Nicolai Lilin's story of hunting and tribalism under an authoritarian state draws a strange crowd who seem more interested in what sort of bullets he's carrying and where his tattoos are, than in the content of his writing.

When I moved to Moscow last year, most of my knowledge of Russia came from Helen Dunmore's historical novel The Seige, set in wartime Leningrad (now St Petersburg). This might not seem like much to start a relationship with a country, but the novel gave me the advantage of knowing something of the personal lives and habits (albeit fictional) of Russian people, underneath the impassive faces on the Metro.

In retrospect, the fact the event showcasing the work of the winners of The Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition occurred the evening before Mr Morgan's death at the age of ninety becomes an excellent tribute to the national makar, and certainly one of the greatest poets in Scottish history.

Free whisky, tongue-in-cheek rage for everything from opera to Thatcher, lots of profanity - it must be the bard of South Queensferry.

On the first day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, there's a mixed crowd in the Scottish Power Studio Theatre to hear Rana Husseini, journalist and human rights activist, talk about her new book Murder in the Name of Honour.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe inhabits an alternate space-time continuum in parallel to the rest of the world/year. Every year a little larger and a tad more corporate. Each year new, similar faces joining some of the same faces as previous years, a little but not much older and more weathered, almost as though the rest of the year hadn't really happened and the month of August was just on a permanently expanding loop. Fringe press launches, like previous entire Fringes, can tend to bunch together in the memory after a while until one can't be sure which was which, where or when. It's like aversion therapy for those obsessive-compulsives like myself who find it difficult to tell a story without providing precise calendar date and location.