Scott's Book Review – Page 3 – The Lanark Website

Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism by Richard Crouter

SPIRIT MATTERS - Reaching for the Divine

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)) looms large for anyone interested in systematic theology. Indeed he is widely regarded as the founder of modern Protestant theology, and is required reading in schools of Divinity. In this book, Richard Crouter argues that Schleiermacher’s theology is best understood by examining his position […]

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House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

Any rational person’s appetite for horror is met in early 2026 by turning the radio on each morning. Should the world not be disturbing enough for your taste, reach for a recent horror novel by Gabino Iglesias (Gabino Iglesias | Facebook). The summary is as follows: For childhood friends Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul, and Bimbo,

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Ideas: A History From Fire To Freud by Peter Watson

PHILOSOPHY - The love of wisdom

Nobody could accuse Peter Watson (Biography – Peter Watson, author) of lack of ambition. In this 1152 page book the author presents the history of human thought between two covers. The story begins nearly two million years ago with the invention of hand-axes and explores how some of our most cherished notions might have originated

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The Land In Winter by Andrew Miller

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

Andrew Miller (Andrew Miller | Award-winning writer) has published ten novels and has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Costa Book Award of the Year, the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Miller’s most recent novel is ‘The Land In Winter‘, and would be a great start

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Flesh by David Szalay

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

The 2025 Booker Prize winner might be the best option to finish your reading programme this year. The author, David Szalay, (David Szalay interview: ‘I wanted to write about what it’s like to be a living body in the world’ | The Booker Prizes), was born in Montreal in 1974 in a Jewish family of a

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The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

LIVES WELL LIVED? A pick from biography and memoir

Published originally in German as Die Ringe des Saturn. Eine englische Wallfahrt (1995), translated as The Rings of Saturn (1998) – with its curious archive of photographs – records a walking tour in August 1992 of the East Anglian coast and in Suffolk. Many observations and subjects enter the mind of its narrator Winfried Georg Sebald (1944-2001) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._G._Sebald and W. G.

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How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

Tristan Gooley (Tristan Gooley – The Natural Navigator) is an author and naturalist. He set up his natural navigation school in 2008 and is the author of award-winning books, including The Natural Navigator (2010), The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs (2014), How to Read Water (2016), The Secret World of Weather (2021), The Hidden Seasons (2025), some of the world’s only books covering natural navigation.

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When We Were Killers by C.F. Barrington

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

‘Dark Academia’ (12 of the best dark academia books of all time) is a genre of fiction attracting a lot of attention. Its aesthetic centres on higher education, traditional lifestyles, Gothic architecture, ancient art and poetry, classical literature, elite college life, psychological manipulation, and the embrace of darkness. To try out this genre reach for

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The Black Loch by Peter May

CRIMINALLY MINDED - Tales of the behaviourally challenged

There are many ‘dubh lochs’ on the Isle of Lewis in The Outer Hebrides. The island is studded with lochs which are coloured dark by the underlying peat. One of the civil parishes on the island is even called Lochs. This book is a follow-up to The Lewis Trilogy by Peter May (Peter May author

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