{"id":84389,"date":"2025-05-08T10:41:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T10:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/84389\/"},"modified":"2025-05-08T10:41:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T10:41:17","slug":"the-good-books-mairi-kidd-i-didnt-finish-terry-pratchetts-last-book-i-couldnt-bear-the-thought-there-would-be-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/84389\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Books, Mairi Kidd: ‘I didn\u2019t finish Terry Pratchett\u2019s last book, I couldn\u2019t bear the thought there would be no more’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author and Director of The Saltire Society Mairi Kidd on the best book she\u2019s read this year, her childhood memories of reading and the authors who inspired her.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first book I remember reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember reading a Topsy and Tim book in church \u2013 I imagine the idea was to keep me quiet. In my memory, one of them gets stuck in a chest freezer, but I hope that\u2019s wrong. I still have many of my childhood books, and indeed many of my mum\u2019s childhood books, but not that one, so sadly I can\u2019t check.<\/p>\n

A book I recommend to everyone:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to cheat and tell you my go-to fiction and non-fiction recommends. In fiction, I tell everyone to read The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone. It\u2019s the \u2018saga\u2019 of Gudrid of Iceland, daughter-in-law of Erik the Red and mother of the first European child born in North America. It\u2019s just glorious. For non-fiction, a friend recommended to me The Wry Romance of the Literary Rectory by Deborah Alun-Jones and now I pay the favour forward whenever I can. It\u2019s a beautiful collection of essays on literary figures who grew up or lived in rectories, from Sydney Smith to Dorothy L. Sayers and is funny, moving and fascinating.<\/p>\n

The best book I have read this year:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I loved Columba\u2019s Bones by David Greig, in which a Viking raider is left for dead after his crew sack Iona \u2013 really he\u2019s just very, very drunk \u2013 and must reach an uneasy truce with the only two survivors of the massacre to remain on the island, Brother Martin and Una, the widow of the smith. It\u2019s brutal, funny and has much to say about faith and human nature. I wasn\u2019t excited by it until I heard Greig speak about it, and then I couldn\u2019t wait to read it. I have always loved George MacKay Brown\u2019s viking stories, and this is a brilliant contrast.<\/p>\n

The book I am most looking forward to:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold which is about the women in the Crippen case. I was inspired by Rubenhold\u2019s brilliant The Five to write my novel The Specimens. In fiction, I\u2019m looking forward to Mere by Danielle Giles. I heard Danielle speak alongside Lucy Ribchester, Alex Howard and Mary Paulson-Ellis at a brilliant event in Edinburgh, and have been excited for the book ever since. It\u2019s set in Norfolk in 990 AD in an order of sisters eking out a living on the Fens.<\/p>\n

A book I didn\u2019t finish:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I generally finish books. Rather sentimentally, I didn\u2019t finish Terry Pratchett\u2019s last book The Shepherd\u2019s Crown, because I couldn\u2019t bear the thought that then there would be no more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An author that has inspired me:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Too many to list. I took a lot of inspiration from The Love of Stones by Tobias Hill. I love writing about objects as well as people, and Hill had a masterful way with that. I only realised quite recently that Hill died in 2023 at the age of just 53 and was so sorry to hear it, his was an amazing voice.<\/p>\n

The book I am reading now:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just about to read Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen. I\u2019ve been deep in writing \u2013 my new book Poor Creatures is out in October \u2013 and can\u2019t wait to surface again and get reading for pleasure rather than research and fact-checking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mairi\u2019s new book Poor Creatures is out in October. She will also be at this year\u2019s Borders Book Festival<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more of The Good Books\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to read the latest issue of Scottish Field.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Author and Director of The Saltire Society Mairi Kidd on the best book she\u2019s read this year, her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[3444,40687,748,1102,4884,40688,712,7412,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-84389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-borders-book-festival","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-edinburgh","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-mairi-kidd","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-the-good-books","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114471795895949878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}