Monday 15 June 2009

Wigtown, Scotland's Book Town

Mr F and I visited Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway at the weekend. It's "Scotland's Book Town" with 19 bookshops (which I think was started 10 years ago as a regeneration project). The town is an ancient one with a harbour (now a lonely spot) going back to the thirteenth century. Here's an image from their website:

wigtown

We're planning to go back for the festival in September, featuring Christopher Brookmyre among many other authors.

We also visited Kirkcudbright, the town where Jessie M King the illustrator lived.

Photobucket

Her house is now a B&B. There are many artists in the town nowadays as well and they have an open-studios week in July.

So not much reading done over the weekend but a literary location visited, as well as an artistic one.

A Village Affair by Joanna Trollope

An Aga-saga where the moral of the tale might be that not even an Aga can bring you happiness ... this book has the author's usual perfectly-observed children and clever characterisation where your opinion of the characters can change as the book goes on. Beautifully-written and one you won't want to put down.

Day 249; book 237