Archive for April 17th, 2008
Sharp yet gentle satire in McCall Smith’s parochial epic: "The World according to Bertie"
I have reported before on other novels by Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith: here and here. The World according to Bertie (2007) is my first venture into the 44 Scotland Street series, originally serial novels in The Scotsman:
The fifth volume of the series begins on Monday. In the past three years, it’s gone worldwide: you can read about Bruce and the other inhabitants of Edinburgh’s most famous fictitious address in Lithuanian, Latvian, Turkish, French, German, Polish and (coming soon) Italian bookshops. Across America, 44 Scotland Street sells in the kind of numbers most writers can only dream about.
With well over a million copies of the series sold in the English language alone, there’s already a huge readership waiting to find out what Scotsman readers will be the first to discover: what McCall Smith’s gently comedic imagination has in store for all his characters (see panels) in the new series. But we’ll start here with Bruce, because he’s the one member of the cast who’s causing his creator the most problems. Read the rest of this entry »
Daily Terror reports on yesterday’s conference
It’s front page news in The Daily Telegraph today, complete with a poll which thus far records:
Should children be taught about homosexuality at school?
- Yes - it is vital to educate students encouraging tolerance and harmony.
- 31% (185 votes)
- No - let them learn about it at home or not at all.
- 68% (411 votes)
- Total votes: 596
- This poll started on Thursday, April 17, 2008
