This weekend it was the London Anarchist Bookfair as well as Edinburgh’s Independent and Radical Bookfair by Word Power. I was a bit disappointed that they both clashed, and the Edinburgh bookfair had less interesting events than usual, but a whole lot of Palestine Solidarity and other more socialist tendencies.
This year there was hardly any factual, investigative or news journalism presentations, but novels, poems and prose. Mike Small and Kevin Williamson are planning to launch a new magazine (again), called “Bella Caledonia”, with a seemingly slightly Scottish nationalism editorial. However, there was some tendencies and new books which were interesting me: one investigation into “Blackwater”, the private American mercenary army, a lot of books about criticising New Labour’s policies into spending £60 billion on “consultants” to change and privatise education, health service and other public services and some books about PFI and one about the water struggles. I was also impressed by the Centre for Alternative technologies – it publishes a whole lot of DIY guides for windmills, solar-panels and similar.
I am at the moment reading Ian Bone’s “Bash the Rich”, and it is incredibly funny. I have just got approval from the author to translate it into German. Unfortunately, I have got a bad cold and headache so am not really up to much today.