Are you a blogger?  Do you read books?  Do you like to sometimes talk about those books online or even in person, with other humans?  Then golly goodness have I got a treat for you.

Tonight is the night of the first ever Edinburgh Book Festival blogger meet up, as detailed in a guest post from Bethany at Subtle Melodrama on Monday morning. I’m going along, although I don’t know if I really count as a book blogger.  I sometimes post photographs of books I’ve recently bought or read, but don’t generally review them – I’m too busy writing my own.  To be honest I think anyone who blogs is more than welcome to come, as long as they have a passing interest in reading.

I’m quite excited, not least because this is the first thing I’m doing at the 2011 book festival; which sounds like a terrible oversight till you hear the much worse admission that it’s also my first ever book festival.  I’ve lived in Edinburgh since 2008 and near it my whole life, so this is pretty inexcusable behaviour.

I actually had vague delusions of getting involved with myself at one point, as the Scottish Book Trust tweeted details of an event where unknowns could do readings of their stuff.  At least two people on Twitter informed me that I should go for it, and if that’s not a ringing endorsement I don’t know what is.  But unfortunately, life happened and I forgot all about it.  This is the downside of the instant gratification of micro blogging, and further evidence that I should probably write everything down in a physical notebook and read over it regularly.  Still, there’s always next year, by which point I might have come up with something polished enough to be worth reading in front of up to several people.

Anyway I digress.  The plan this evening is to meet and chat and probably end up at the (free!) Unbound event in the Spiegeltent.  Unbound events are on every night between 9 and 11pm and take various forms, but tonight it’s The Golden Hour (the same Golden Hour that started life at The Forest Cafe, coincidence fans).  It is part reading and part gig, which sounds nice, and features Joe Dunthorne (author of Submarine, who I’ve actually got a ticket to see tomorrow), Kelly Link (who, according to her website, is thinking about writing a young adult novel in free verse about a high-school girl who interviews a vampire), William Letford (who restores medieval villages and works as a roofer when not writing poetry and short stories) and Billy Liar (acoustic punk band).

With any luck it won’t be tipping down with rain, but even if it is I’m sure we can cultivate a kind of blitz spirit and muddle through it together. What doesn’t kill us will only bring us closer together, and then we can all collectively blog about it, so it’s a win/win situation.

See you at 7.30pm just outside the book festival entrance at Charlotte Square.