to the already massive pile.

Still, worse ways to make a living, eh?

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Margins Festival – well good

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

Aye so, you all know about Margins Festival, right? Now in its second year, it’s the brainchild of Cargo Publishing benevolent dictator Mark Buckland, a cool book and music festival in The Arches in Glasgow spread over the weekend of 24-26th February.

This year has the likes of Roddy Woomble, Aidan Moffat, William McIlvanney, Don Paterson, Louise Welsh and a performance of Alasdair Gray’s Fleck featuring the great and good of Scottish writing. Click on the banner at the top for all the events.

There’s also a cheeky wee event featuring myself and the fantastic Helen FitzGerald at 1pm on Saturday 25th Feb. It’s £4 a ticket, which you can get here.

It’s the first time ever I’m gonna be reading from Hit & Run, and considering it’s not out till two weeks after the event, it’s something of a pre-season friendly outing. Strained hamstrings and all. Although myself and Helen might not be friendly, we might be incredibly antagonistic to each other. You never know.

You’ll be able to buy copies of Hit & Run at the event before it’s out, a further insult to the laws of causality after that whole faster-than-light neutrino thing. They still haven’t sorted that out, have they? Anyway, hope to see you down there, and here’s a cool picture of a neutrino detector to finish:

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Are you a book blogger or reviewer?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Doug Johnstone


Are you a book blogger or reviewer or some similar shit? Would you like a copy of my forthcoming novel, Hit & Run, to read or review or write about or use as loft insulation?

Well we have finished copies of the novel, just look:

If you want one and have a reasonable reason to have one (loft insulation doesn’t really count), drop me a line and I’ll get Faber to stick one in the post to you.

Here’s what it’s about:

Driving home from a party with his girlfriend and brother, all of them drunk and high on stolen pills, Billy Blackmore accidentally hits someone in the night. In a panic, they all decide to drive off. But the next day Billy wakes to find he has to cover the story for the local paper. It turns out the dead man was Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord and, as Billy struggles with what he’s done, he is sucked into a nightmare of guilt, retribution and violence.

Expect the onslaught of self-promotion to start very soon. Very soon. I’m really sorry. Gotta be done, though.

Have fun!

Doug x

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Ten books to look out for in 2012

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Doug Johnstone

Ach, everyone’s doing this, but here you go anyway, here are ten books I’m looking forward to getting my mitts on in the next six months. These are in chronological order, likes. Enjoy!

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana (William Heinemann, January)

Already out and I’ve already read it and it’s fucking amazing – like a shotgun blast in the guts of literature. Terrifying, brutal but brilliant.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (Picador, February)

Wish I had an author name like that. Auslander’s memoir, Foreskin’s Lament (yes, really), was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, so this first novel promises much.

Ron Rash, The Cove (Canongate, March)

Ron Rash’s last story collection won the Frank O’Connor prize, this novel will likely also mix top class literary writing with earthy wisdom.

Dan Rhodes, This is Life (Canongate, March)

A new Dan Rhodes book is always welcome, and this is apparently a missing baby mystery in gay Paris. Hurrah for Dan Rhodes!

Mark Leyner, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack (Little Brown, March)

I read Et Tu, Babe by Leyner many, many years ago, then he seemed to disappear. It was a totally mental book. The title of this alone suggests it will be awesome.

Irvine Welsh, Skagboys (Jonathan Cape, April)

Long-awaited prequel to some obscure book called Trainspotting. Sweeeet.

Megan Abbott, Dare Me (Picador, May)

Abbott’s The End of Everything was one of my favourites of 2011, so I’m now a complete Abbott fan, and cannae wait for this.

Ewan Morrison, Tales From The Mall (Cargo, May)

Twenty-first century dislocation and commercialism brought to vivid life by this experimental and revolutionary collection of stories from a controversial dude.

Richard Ford, Canada (Bloomsbury, June)

Yay, a new Richard Ford! It’s probably about Canada. I love Canada. And Richard Ford. Good times.

David Vann, Dirt (William Heinemann, June)

Vann moves from Alaska to the desert for this new novel. I bet it’s still bleak as fuck, though. Can’t wait.

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opinions are like assholes…

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Doug Johnstone

…everybody’s got one.

And here are some of mine, below. I was asked by various people for my favourite shit. I told them. They printed it.

Here‘s my favourite book of the year over at Tony Black’s excellent Pulp Pusher blog, in some seriously impressive company.

Here‘s my round up of the year over at the fantastic Manic Pop Thrills site.

Here‘s my cultural highlights of 2011 and 2012 over at Faber’s Thoughtfox blog, in more seriously impressive company.

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best science books of 2011

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Doug Johnstone

Some of you might not know this, but in a previous life I used to be a scientist. An experimental nuclear physicist, to be precise. Anyway, that experience has come in quite handy of late, and I’ve spent the last few years reviewing popular science books, amongst other things, of course.

Recently I was asked to round up the best science books of the year by the Independent on Sunday and The Big Issue magazine. The latter isn’t online yet, as far as I know, but the Indy on Sunday piece is over here – please check it out.

Needless to say, the picture editor at the paper went with a big picture of the apparently sexy Prof Brian Cox. Since he’s not really my type, I’ve gone with the rather lovely cover of probably my favourite science book of the year – The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘biography of cancer’.

Get yer boffin caps on and enjoy!

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some thoughts on the year and stuff

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Doug Johnstone

So, that’s 2011 almost finished. It was a good laugh, eh? Been looking over this website and noted a few things:

– Smokeheads got a whopping 25 reviews from bloggers, newspapers and magazines. Some folk didn’t like it, but them’s the breaks. If you want to take a look at some of ’em, they’re all collated here. Best quote I think has to be the reviewer who was ‘left with a similar feeling to watching a dog eat its own vomit’ after reading the book. Lovely. There were loads of great quotes but I can’t remember them, and I have a rule that I only read each review once, good or bad, then fling it up on the site. That way you don’t get bogged down in all that ‘he said, she said’ stuff.

– In a weirdly coincidental way, I was also interviewed 25 times by various publications and online folks. I was asked to interview myself, talk about cinema and hold deer antlers in the woods. All in a day’s work for yer slapdash novelist. If you wanna check out some of that shit, knock yerself out here.

– I performed at 27 events throughout the year. Wow. That’s quite a lot. They weren’t all together like in one massive busy month-long tour or anything. Some were more formal than others, some were more fun than others, most of them were a bit drunken. I played with Hugh Cornwell and got asked what the most illegal thing I’d ever done was. For a potted history of it all, check in here.

All of which was promoting my latest novel Smokeheads. As a cheeky wee pre-Christmas reminder, let me humbly point out that you can buy the book by clicking on the cover below.

And while I’m at it, I might as well mention that I was also promoting my most recent EP, ‘Keep It Afloat’. Got quite a few good reviews and some nice radio play. Can’t complain at all. You can listen to it, download it or buy a physical copy by clicking on the cover below.

Hell, it’s been a busy year. And 2012 will no doubt be another doozy. Got some exciting stuff in the pipeline, not least the publication of my next novel Hit and Run on 1st March. Click on the pic below for Amazon’s take on it. I won’t say anymore, as I’ll no doubt be boring you rigid with chat about the bloody thing for the forseeable.

Aye so, that’s that, really. Like I say, got some other exciting news in the offing, but I’ll keep my powder dry on that for now.

Have a great festivus one and all, and see you on the other side.

Doug x

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