Edinburgh in August inspires mixed feelings. Lots of lovely things to do, see and listen to, but also lots of (I'm sure, lovely) people to get in the way as you try to go about the dull everyday demands of actually living in the city. It's hard not to get a bit grumpy at crowded buses, people walking very slowly when you're late for work and not being able to get a seat in your favourite cafe.
Still the good outweighs the bad and there are lots of great book things to do in Edinburgh in August. The Edinburgh International Book Festival is the obvious one, and, despite losing a lot of my goodwill during four hours online trying to book tickets and even getting them in my basket only to see them disappear for ever, I'll be taking at trip or two down there. While a lot of the well known authors are sold out, there's usually something interesting still available on the day and also some unticketed events. One that's worth checking out is Unbound, a series of free evening events in the Book Festival's Spiegeltent. The programme includes spoken word, music and psychic experiments...The Spiegeltent is also home to Story Shop, a showcase for new writers and new writing from Edinburgh, taking place at 4pm each day.
As well as the main Book Festival, the Edinburgh Book Fringe takes place at Word Power Books. The Book Fringe is being launched by Alasdair Gray, author of Lanark. Sadly I think real life (i.e. looking after my children) will get in the way of me going to the launch but there's lots of other interesting stuff going on there.
The Inky Fingers Minifest is also running from 8-13 August and features readings and performance poetry, an all day writing and performance marathon and FlashFictionMob appearing around the city.
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