English and Scottish literature have always been complicated hybrids, and separating the nations won't change that

Just beforeAlex Salmond gave the Hugo Young lecture, I received an email from the Scottish government announcing their plan to make it compulsory for every schoolchild doing "English" in Scotland to study at least one "Scottish text". Although Robert McCrum wrote, a propos of the lecture, that "if the politics of the United Kingdom become fragmented, then culture will surely follow", I'd suggest that the culture has already fragmented. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was commonplace to talk about Scotland's "cultural independence". But that doesn't make the idea of what constitutes a "Scottish text" any less problematic.

Muriel Spark, when theMacallan Short Story Competitionwas being set up, suggested that it be open to Scots "by birth, residence or formation", a suitably elastic set of terms. There are writers everyone would identify as Scottish: Burns, Scott, Stevenson; Kathleen Jamie, Janice Galloway, Liz Lochhead. But what about Byron, "born half a Scot and bred a whole one"? Or James Thomson, poet of The Seasons and "Rule Britannia"? If it's a question of residence, then Lucy Ellmann, Kate Atkinson and JK Rowling are Scots (but does that make Ali Smith and Jackie Kay English?). If it's a question of birth, then James Robertson is English and Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In The Willows is somehow a Scottish text. The wonderful AL Kennedy once quipped to me that if we measured things by conception rather than birth, she's technically Australian. Would it be acceptable for a Scottish student to write on Kafka's The Trial (translated byEdwin Muir, of course) or theScott-Montcrieff version of Proustor on Edwin Morgan's versions of Mayakovsky or Don Paterson's of Rilke? Essentialist definitions are supremely futile: show me a definition of a Scottish writer and I'll find an exception to that rule. What I really hope is that whatever list of recommended authors is created by the panjandrums at the Scottish Qualifications Authority, they don't just concentrate on Scots writing about Scotland. It would be a travesty of Scotland's contribution to world literature to omitThomas Carlyle's French Revolution, JM Barrie's Peter Pan (or any of his even greater plays: Dear Brutus is a particular favourite of mine), James Frazer's The Golden Bough orVeronica Forrest-Thomson's On The Periphery.

Robert McCrum worries that "without infusions of new blood from Scotland and Ireland British writing could start to look rather vulnerable". "British writing" might; but English writing seems to me to be in remarkably good form. You can't worry about a literary culture that boasts David Mitchell, China Miéville, Tom McCarthy, Nicola Barker, Iphigenia Baal, Scarlett Thomas, Hari Kunzru and Zadie Smith. In fact, their peers in Scotland might do well to look at the imaginative leaps in form and thought they have achieved: the equivalent generation here seems tame and complacent in comparison.

But since, as Scots, English, Welsh and Irish, we have a common currency in the infinitely flexible "English" language (and share that with writers as diverse as Miguel Syjuco, Junot Díaz, Lydia Millet and Chinua Achebe) the idea that a political re-balancing of the already dis-United Kingdom would strand us in mutually exclusive cliques seems unlikely. In fact, it might strengthen literary culture as a whole to have those exchanges and interchanges happening with a sharper sense of clarity. I can't imagine that the future will be less complicated and less interwoven – and that is almost grounds for a very unScottish degree of optimism.

Literary adaptations look set to sweep the board in Hollywood this year

Six of the nine nominations announced this week for Best Picture are based on books, reflecting a recent pattern in which the Oscar lists have consistently and gratifyingly affirmed cinema's dependence on literature. Apart from a modest lurch towards originality in2010, the previous five years saw line-ups in which half or more of the shortlistees were adaptations, including the winnersNo Country for Old Men(2008),Slumdog Millionaire(2009) andThe King's Speech(2011).

It's not classic novels that attract movie-makers. Of the books turned into nominated films this time, onlyMichael Morpurgo's War Horse(1982) was not published in the noughties. The others are Brian Selznick'sThe Invention of Hugo Cabret(filmed as Hugo), Jonathan Safran Foer's 9/11 novelExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close,Moneyball by Michael Lewis(the second non-fiction sports title by him in three years to generate a Best Picture nominee, as he also wrote the source of Blind Side), and two debuts,Kaui Hart Hemmings's The DescendantsandKathryn Stockett's The Help. It's the first time for quite a while – conceivably since 1940, whenGone with the Windwon andWuthering Heightswas among the nominees – that versions of two novels by women have been listed for the most coveted Oscar.

Bafta's shorter Best Film list, announced a week earlier, is even more novel-reliant, withThe Artistthe sole original film selected, competing withDrive(based on aJames Sallis thriller) andTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, as well as The Descendants and The Help.

Diehard believers in cinema's creative autonomy will no doubt point in the Oscars list not only to The Artist, but also to two self-penned movies by publicity-averse veteran auteurs,Woody Allen's Midnight in ParisandTerrence Malick's The Tree of Life.They'd be unwise to do so, as these films are by no means pure of literary influences. Online commenters have begun to note echoes of DH Lawrence (as well as Arthur C Clarke andStanley Kubrick's 2001) in Malick's Palme d'Or winner, and particularly The Rainbow's portrayal of one family against a cosmic backdrop; while Midnight in Paris makes no secret of its bookish hankerings, magically granting its present-day protagonist encounters with Djuna Barnes, TS Eliot, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

It's an endlessly interesting conversation-starter, and we'd like to record your answers on a Flickr gallery

What are you reading? is often the start of a great conversation. We swap book recommendations andwrite about the books we've just readon the site, but now we'd like to invite you to answer the question in pictures – don't tell us, show us.

To do this we have started a Flickr group calledWhat are you reading today?where we invite you to upload your photos and share with us what you are reading. You can post up to seven photos a week in the group, so if you like, you can share what you are reading every day and use it a bit like a visual book diary. This is an experiment so it's up to you which way it goes and what it turns into, but it might be a great way of getting a moving picture of what books are proving the most popular with readers.

The photo can be a picture of you reading your book or just a snap of the cover. As long as we can see the title, we don't mind. And, as library goers across the UK markLibraries Dayon 4 February, this seems the be the perfect moment to show your support for your library by posting a picture of the book you've just borrowed.

If you have any questions, or any problems uploading your photos to the group, please let me know in the thread below. If you're on Twitter you are also welcome to tweet us your photos@guardianbooks.