A SEARCH has been launched for the country's favourite Scottish book of the last 50 years.
People are being asked to choose from a shortlist of 50 titles compiled by the author, literary critic and programmer of Glasgow's Aye Write festival, Stuart Kelly, in the initiative led by the Scottish Book Trust.
The poll is part of Book Week Scotland 2013, which runs from November 25 to December 1, with the top ten books being announced at the end of that week.
You can now visit www.bookweekscotland.com to choose from a shortlist of 50 titles.
Mr Kelly said picking 50 books was "never going to be uncontroversial."
Notably, it features Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark, but not The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, perhaps her most famous novel, as well as a book from 2012, Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon.
He added: "I am grateful to colleagues at the Scottish Book Trust for their assistance in compiling this list.
"I think it combines the well known with the idiosyncratic, the famous and the unjustly forgotten and will hopefully help readers discover new possible favourites and revisit existing ones."
Titles on the list of 50 include Alasdair Gray's Lanark, Iain Banks's The Bridge, Banks writing as Iain M Banks with Excession, Ali Smith's Hotel World and Christopher Brookmyre's One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night.
Also in the 50 are Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, Kate Atkinson's Life after Life, Denise Mina's Garnet Hill, The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh and Ian Rankin's Black and Blue.
Marc Lambert, chief executive of Scottish Book Trust, said: "We are keen to find out whether old favourites - Alasdair Gray, Muriel Spark - will stay the course, or whether other more recent writers have come to resonate more strongly with Scottish readers."
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