Luath's 100 Books That Shaped Us
The BBC recently shared their picks of ‘100 Books That Shaped Our World’. Inspired by this, here at Luath Press we’ve compiled an exclusive list of 100 books that have shaped who we are as a publisher today. Many of our chosen books are set in Scotland, by Scottish writers or have a unique connection to Scotland. Have you read all of these books? Which 100 books have shaped you?
Lanark, Alasdair Gray (Canongate Books)
How Late it Was, How Late, James Kelman (Vintage)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (Macmillan)
Waverley, Sir Walter Scott (Penguin)
1984, George Orwell (Penguin)
Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass, Darren McGarvey (Picador/Luath Press)
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, John McGrath (Bloomsbury)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle (Penguin)
Knots and Crosses, Ian Rankin (Orion)
Cities in Evolution, Patrick Geddes
The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism and Carbon Footprint, Ellie Harrison (Luath Press)
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson (Penguin)
Poor Things, Alasdair Gray (Bloomsbury)
The Magic Flute, Alan Spence (Phoenix)
The Poems of Ossian, James Macpherson (Book on Demand)
A Disaffection, James Kelman (Vintage)
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (Penguin)
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh (Vintage)
Choose Life. Choose Leith: Trainspotting on Location, Tim Bell (Luath Press)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (Penguin)
Filth, Irvine Welsh (Vintage)
Consider the Lilies, Iain Crichton Smith (Orion)
Dear Green Place, Archie Hind (Polygon)
Greenvoe, George Mackay Brown (Birlinn)
Poems, Chiefly in the Scots Dialect, Robert Burns
The Cone Gatherers, Robin Jenkins (Canongate)
Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K Rowling (Bloomsbury)
Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stane (Scots Language Edition), Matthew Fitt & J.K Rowling (Black and White)
Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Birlinn)
The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland, Nan Shepherd (Canongate)
The Ultimate Guide to the Munros, Ralph Storer (Luath Press)
How to be Both, Ali Smith (Penguin)
Trumpet, Jackie Kay (Pan Macmillan)
Blossom: What Scotland Needs to Flourish, Lesley Riddoch (Luath Press)
Dirt Road, James Kelman (Canongate)
Radical Renfrew, Tom Leonard (Edinburgh University Press)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg (Penguin)
The Trick is to Keep Breathing, Janice Galloway (Vintage)
The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks (Little, Brown)
I Ran with the Gang: My Life In and Out of the Bay City Rollers, Allan Longmuir (Luath Press)
Outside the Narrative: Poems 1965-2009, Tom Leonard (Word Power Books)
Peter Pan, J.M Barrie (Penguin)
A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre, Audience, Class and Form, John McGrath (Nick Hern Books)
Janine, 1982, Alasdair Gray (Canongate)
The Lions of Lisbon: A Play of Two Halves, Willy Maley and Iain Auld (Luath Press)
100 Favourite Scots Words, Pauline Cairns Speitel (Luath Press)
The Comforters, Muriel Spark (Birlinn)
Autumn, Ali Smith (Penguin)
A Nation Changed? : The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On, Gerry Hassan and Simon Barrow (Luath Press)
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, Hugh MacDiarmid (Birlinn)
Katie Morag’s Island Stories, Mairi Hedderwick (Random House Children’s)
Macbeth, William Shakespeare (Oxford University Press)
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (Penguin)
No Problem Here: Understanding Racism in Scotland, Neil Davidson (Luath Press)
Journey to the Hebrides, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell (Penguin)
Isle of Rust: A Portrait of Lewis and Harris, Alex Boyd (Luath Press)
The Quarry Wood, Nan Shepherd (Canongate)
Standing Female Nude, Carol Ann Duffy (Pan Macmillan)
Young Adam, Alexander Trocchi (Alma Books)
Buddha Da, Anne Donovan (Canongate)
The Scottish Nation: A Modern History, Tom Devine (Penguin)
Whisky Galore, Compton Mackenzie (Birlinn)
Scotch on the Rocks: The True Story Behind Whisky Galore, Arthur Swinson (Luath Press)
The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neonationalism, Tom Nairn (Verso Books)
Old Nations, Auld Enemies, New Times, Tom Nairn (Luath Press)
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (Penguin)
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (Penguin)
Mollycoddling the Feckless: A Social Work Memoir, Alastair Findlay (Luath Press)
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott (Oxford University Press)
Hamish Henderson: Collected Poems, Corey Gibson (Birlinn)
The Second Life, Edwin Morgan
Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, David Hume
David Hume on God, David W Purdie & Peter S Fosl (Luath Press)
The Adoption Papers, Jackie Kay (Bloodaxe Books)
The Slab Boys, John Byrne (Faber & Faber)
Far Cry, Norman MacCaig
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Liz Lochhead (Nick Hern Books)
On the Trail of Mary Queen of Scots, J. Keith Cheetham (Luath Press)
All the Little Animals, Walker Hamilton (Freight Books)
The Mermaids Singing, Val McDermid (HarperCollins)