This is an extremely tricky question to answer for a Scots writer and a prolific reader. Twenty, thirty, forty, names of books and authors kept jumping into my head. There are so many fantastic Scots authors and books that choosing one or even ten would be difficult. In fact, the more I have thought about this question the more I find it difficult to narrow it down to a hundred.
Books, of course, are a matter of taste and genre and so whilst one reader may enjoy one author, others would think them incomprehensible or ill considered. When still a boy my favorites were (in no order) Nigel Tranter, Naomi Mitcheson, John Prebble, Sir Walter Scott, Gavin Maxwell (though I am unsure he was Scottish despite the name and the fact that he lived here) Angus McVicar and a few others but as I grew into a man these changed.
Sir Walter Scott’s genius impinged upon my thought and literary sensibilities more and then I found Ian Banks, and better still Iain M Banks. The former is a wonderful literary fiction writer, the latter (and the same person) a science fiction wonder. But we have Chris Brookmyre, who has always entertained me, Robert Burns and who could rule him out, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, some of the best crime writers in the world and so many others that it is impossible to mention them all here.
For me, and for me alone, I had to pick the best from those many wonderful authors and distill them down into one singular book I would end up with “The Algebraist” By Iain M Banks. Lol- though it would have had fierce competition from many other books.
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