Books like The Pictish Symbol Stones of Scotland — picked by fans

A doomed king, the last of his kind: a final shepherd of a race fallen into such depravity and barbarity that most no longer see the Picts as human; a man driven to deliver his kin from Roman oppression, to lift his people out of squalor. I was floored by Howard’s iron-hard writing in this all-too-brief sequence of heroic stories. The razor descriptions cut to the core of a man willing to give his all in a doomed quest. I read and re-read the few tales of Bran, but I always find something new and ferocious in the brooding king’s tragedy and bitter triumph. These tales rekindled my love of sword and sorcery, and helped me hone the edge in my own stories. I recommend them to any fantasy fan!

This book is not just about Scotland, despite the title. It is a very rich and imaginative study that is both helped and hindered by its remit being modern Scotland, which was never a single political or cultural entity in the early Middle Ages. That means the author has to look at several distinct groups: the English of Northumbria, the Britons of Strathclyde in the southwest, and the Vikings of the north and west, as well as the ‘Scots’ themselves of central Scotland (whose collective identity as Scots was taking shape at this time). All of this is done with insight, imagination, and command of the complicated sources. It is a lesson in how wide-ranging histories of Britain should be written.

This novel reminds the reader that humans have carried certain truths from the dawn of time. It tells the story of Phaedrus, a slave from birth. When he gains his wooden-foil of freedom in the gladiatorial arena, he finds his life suddenly empty, and without purpose. This results in him agreeing to assume another’s identity. Not simply ‘another’s identity’ but to become a ‘king’ of the Dal Riada people of Scotland. Phaedrus, to his surprise, discovers leadership gives his life true purpose, friendship, and love. But the time comes when he must show himself worthy of the Mark of the Horse Lord. Beautifully told, the novel speaks of how sacredness and self-sacrifice intertwine for those who truly rule. 

There are 25 (!) books in the Rebus series by Scottish writer Ian Rankin, which is really great news for everyone because they are all really good. Each book can be read as a stand-alone as well, so don’t be daunted. This one is one of my favorites because it has a cool twist and it’s very moody.

Inspector John Rebus, who is (as many mystery protagonists are) a gifted detective who doesn’t always play by the rules, has been sent a way to a kind of Scottish re-training course for senior offices who have been bad. The dialogue is very good here, not to mention the many gritty descriptions of Edinburgh. 

Ludington’s book is exciting because it disproves pervasive ideas about wine consumption. One of the big assumptions in the history of commodities is that middle-class people want to imitate elites, and that taste trickles down the social ladder.

Ludington shows that the opposite was true 250 years ago in England and Scotland: aristocrats started changing their wine-buying habits to appear more sympathetic to the middling sort. This trickle-up is an eighteenth-century equivalent of affluent hipsters drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon or fashionistas buying $400 jeans.

I’m the type of reader who finishes each sentence thinking yeah, but how do we know that?, so I find Ludington’s generous footnotes and detailed cellar inventories to be deeply satisfying. This is not an easy read, but it’s a thoroughly enriching one.   

I’ll go ahead and admit that taking issue with David Johnson is one of my favorite pastimes. However, his work is the only work focused on eighteenth-century Scottish music, and as such is a major contribution. Johnson gives a very readable, very enjoyable (one needn’t know music…) overview of what was then known (1972) about Scottish musical culture. Arts and Enlightenment went hand in hand in Scotland, so read Broadie for the ideas and then Johnson for what these same philosophers were doing for entertainment.

Witch Wood tells the story of a high-minded, ardent and scholarly young Presbyterian minister, David Sempill, who is called to a benighted Tweeddale parish in 1645 at the time of the War of Three Kingdoms, and how his desire to root out covert witchcraft amongst some of his most ‘devout’ parishioners at a time of civil war and plague leads to tragedy and exile. The Marquis of Montrose, on whose biography John Buchan was working at the same time, has a walk-on part in the story. John Buchan considered this his best work of fiction, and I agree.

This magnificent book made me realize perhaps more than any other by a Scottish female writer that the lives of working-class Scottish women are unique, important, and worth writing/reading about.

The book tells the story of Joy, a woman whose mental health is slowly crumbling before our eyes. Galloway masterfully tells this story in the first person so that we are right inside Joy’s mind. We discover a background of abuse and recent bereavement, leading to issues with alcohol abuse and anorexia.

That should all make for a depressing read, and it is of course heart-breaking at times but it is also ultimately about one woman’s search for what it takes ‘to keep breathing’. Utterly spellbinding writing from one of Scotland’s greatest writers. 

When I moved to Scotland for my postgrad year studying writing at the University of Edinburgh, the apartment I rented had one book in it – this collection of short stories, set in the same city.

I was pretty sure Trainspotting was the best novel I’d ever read, but I wasn’t aware of this collection of three works of Irvine Welsh’s short fiction. My first night in the apartment, I sat on the one chair and read the one book. And what a buzz!

I loved the mix of grittiness, euphoria, and dark-as-night humour. The focus on club drugs was more relatable than the heroin culture of Trainspotting (although to my delight, Spud Murphy makes a cameo appearance – twice!). 

I have re-read this classic several times since I was a child.

The abridged version I read in 4th grade. RLS himself said, “The characters took the bit in their teeth; all at once they became detached from the flat paper, they turned their backs on me and walked off bodily…”

Not long after being introduced to Alan Breck Stewart, we hear him exclaim, in a ship’s cabin filled with the blood of villains he has shed, “Ah Davy, am I no’ a bonnie fighter!” How often, as a lad, I imagined myself taking on that crew with my broadsword!

Young David Balfour, in his quest to get back his inheritance, learns from Alan and his complex character that the Jacobite cause in Scotland is not clearly a matter of right and wrong. Did Alan kill “the Red Fox”? This is debated among Highlanders to this day!