An interesting interview with Iain Banks on his return to the convoluted family saga in the Times:

IAIN BANKS WAS ONCE ASKED what his motto was. The answer? “Oh, what the hell.”

A bit flippant for a life philosophy, perhaps, but it’s an attitude that has made for a brilliant, breakneck career: having set heads spinning with his gruesome, gothic debut The Wasp Factory in 1984, Banks has published a further 22 books in the subsequent 23 years, a production rate not matched by any of his peers from the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list of 1993.

Looks like I'll be adding The Steep Approach To Garbadale to The Bookcase Of Unread Books At The Top Of The Stairs soon...

Oddly I was walking round London listening to the BBC radio reading of The Crow Road on my iPod the day before yesterday...

[Linkage via Blog of a Bookslut]