This year I've been privileged to hear from some excellent writers, some well-known and some obscure.

There's a balance to be struck when choosing events at the book festival. While a popular author is speaking to a huge crowd in the RBS Main Theatre, a couple of obscure travel writers or poets are quietly presenting their work on the other side of Charlotte Square, which might be the book that alters your life this year.

I'll admit, giving an unbiased review of Margaret Atwood isn't an easy task for me. This is the author I credit with changing my entire concept of literature, back in my impressionable early teens. The author is part of the Canadian national psyche, and as an ex-pat I've often returned to the familiar landscape of her work, as well as that early realisation of the possibilities of fiction.

As with the readings from yesterday's poets, John Hartley Williams and Brian McCabe divide the hour long session into reading time, with no time allocated for questions. Again, I feel this is a lost opportunity for the audience to gain some insight into the methodology of the poets.

In the Peppers Theatre, John Burnside and Don Paterson, both Fifers and currently at St Andrews, are reading from their distinct poetry. The event is chaired by Brian Johnstone, director of the StAnza festival and owner of a glorious moustache.

Waiting in the novelty igloo to see if I've been granted a William Boyd press ticket, I happen to meet someone from BBC Scotland who lived just a few kilometers from my hometown in Canada. As we expound on the hospitality and wild beauty of the Maritime provinces, I'm gifted with the golden ticket, and walk to the RBS Main Tent with a couple of minutes to spare.

Perhaps it's the combination of extreme beauty and violence which add to the allure of some landscapes. This is true in the case of Kashmir and the Indus region, the settings for Justine Hardy and Alice Albinia's books respectively.

I'm in the Scottish Power Studio Theatre, talking with another of the press pod inhabitants about Moscow and waiting for the lights to dim.

I'm beginning to warm to the Writer's Retreat. Today it seems friendly and intimate, a great venue to hear Rana Dasgupta and Suhayl Saadi present their second novels.