my book of the year has arrived

finally reunited with my now most valuable book

love this for Edinburgh

wearing this today for a real one

gutted to hear of the passing of Béla Tarr. in tribute, here’s the time we recreated the bar scene from Werckmeister Harmonies for my 30th birthday in 2019

reading thread, 2026 edition

Chalamet must be getting wary of typecasting as that’s the second year in a row he’s played a smug but talented upstart Jew scamming his way to the top of his field in post-war NYC

Alasdair Gray’s sardonic definition of postmodernism now reads like a prescient description of tech bros’ AI triumphalism

i did one of those ‘my books of the year’ things: sigmaportfolio.substack.com/p/cultural-h...

Thank you all, the update than we can barely believe we get to make. To everyone who supported us through this last month, we couldn’t have even come close to this outcome without you all. Have a peaceful festive period, we’ll see you in the bookshop soon 🧡

glad to be ahead once again

dear @rianjohnson.bsky.social did i miss the Gravity’s Rainbow reference in Wake Up Dead Man??

great to see national recognition for Phantom Limb at last night’s Saltire Awards!

We need your help. @waterstones.bsky.social, without any direct communication with us, will be opening their 6th Edinburgh branch less than 100 metres from our front door at the Foot of the Walk in Leith. Please read on for more information www.heraldscotland.com/news/2562908... (1/2)

happy On the Calculation of Volume Day to all who celebrate. i’m wearing my shirt to mark it

Tonight! Come along for what promises to be a stimulating and provocative discussion about literature and how it interrogates our dark pasts, both personal and national.

utterly depressing to read of the plans to demolish Argyle House, another modernist jewel potentially disappearing from Edinburgh’s urban fabric after the loss of the RBS building on Dundas Street.

Looking forward to talking to the great Swiss novelist Christian Kracht about confronting the dark legacies of twentieth century European history in his latest book, Eurotrash, at Waterstones West End. Tickets available here: www.waterstones.com/events/chris...

really sorry to hear of the passing of Peter Watkins. La Commune is easily one of the best depictions of revolutionary politics i have ever seen and i know of no one else whose work was so committed to interrogating how the media are complicit with imposing the agenda of capital

The high modernism of Glasgow novelist Alexander Trocchi has often been overshadowed by his low living. At the centenary of his birth, can we discern a meaningful literary legacy beyond his associations with existentialism, Situationism and counterculture? tribunemag.co.uk/2025/08/salt...

we must bring these stakes back into criticism

my band Shinlifter have their EP launch on Saturday and with impeccable timing our Instagram has been hacked so we’ve lost our main channel for promoting it. if anyone wanted to help share this brilliant poster by my pal Grace there, here or elsewhere we’d be very grateful!

It has been such a great honour to be one of Krasznahorkai's interpreters into English (since 2008), along with George Szirtes and John Batki. I also have to mention the visionary New Directions and my beyond stellar editor Declan Spring 🧡 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/b...

in honour of Krasznahorkai’s Nobel, here’s a video of me and my buds at the bar recreating the iconic scene from The Melancholy of Resistance/The Werckmeister Harmonies on my 30th birthday in 2019

when i saw László Krasznahorkai at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2012, the interviewer asked him to give some context for the reading he was about to give and he bluntly replied, ‘No, this is literature!’ then launched into a spellbinding twenty minute monologue from Satantango

can’t believe the Nobel went to a guy who i’ve genuinely read all the available books in English by. so pleased for László!!!

obsessively consuming the biggest release in American pop culture this week

life achievement unlocked: visiting every poet’s grave mentioned in The Smiths’ Cemetery Gates

FAO Your Party

obsessed with Bob Dylan’s new dripped out look wearing a North Face with the hood up on stage

this is quite the effusive cover quote. too bad it wasn’t for the book it was on as i’d probably have bought it immediately.

can’t believe Nice N Sleazys kb’d Michael Shannon last night and he left shouting ‘Fuck this place. Fuck Glasgow’

The UK government will evacuate nine of the 40+ students in Gaza with scholarship at UK universities. My PhD student Shaimaa isn't included. We must now make sure they help the other students - email your MP today. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

i regret to inform you i’m now facilitating terrorism by selling Sally Rooney’s books at work.

Proud to have an article in here reflecting on Alexander Trocchi’s legacy alongside the most incisive and urgent commentary on our current political malaise. Get it doon ye!

really excited to get stuck into these. huge fan of Hopscotch so glad to see Cortázar novels back in print.

Arthur’s Seat is on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel and the sewers are muddied with a thousand lonely Oasis fans and a dark wind blows

seeing lots of folk in Oasis gear queuing up for Fringe shows. it’s almost as if much of the so-called ‘Oasis effect’ is just thinly veiled cultural snobbery.

Demonstrating my headstand reading stunt during a presentation of my new book Fascist Yoga at Argonaut Books in Edinburgh last night. If you missed me you can still buy the book at Argonaut & it's also available online here: www.plutobooks.com/978074535112...

The words “Please can you DON’T?!” were immediately conveyed here by poor Calum, drummer for Shinlifter. Sorry, pal. They asked me to. Just pretend I’m not here. 🥴

It’s festival time and I’m chairing a few events at both the Book Festival and Fringe. Tomorrow I’m talking to @stewarthome.bsky.social about his latest provocation, Fascist Yoga at @argonautbooks.bsky.social argonautbooks.co.uk/product/7th-...

surely academics at Edinburgh University have highlighted for years the racist undertow to the enlightenment so why doesn’t the principal simply commit to not cutting the jobs of those doing this research he deems so valuable?

depressing to see such naked snobbery being published in the year of our lord 2025. working class people have always been reading literature; they never stopped.

support escalating for Gaza but baffled by the strategic error here of advertising an occupation in advance

We were robbed last night. When it’s our stock or our money that is targeted, there’s insurance and systems in place for this, but when it’s stealing from a charity in an extremely direct way then we just can’t abide it. scottishbooktrust.com/donate @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social

great book post at work today

last week i gave a talk about Alexander Trocchi’s aesthetics and politics of failure at a centenary symposium at Glasgow University which has now been published by @bellacaledonia.bsky.social bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/06/19/s...

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”

speaking tomorrow at this conference to honour the centenary of Alexander Trocchi’s birth at Glasgow University. come watch me give my first, and most likely last, academic paper on Trocchi’s aesthetics and politics of failure.

happy pride month to them