Celeb Endorsement for Better Book Sales

Want to boost sales of your book? Just look at what a touch of celeb endorsement can do!

According to the Guardian, when the cover of Flann O'Connor's1939 novel The Third Policeman was was flashed up on screen for a moment during an episode of the cult TV series Lost fans rushed out to buy a copy to help them understand the baffling plot. Result: 15,000 copies of the book were sold in just three weeks.

Other episodes of the show have apparently seen characters reading classic bunny saga Watership Down and Madelaine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

Meanwhile, across the the world, Osama bin Laden's bedtime reading has made the Amazon Top 50 list. (Previously it ranked below the 200,000 mark) When he mentioned Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower in a recent audio tape as a useful read about Bush "lying and practicing injustice", sales of former US State Department official William Blum's book became an immediate bestseller.

Thing is, would you really want Osama promoting your book? And just where would you send his share of the profits?

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Local Authors Outsell The Da Vinci Code!

Dzireena Mahdzir charts the incredible rise of the popular Malay novel in Starmag today and the sales figures speak for themselves. (Dzireena points out that the Da Vinci Code sold just 10,000 copies here in comparison):

Sharifah Abu Salem sold 70,000 copies of her novel, Pesona Rindu (Enchantment of Longing), last year. And she had company: Sepi Tanpa Cinta (Lonely Without Love) by Damya Hanna also sold 70,000.

In fact, in little more than half a decade, just one publisher of Malay novels, Alaf 21, has sold more than half a million copies of seven titles, including Sharifah and Damya’s books. Tak Seindah Mimpi (Never As Wonderful As a Dream) by Sharifah Abu Salem sold 70,000 copies in 2000; Kau Untukku (You Were Meant For Me) by Aisya Sofea, 80,000 in 2001; Kau Yang Satu (You Are the Only One) by Nia Azalea, 75,000 in 2002; Bicara Hati (Discussions of the Heart) by Damya Hanna, 100,000 in 2003;Sehangat Asmara (In the Heat of Love) by Aisya Sofea, 70,000 in 2003; Pesona Rindu (Enchantment of Longing) by Sharifah Abu Salem, 70,000 in 2004; and Sepi Tanpa Cinta (Lonely Without Love) by Damya Hanna, 70,000 in 2004.

Apparently a big reason for the rise in popularity of Malay fiction is that publishers decided to use everyday language in their books rather than the more poetic form of the language used for literature, making it much more accessible to the man on the street. Romance is the staple fare (although there are also thrillers, sci-fi and historical novels) but in its culturally acceptable version:

... in keeping with our culture, passion is restrained to eyes meeting, and love is seen as something more emotional than physical. And you don’t declare love in an unseemly manner ... when a character declares his love, he does it poetically. ... Religion, good values and love are all tied up together, and this strongly influences the overall flavour of the stories.

It's nice to see local writers doing well, and reading encouraged. But - dare I ask - is the fiction any good?

Pay Less, Read More

More places to buy books, this time for reading on a budget.

Pay Less Books


A few days ago I wrote about Skoob, which sources its second-hand books from the UK. Pay Less is the largest chain of second-hand bookstores in Malaysia, and sources books from both Europe and the US.
Interestingly, Pay Less began in West-Africa in 1995 by two Europeans: Dimitri Chaniotis and Elke Wollschon. Its mission statement is "to provide consumers with quality English books at discounted prices, with superior customer service in a friendly environment." There are several branches around the city: Ampang Point, Amcorp Mall, Atria Shopping Centre, Carrefour Subang Jaya, Jaya Supermarket, The Summit, Tesco Puchong and IOI Mall, and the chain claims to have 500,000 titles in stock.

I visit Pay Less at the Atria since its just up the road from my house. Of course, there's always something there that I want, and I'm extremely happy to have built up a collection of Best American Short Stories: the books cost me around RM 12 each. My friend Sandra, member of our book club and mad keen reader, works at The Summit branch - so say hello to her when you drop by.

And no more grumbling about not being able to make it to the Klang Valley to buy books, because you can also buy online! Pay Less is affiliated to the wonderful Abebooks (and postage within Malaysia is just a ringgit or two extra.)

Book Rentals

Too poor to buy a book, even from Pay Less? Okay, why not rent one instead?

My friends on the other side of the world will be scratching their heads at this point. Rent a house, rent a car, rent office space - yes. But rent a book??

It's actually a pragmatic solution to a very real problem. Many people can't afford to buy books. We have public libraries here, but they still fall short and aren't always conveniently located.

There are quite a number of little book rental places tucked away around the city, and they seem to come and go. There used to be one in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail that I liked very much since the owner had made the effort to buy in more literary titles, and I was sad when I heard it closed down last year.

City Book Rentals in Lucky Garden, Bangsar (just behing TMC supermarket) has been around for a while and has shelves and shelves of popular fiction (romances, chick lit, thrillers) but certainly enough serious literature to keep the more highbrow reader happy. (The owner clearly had me sussed out the second I walked in and thrust a copy of Su Tong's most recent novel into my hands - and yes, I was tempted.)

Book rental works like this. Each book has a cover price. For a new paperback novel, this might be RM30. (Scruffier copies go for much less, of course.) This is what you pay to take the book away with you. But if you return the book within a month, you get most of your money back, and so may actually pay just RM4-6 for the pleasure of reading it. If you want to keep the book, you just don't bother about returning it.

No book rental place near you? Reader's Shack is Malaysia's first online book rental business. You can even put your own book collection to work by renting books out to others!


Warehouse Sales

Not a bookshop, but a phonomena.

Some of the larger bookshop chains shed their excess stocks with annual sales held in a warehouse or other vacant commercial space, and there are some fantastic bargains laid out on tables in acres and acres of space. At the moment MPH and Times both have their sales on, and I made it to the Times sale yesterday in Atria, PJ.

I hadn't expected it to be so good after reading Daphne's blog, but actually found it to be the best warehouse book sale yet for me. ('spose it depends on the kind of books you're looking for.) Books were wonderfully cheap: paperbacks for RM 8, hardbacks for RM15-20, coffee table books for around RM25, minature Penguin '60's for RM1. Plenty of recent and critically acclaimed fiction. Best bargains have to be Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex and Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters in hardback, and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections in paperback - excellent books for a song.

Marisa and Starlight were also browsing the books (we'd aranged to meet for lunch) and I kept dropping recommended reads into Starlight's basket with little stabs of guilt that she'd have to pay for them. It was Marisa's second visit and she refused a basket saying she'd be tempted to buy too much if she did. The tactic didn't work - by the end of her browse, she had a huge pile anyway. I got three carrier bags of books for RM160, mostly paperback novels, but a lovely coffee table book featuring Singaporean artists. It's such a great feeling to find books you love at low low prices! I may go back another day for another pile.


Supermarkets

I've mentioned before cheap books, (mostly Penguin titles at RM9.99) in supermarkets. I've seen them in Cold Storage Bangsar and Carrefour Megamall. (Carrefour in Wangsa Maju was Leon's undoing - remember?) I've heard there's also copies in branches of Tesco.)

Okay then - I've written as much as I can about the cheap sources for reading materials. There are probably lots of other cheap places I haven't heard about, so let us know. (I know someone will say Chowrasta Market, Penang, again, and I'm longing to go and explore for myself.)

And please don't turn up at my blog again groaning that you can't afford to buy books!

Meet Up and Scribble Night

A small group of us met up for a scribble session at Delicious Bangsar last night. Priya, Angeline, Seck Yen, Anna and Animah all did my creative writing course last year, though at different times, and hadn't met each other before.

We took some (crazy!) prompts from The Writer's Book of Matches: 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction by the staff of Fresh Boiled Peanuts literary magazine. I ended up writing about a dentist who gets stabbed while waiting in the queue at TGV to pick up his tickets for The Da Vinci Code.

Yes, the stories came and sat with us too. Some of them pretty bizarre. Seck Yen and Animah both have absolutely surreal imaginations ...

Here's a couple of pictures I took:

The glamorous Anna who told me to caption this picture "It's the lack of oestrogen" for some reason!

Seck Yen reading his stuff and Angeline listening with rapt attention.

The good news of the evening - Priya is going to have a play performed at KLPac soon!

My Creative Writing Course

My creative writing course kicks off again next month, with MPH giving it a home once more. For which I am eternally grateful.

I haven't advertised it yet. Not because I'm slow and inefficient (which actually, yes, I am) but because I'd had a whole lot of folks who expressed interest in the course last year and were left in mailing-list limbo, so I have to give them priority. And then there's the word of mouth factor. Participants enjoyed the experience and passed the word onto friends. Thanks too to Yvonne for the publicity on her blog! (I may take her on as full-time publicist!)

I keep the group size small (I aim for 10 max) so that everyone gets plenty of time to share their work, but that means that courses fill very quickly.

The course will run on Tuesday nights 7.30-9.30 from 14/3-18/4/06. The price is (notionally!) RM450 but with the MPH Reader's Card there is now a 20% discount.

If you are interested, please contact me directly:

sbakar@streamyx.com or 012-6849935

And I'll send you all the details.

April/May I will be running the course in-house for a corporate client ('bout which I can say nothing at the moment), which means that the next public course will be in June. I'm also in the process of planning one or two follow-up courses, and short workshops for fun. My head is veritably buzzing with ideas!

Being

The woman walks up the mountain

and then down. She wades into the sea

and out. Walks to the well,

pulls up a bucket of water

and goes back into the house.

She hangs wet clothes.

Takes clothes back to fold them.

Every evening she crochets

from six until dark.

Birds, flowers, stars. Her rabbit lives

in an empty donkey pen. The sea is out

there as far as the stars. Always quiet.

No one there. She may not believe

in anything. Not know

what she is doing.

Every morning

she waters the geranium plant.

And the leaves smell like lemons.

Linda Gregg

Magical Realism and String Hoppers

Our book club met last night at Muntaj's house to consider The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I hadn't felt like rereading the novel and my recollection of it was somewhat hazy.

(What remains with you after you read a book? An atmosphere, a vague impression, a memory of how you felt, a web of associations to do with where you were, and who you were with, and the room you sat in when you were reading it? Meanwhile, the story itself quietly slips further and further away ...)

But it was such a pleasure to see the reactions of most of the others, meeting both the novel and Allende's writing for the first time.

There was much laughter over favourite episodes, some had found it 'spooky' in parts since the dead walk around quite comfortably with the living, and Clara emerged as the favourite character. Comparisons were drawn with One Hundred Years of Solitude which we read last year, and overall the Marquez was preferred. 'Magical realism' has taken up residence in everyone's vocabulary now.

My own feelings about this novel are now very much coloured by having read Paula, Allende's extended letter to her daughter lying in a coma. This book revisits much of the same family history, but also tells Allende's own story. And goodness, this lady has certainly lived a life. You feel so much for this mother, grieving her daughter's slow death in a Spanish hospital, and coping with that pain by telling stories.

Sandra did a great job of leading the discussion and had put a lot of effort into her research, and Muntaj had cooked some delicious curries to go with string hoppers for supper. Many thanks!

Related Posts

On Allende:

Where Do little Stories Come From, Mummy? (23/7/05)

On Our Book Club:

Fiction & Friends (9/11/04)
What Book Lovers Look Like (16/2/05)
From Clouds to Kofta and Kulfi (2/3/05)
Time Travelling (31/5/05)
The Harmony Silk Factory Tour of Perak (21/6/05)
The Buzz on the Bee Book (29/8/05)
Kunzru Makes an Impression (17/10/05)
Ouch! Let Me Go! (17/11/05)
Malgudi Revisited (6/12/05)

Starlight's Pesky Book Meme

Oh dear. I've caught a pesky book meme from Starlight who caught it from Jane Sunshine. Can't resist.

1. What is the total number of books you've owned?

My current library is well over a thousand books, but I've lost so many more moving from one part of the world to another. I've also given away a fair number to friends who I felt would appreciate them; lent books that haven't been returned by folks unclear on the concept of 'borrow'; and culled books I felt wouldn't read again when I ran out of space ...

2. What is the last book you bought?

Yesterday I picked up a book I'd ordered weeks back from Raman: Patricia Highmith's short story collection Nothing That Meets the Eye.

3. What is the last book you've read?

Stuart - A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters. Currently writing a review of it for the Star.

4. What are you currently reading?

The Accidental by Ali Smith, and enjoying it greatly. My bedtime reading is a few pages of Thank You for Not Reading by Dubraka Egresic, a collection of essays about the state of the book industry by the Croatian critic.

5. What are the 5 books that have meant a lot to you or that you particularly enjoyed?

Only 5?! These are books I have read several times and will keep coming back to:

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. Was haunted by the book ever since I read it in Russian at school (hey - the simplified version, okay!). "Hero" battles boredom in a series of poignant interlinked stories which shows the sickeness of the age.

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. A prequel that's much better than the book it's based on. The story of how Jane Eyre's Mrs. Rochester was driven mad by her husband. Love the sensuality of the writing.

Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky. A dark crime novel about a homicide and it's aftermath. Way ahead of its time.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. I've never laughed and cried so much when reading a book. Took to my bed for a couple of days in a state of total emotional collapse when Corelli disappeared.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. Funny and moving. But it's the language that gives me the most joy - every sentence so carefully crafted. Imagery that jumps to the eye and leaves you breathless with surprise. I could eat this book, it's so perfect.

6. What book(s) would you wish to buy next?

I'm dying to read Alan Bennett's Untold Stories. Wish I'd picked it up in the UK where it was ridiculously cheap but my suitcase was already way over weight. It's just arrived in the bookshops here.

7. What book(s) that caught your attention but never has a chance to read?

I admitted to Raman yesterday with incredible shame that I've never read Kafka's The Trial. Must do something about this quickly.

8. What book(s) that you've owned for so long but never read it?

I have gazillions of books I've bought but not yet got round to reading on my shelves. (And feel guilty about).

I feel most guilty about James Joyce's Ulysses. I've read and enjoyed parts of it (especially Molly Bloom's luscious soliliquy), but the book as a whole still terrifies.

I want to read Donna Tart's The Secret History and Barry Unsworth's Pascali's Island, but other books keep getting in the way.

9. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Can I cheat and say anyone who reads this and wants to be infected by it?

A Home for Bookworms

Continuing the bibliobibuli guide to local bookshops:

I write so often about Silverfish because Raman is the superhero of the book-centric world: the universe knows no peer! Truly.

The shop was in Sri Hartamas in 1999, moved to more upmarket Bangsar a few months later, and occupies the first floor of a shop-lot on Jalan Telawi Tiga, just a roti canai's twirl from Devi's Corner.

Raman moved into publishing in 2000. Revitalised the Malaysian short story in English, long neglected, with his New Writing series. Gave the wannabe-published something to live for. (Which reminds me, the deadline for the next anthology is end March and even those of you who read this blog from the otherside of Pluto can send in stories.) Published books by other local writers. Is perhaps the best person to send a manuscript too if you need a second opinion, though he won't mince words if he thinks it's rubbish. (I do respect his opinions even if I don't always agree with them.) Runs an editing service.

Hosts events for writers - some very famous names have turned up to read and socialise and eat crisps including Bharati Mukherjee, Shashi Tharoor, Tash Aw and Romesh Gunasekera.

Raman also started up the KL International Literary Festival, something that was badly needed in this corner of the globe. (The next festival is glinting in Mr. Raman's eye even as I type this. I seriously better run and hide.) Now he has started up a literary mag. Is there no end?

As a bookshop, it must be admitted, Silverfish is a little run-down, extremely eccentric. (Like it's owner?)

It might be my bad luck but the shoe-mender from the street below always seems to be changing his clothes on the stairs. (He uses the switch-box as his personal locker.) I've stopped apologising for invading his privacy.

Books there are. A very good section of books by local writers. Some good finds of the more literary kind on the shelves, a mix of new and second-hand copies, though stocks seem low at the moment. When Raman goes on a book-buying spree to India there are some great bargains to be had. And there are always too many temptations on the front counter: I'm so often caught by the "Hey have your read this?" which has heralded not only my happy introduction to Bulgakov, Saramago and Bukowski, but also my gradual fiscal undoing. Phek Chin, Raman's assistant is very clued up about books and whatever they don't have in can usually be ordered very quickly.

Raman's recently partioned off the back room, and now has a space for readings, classes, meetings. He's custodian of a large private library of antiquarian books about this part of the world, and you can sit and read them as long as you like.

The best thing about the shop is that it operates as a meeting place for all kinds of interesting people.Peter Carey and VS Naipaul have browsed the shelves. You might bump into an ambassador or a BBC correspondent or a famous poet or a publishing rep or just another booklover or fictionating scribbler like yourself. Hang out here. Make yourself a cup of tea. Relax.

A woman recently wrote to Raman all the way from Australia to express her concern about the name of the shop. Did Mr. Raman know that Silverfish ate books?

(The one and only silverfish that turned up in Mr. Raman's office one day was treated with the great reverence that befits a mascot.)

The Versions of Pi

Back in November I mentioned that the Times were holding a competition to find a new illustrator for Yann Martell's Booker winning Life of Pi. You can check out the finalists here. Each one now has to submit three more illustrations for the books before a winner is chosen.

The standard is very high. But I must confess that I like the illustration by Victor Tkachenko best of the bunch:

Belief in Your Words

Former bus driver, Magnus Mills, on his first novel The Restraint of Beasts:

Yes, once I started I knew it'd be published because, you see, if you are going to believe in a book that much, you've got to be prepared to publish it yourself if no one else will.

If you haven't read The Restraint of Beasts (shortlisted for the Booker 1998), do track down a copy, particularly if you have a fascination for high-tension fencing.

I almost choked laughing.

Thumbs Up for Self-Publishing

Judging by the number of self-publishing websites, it may not be long before we reach the tipping point of mass adoption.

Victor Keegan road-tests self-publishing websites in the Guardian and declares that the mainstream publishing companies could be "in line for a much needed shock". He is impressed with Lulu, and Publish and Be Damned. He also mentions the all-inclusive package offered by Grosvenor House.

Closer to home, we have Gary Gan and his G&L Solutions, of course.

Related posts:

MPH Writer's Circle (16/1/05)
Self-Publishing (31/3/05)
The Underground Route to Self-Publishing (14/6/05)
The Blooker Prize (4/12/05)
The Power to Publish (21/12/05)

Skoob is Books Drawkcab

Wonder how many of you actually know that we have a branch of the best secondhand bookshop in London?

(And yes, I have checked out the parent store, Skoob in Russell Square - how could I not?)

Skoob Malaysia has gone through a variety of incarnations. When I first came across it in the early 90's it was sharing half a shop-lot with a dobi shop. (That's a laundry - notice how I am now carefully translating terminology! Let's let shop-lot slip past and hope Walker doesn't notice!)

It later moved to slightly larger premises just up the road in Jalan Telawi 3. The first time I wandered in there, I had a surreal experience. Now bear in mind that this was well before the days of the big bookshops, when the best that could be found in Bangsar was a rack of Jackie Collins and Jeffrey Archer in Guardian pharmacy between the headache pills and the face creams. For some reason, I had a craving for a copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson.

I asked the woman behind the counter, expecting her to say something along the lines of "Huh?".

Cindy (for 'twas she) didn't skip a beat. Without looking at the shelves, without consulting any data base or list, she calmly asked "Would that be the 1923 Everyman edition in two volumns or the Heath&Co 1929 edition?" I nearly died of shock on the spot! We checked the shelves and both were there. An oasis in the dessert.

An oasis too of intelligent conversation as proprietor Thor (no relation to the thunder-god, unfortunately) playwright, actor, theatre-director, critic, lecturer, and his musician wife, Cindy, are book-loving kindred spirits.

I loved the shop for it's sheer plenty. Shelves were filled to capacity. There was a terrific range of novels, poetry, literary biographies, and of course the philosophy, religion and the occult in which the bookshop specialises. Books were stacked on the floor, filled even more boxes in the backroom, recent deliveries from the mother-ship in London.

Loved too the way that it drew eccentric characters to it. One rainy afternoon, I was browsing in the shelves of my favourite second-hand bookshop when an elderly, dhoti-clad gentleman burst in from the street, angrily brandishing a copy of Middlemarch at Thor who had apparently recommended the novel as the kind of improving read this gentleman said he was after. (He'd rejected a James Clavell novel the week before because the "language was not rich enough"!)

“Why does she call herself George?" he wailed "I don’t read books by women writers.”

I also laughed at Thor's story about customers coming in to buy antiquarian books by the yard to show the world how well read they were.

When rentals in Bangsar started to go through the roof, Thor moved a couple of miles closer to the city centre to a spacious property in Brickfields, behind the YMCA and next to a rather good Indian shop selling thosai. (Love Danny Lim's moody picture of Alvin Wong outside SKOOB in its Brickfields incarnation.).

More recently, it's moved again to Old Town, P.J. (Lot 122 & 123 Menara Mutiara Majestic, Jalan Othman to be precise), and takes a little more tracking down.

It's a book-lovers haven still (and a lot of books are much cheaper these days) and thanks to Cindy's artistic touch (flowers, lights, teak benches, cushions), the ambience is as squidgy as you could desire. Thor will even make you a cup of tea to sip while you browse. (Tell him Sharon said so.)

As I write this it strikes me that I badly need to make a pilgrimage to Skoob to fill some gaps in my collection, especially now that I have bookshelf space. (But for how long at this rate?? *sigh*).

Photo from The Sun

A Quick Guide to Bookshop Chains

This is for Walker and others across the world, bemused when we talk about our local bookshops. What's MPH? What's Kino? What strange code are we talking in? This is a whistle-stop tour of the bigger bookshop chains here.

Booklovers were very poorly served here until quite recently. The explosion in the number of bookshops has gone hand in hand with the growth of huge shopping malls around the city.

MPH

MPH is the biggest chain bookshop and can claim to be the oldest, since it was originally set up as Methodist Publishing House 100 years ago. (Watch out for anniversary celebrations throughout the year!) It now has 26 outlets in Malaysia including 19 in the Klang Valley (that's the connurbation created by Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and surrounding areas). The two biggest stores are in Mid Valley Megamall (opened 2000) and I Utama (opened just a couple of years ago). A big effort has been made with making the stores customer friendly with reading areas (the one in Megamall even has a "courtyard" area with potted plants and a fountain!) and a cafe. A customer loyalty scheme (the MRC card) bags you an annual rebate in the form of book vouchers (Just got mine and have RM117 - enough for a hardback! - to spend) and other benefits (discount on my creative writing course, invitations to previews of the 'warehouse sales'!)

The store is making an effort to support local writers with it's Writer's Circle and also has a full calendar of in-store events.

MPH is also the main book distributor for Malaysia and supplies most of the other bookshops, and also has a publishing arm.

Times

Generally smaller stores than MPH. No website that I can find! (Opportunity missed, someone!) I go to the branch in Bangsar Shopping Complex and love the display of latest books by the entrance: too tempting, I never escape without a hole in my pocket.

Most of all I love the fact that I get a hefty 10% discount on books with my Times loyalty card and 20% in my birthday month.

Popular

Popular Bookstore has been around for a very long time in Malaysia and Singapore, specialising in titles in Chinese and discounted books. It has a very big store in the Chinatown area in the city centre. Recently it seems to have reinvented itself, and the new branch in Ikano Power Station has a pretty good selection of fiction and other titles in English. Organises events and has a customer loyalty card.

Borders

Borders is the new kid on the block. The first branch was opened in Times Berjaya Square last year, and is supposed to be the "biggest Borders in the world". Perhaps it is in terms of floor space. It certainly isn't overstocked in terms of books. Titles are shipped in from the US and some are more expensive than at other bookstores (I found this with the prices of Oxford dictionaries for example, which the other stores source locally), so it pays to compare prices. There's a branch of Starbucks in-store. Some move recently to host in-store events.

A new branch recently opened at The Curve (distressingly near to my house!) A very pleasant place to loiter.

Kinokuniya

I've saved the best for last. Kinokuniya is actually a Japanese chain and the KL store sits on the top floor of Suria KLCC, the shopping complex that nestles between the twin towers.

This is book lovers heaven. Even visiting novelists of note (no names to be dropped today) have been impressed and spent hours browsing. It's extremely well-stocked. Very wide range of fiction titles. Interesting in-store promotions (I love the themed displays by the entrance). Generous discounts on featured titles. Generally very clued up staff. Pleasant ambience and a cafe upstairs with a panoramic view of the KLCC park.

Walker, will that do for a start?

The rest of you, anything I forgot to say?

Related posts:

Bookshop Snakes and Ladders (19/6/05)
How Squidgy is Your Bookshop (30/11/05)

Book Spree! Whopee!

Now's the time to stock up on cheap books!

MPH is having a stock clearance promotion and MRC members are invited to the preview on 22 - 23 February 2006 9.30am-7.00pm and can take along three guests. (It's open to the public 24 - 28 but by then all the keen readers will have bought up the best stuff.)

The venue is Dewan D'Kelana, Kompleks Sukan MPPJ, Jln SS 7/5, Kelana Jaya, 47301, PJ.

If you need a map or further details contact MPH at 03-7781 1800 (mrc@mph.com.my).

All those of you who got too many ang pow for Chinese New Year now know how to spend the money.

Fabricated Memoirs: Even More Fakery

Post-Frey, newspapers take stock of past memoir fakery. Here are some more examples of "non-fiction" works which were were subsequently outed as fakes, with some googled up links for your reading pleasure.

From the Washington Post :

I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala , a 1984 memoir by a Nobel Prize-winner, is found to recount incidents that she could not have witnessed.

J.T. LeRoy, supposedly a male teenage hustler and the author of Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things , is revealed as the fictional creation of Laura Albert and her husband, Geoffrey Knoop.

And theBookseller :

Jihad by Tom Carew. In which the author recounted his exploits with the SAS and his time training Afghan rebels. While Carew served in the army, he was providing support to--not actually in--the SAS (although he was SAS trained).

The Cage by Thomas Abraham. Having fought in the Vietnam War, Abraham told how the Viet Cong held him as a PoW. His claims of capture and subsequent escape were disputed by fellow veterans and remained unsubstantiated by military records.

Widower's House by John Bayley. An account of life after the death of his wife Iris Murdoch included the portrayal of two women who chased after him. He later admitted that they were actually composite characters, 'both real and unreal.'

So even a respected literary type like John Bayley (ex-Warton Professor of English at Oxford) mixes a little fiction into his fact!

I had forgotten about an earlier, very famous fakery case. As a teenager I loved this book and the TV series that sprang from it almost enough to forgive Hayley totally:

Roots by Alex Haley. A chronicle of seven generations of Haley's family was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Many of his genealogical claims were shown to be falsified, and he reached an out of court settlement for plagiarism with Harold Courlander, author of The African.

Related Posts:

A Clutch of Bogus Memoirs (6/2/06)
Oprah Chops Frey into a Million little Pieces (28/1/06)

Roses in Kino!

Evidence, if any is needed, that Animah hit Kinokuniya this lunch-time in pursuit of elusive romance among the bookshelves. Sadly there were no clandestine encounters by Sufi poetry (Where were you guys?) but I am so grateful for the copy of The Garden Of Heaven: Poems of Hafiz that she bought for me.

There was one surreal moment though when an extremely handsome young guy (dressed in black, long dark-hair tied back) materialised out of nowhere with a whole bag full of roses, presented one with a florish to a very stunned young lady standing just a few feet away from me ... and then fled the scene before she could protest. He wasn't an employee of Kinokuniya. Was it one of you? If so, well done.

I gave my rose to Arthur, a very nice young man on Kino's management team who stopped by to chat and ask how we thought the store was doing. (I have no complaints, just that I spend too much time and money in there.) Then Animah and I consoled ourselves with a cup of hot chocolate in the cafe upstairs.

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Carol Ann Duffy

More Love Among the Bookshelves

Still warming up for Valentine's. Still exploring the connection between love and books.

Let's recap.

So now we've learned that Kak Teh and rhelynn found love among the bookshelves. And bookshops are a favourite pick up spot for Walker, so it works for some. (Though Lil Ms D sadly believes it's her karma to only find gonks wherever she looks. Sadly, she may be right.)

A British Council friend in Taipei told me about a bookshop which stays open all night. It has become one of the favourite pick-up spots in the city. A Taiwanese Government report says about the Eslite bookshop:

Besides the store's cozy atmosphere, with places to sit and read, one reason for the economic success of its late-night operations is its popularity with young people looking for romance, especially for those hoping to find a more intellectual or refined companion.

So never mind speed-dating, maybe all you have to do is hang out in front of the right shelves and see who happens to pick up the kind of books that makes your heart happiest. It's bib-dating of a more free-ranging kind.

Oh let's do a quick survey - suppose you want to meet the love of your life in a bookshop, which section would you hang out in?* If you don't have that special someone yet, why not put a rose between your teeth and go stand in MPH or Borders or Kino during your lunch-break tomorrow and see which other lonely hearts happen along ...

Incidentally, did you know that a certain local bookshop owner rearranged his floorspace because of the folks who found - ahem - a bit tooooo much love among the bookshelves? (True) But then, why deny spontaneity?

In tomorrow's Valentine installment: a gift suggestion that will cost you next to nothing but melt your loved one's heart.


*If I were footloose and fancy-free and whole-lot younger my choice would be next to the books on tantric sex. (Cut to the chase, why not?!) Not that you're in danger of finding too many of those in KL bookshops!

Yvonne's Valentine Ad

As most of my local readers will know (and if you don't, which rock have you been hiding under?) blogger Yvonne Foong is raising money for an urgent brain operation. I have (at last!) bought one of her fundraising t-shirts and will be proudly wearing it around town.

Picture (above) is just an excuse to flash my boobs at you all! Hope Yvonne appreciates the trouble I went to to fish the garment out of the dirty laundry basket for the fashion shoot. (You can work out for yourselves why the writing is back to front, okay?)

Anyway, now BlueMoutain Arts have donated 5,000 copies of a poetry book called This Valentine's Day, I Promise You All My Love to help her raise money for her surgery.

Yvonne is selling it for just RM10 and you can drop by her place in Subang Jaya to pick up a copy before Valentine's Day. For an extra RM3, she will mail it to you.

You can e-mail Yvonne at yvonnefmn@gmail.com for further details.

She gets money for her fund, you get a valentine's gift ... and the warm fuzzies come free. Sorted!

Love Among the Bookshelves

I was tickled by an article I read in the Malay Mail yesterday:

Librarians across Belgium are putting aside their reading glasses for arrows as they play Cupid. Using candles and romance to lure single readers to the library, they hope it will become the next trend in dating.

Dubbing it 'bib-dating' in Dutch - literally, library dating - they hope to draw more people to books by appealing to their hearts - while giving singles a new place to find love.

"Basically it's speed-dating, but in a new setting - with books," said librarian Eric Van der Straeten.

He and fellow librarian Danny Theuwis are hoping their idea will blow the dust off stereotypes of libraries as stuffy and suffocating.

Theuwis experimented with the dating idea three years ago, combining 14 single bookworms - most between 18 and 35 years old - with novels.

"I got some flowers for the tables, got some candles and gave those who came a glass of red wine," Theuwis said.

The informal setting and two people huddling to discuss their favorite books was all that was needed to break the ice and let relationships blossom, he said.

The idea of speed dating (aka bib dating!) with books has apparently taken off in the UK too in both libraries and bookshops.

Wouldn't it be fun to try it out here?

Books for Your True Love

Stumped as to what to buy your true love for Valentine's Day? How about a book?

Starmag reviewers share their choices in today's issue and there are some fun ideas. My recommendations are Daisy Goodwin’s delightful Essential Poems (to Fall in Love with) and Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture (taste a little sample here).

What would you have chosen?

Commonwealth Champs!

I'll never make a litblogger with street cred at this rate! The regional winners of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize were announced days ago and I was clearly sleeping on the job.

I'll just cut to the chase. Our Tash has done us proud yet again with a win in the Best First Book category for the South East Asia and South Pacific region. (Australian Writer Kate Grenville won for the best book overall with The Secret River)

Zadie Smith won Best Book Prize for the Eurasia region for On Beauty while Donna Daley-Clarke won the Best First Book Award for Lazy Eye. (I've just noticed incidentally, that Daley-Clarke is yet another UEA grad. But of course, creative writing courses don't help anyone, do they?)

The overall winner will be announced March 14th in Melbourne.

Dropping Keys

The small man

Builds cages for everyone

He

Knows.

While the sage,

Who has to duck his head

When the moon is low,

Keeps dropping keys all night long

For the

Beautiful

Rowdy

Prisoners.

Hafiz

The Role of the Reviewer

I don't think that a writing community can really grow strong without the feedback reviews provide, and I feel that too few books get reviewed here in Malaysia where the newspapers give very little space to them. Books by local writers continually slip through the net, and the public don't even get to hear about most of the titles from overseas that they might be interested in. (The bookshops fight their own corners, but still ...)

Local fantasy writer and environmentalist Glenda Larke (whom I wrote about some time back) talks about the role of the reviewer, and her own feelings about being reviewed:

... a good review should do one major thing: it should give a reader who hasn’t read the work an idea whether he would like it or not (or alternatively give a reader who has read it something more to think about).

It is not enough to retell the story, obviously. And it is certainly not enough to criticise the work – favourably or otherwise – without saying, coherently, why. There are three kinds of reviews which particularly bug me: the one that is dismissive from the start, e.g. the snide reviewer given a science fiction book to review by a newspaper editor when he loathes the genre, and who then has fun ridiculing it for being science fiction; secondly, the reviewer who attacks the author rather than the work, e.g. on his or her politics; and thirdly the reviewer who slams (or praises) a work but never gives a thoughtful reason.

As an author, I look upon all reviews as a chance for me to learn. What worked, at least as far as this particular reviewer is concerned? What didn’t? And why? If the reviewer can tell me any of that, I am pathetically grateful.

I'm usually on the other side of the equation, reviewing writers. Just hope I get it right.

Will the Real World Book Day Please Stand Up?

MPH's Renee Koh seemed very amused yesterday, when I told her that British Council had plans to celebrate World Book Day on March 2nd. She told me that the book chain would be celebrating the event on April 23rd.

Seeing my obvious bewilderment, she explained:

"There's actually TWO World Book Days. The British World Book Day is in March and the UNESCO one is in April. MPH celebrates the event in collaboration with the Spanish embassy because World Book Day actually began in Spain."

Now why do the Brits (and Irish) have to be different?

Anyway, two days to celebrate books in KL can't be bad!

My Bookshelves

So many books, so little time. My to-be-read shelf ...

Why are my novels in alphabetical order, when my handbag is a disaster zone?

Warning: Reading is Bad for You!

Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sound-scapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. . . .

Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. . . .

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. . . .

This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one.

And to think we've been advocating reading for so long! How could we have been so muddle-headed and mistaken?

Relax booklovers! The extract from Steven Berlin Johnson's book
Everything Bad is Good for You above is intended as an "imagined rendition of what some pompous, self-satisfied gamer would say about books had he never actually sat down and read one." His book argues the case that all those elements of popular culture (e.g video games, television) that are generally assumed to be bad for us are in fact making us smarter.

Now if you were taken in by the extract, you're not alone. When this piece appeared in a New York Times review, Johnson received "innumerable confused responses" from readers unclear on the idea of satire. One wonders if they've been playing too many computer games!

When a Story Bites You on the Bum

So I'm having lunch with an editor friend one day and I tell him the story. The ins and outs of it. The complexities of it.

When I stop, he prompts "And then?"

"That's it."

"And then?"

"There is no 'and then'. That's all I know."

"And then?"

I begin to get angry. Isn't the guy listening?

"Look" I say "I've told you everything that happened. "

He sits back in his chair and considers me.

"Sure, he says, that's the end of the real life stuff but you're a fiction writer so you can keep going past this point."

"I could but I don't write in that genre. I'm into the serious stuff the lit fic. I'm not a thriller writer. why couldn't this story go away and bite Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown or John Le Carre on the leg. They could do it justice. not me."



Some times there's a story that won't go away.

you try to ignore it
but it keeps on yapping and yapping
so you push it away

then it comes and nips you on the ankle
and you say 'go away'
and throw it a stick
"i'll think about it" but you never do

but then it comes back
and bites you on the bum
so in the end you have to get nasty with it

i don't know how you end
i have no interest
i don't write in that genre
i'm into literary fiction
heavyweight stuff
go bite dan brown or john le carre
they'd get it right
go find an investigative journalistic
who claims moral high ground

bu no, the story wants my lap
my fingers on the computer

A Clutch of Bogus Memoirs

I'm writing a piece about truth and the memoir and if you haven't already been bored to death by the Oprah/Frey story, you might like to read the original expose piece, A Million Little Lies, on the Smoking Gun website.

(If you decide that this whole issue is being taken way too seriously, please do go read the very funny spoof by Kenneth J. Harvey on the Times website!)

Anyway - I decided to see if I could find other memoirs which have pulled the wool over the eyes of readers (and publishers) and found, surprise surprise, that Frey is certainly not the first nor the worst offender.

First there's the case of Nasdijj. Purportedly of Navajo descent, Nasdijj wrote an ode to his adopted son who died of fetal alchohol syndrome. The piece, published in Esquire magazine was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and won him a contract for a full-length memoir. He went on to write two more volumes of memoir about his lifetime of suffering.

Except that Nasdijj was no more Native American than my left elbow, and his stories were largely lifted from accounts by other writers. The LA Times blew the whistle and outed Nasdijj as Tim Barrus a white-writer of gay erotica.

Then there's Binjamin Wilkomirski. His prize-winning memoir Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, was hailed as a classic and earned him comparisons to Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi and Anne Frank.

Except that he never was the holocaust survivor he claimed to be.

Author Daniel Ganzfried researched the case and discovered that legal documents and school records contradict the author's claims. Wilkomirski was outed in an article in Swiss publication, Weltwoche in 1998, and revealed to be a Swiss protestant called Bruno Grosjean. Unlike Barrus though, he appeared to be genuinely convinced of the truth of his story.

Another memoir fraud was unmasked in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald with the aid of Jordanian journalist and woman's rights activist Rana Husseini .

In her memoir Forbidden Love, Norma Khouri told the "true" story of the murder of a young Jordanian woman by her father because she dared to date a Christian man . The book was a great hit and sold more than 250,000 globally. In Australia, where the author has been granted asylum, it was voted one of the country's 100 favorite books of all time.

Her story was exposed as a fraud and as the Lebanese Times reports:

The scandal was a setback for advocates of women's rights in Jordan and provided a disturbing case study of how lies and distortions can masquerade as "fact" in Western discussions of the Arab world and Islam.

and the book was withdrawn from sale.

Publishers beware!

From Page to Screen

Seeing the film disturbed me. I felt that, just as the ancient Egyptians had removed a corpse's brain through the nostril with a slender hook before mummification, the cast and crew of this film, from the director down, had gotten into my mind and pulled out images.

... I was not prepared for the emotional hammering I got when I saw it. The characters roared back into my mind, larger and stronger than they had ever been.

... I realised that I, as a writer, was having the rarest film trip: my story was not mangled but enlarged into huge and gripping imagery that rattled minds and squeezed hearts.

Annie Proulx talks about how her story Brokeback Mountain moved from page to filmscreen and pays director Ang Lee the ultimate accolade.

When is a Writer Like a Lava Lamp?

There is an awkward period in the lives of clothes, furniture and writers, when they become something more than dated but something less than a piece of history. We call things that have reached this state ‘unfashionable’, and usually throw such stuff away without thinking any more about it ...

writes Colin Burrow in the London Review of Books, describing novelist Anthony Burgess as:

.... a 1960s sideboard of a writer ...

Tastes change. Authors fall horribly out of fashion. Never noticed it when I was younger, but I've realised that many of the writers I read back then are no longer talked about on literary pages, no longer to be found in the bookshops, not read by posers on the tube, not studied on courses. Burgess, John Fowles, William Golding and perhaps D.H. Lawrence don't seem to be enjoying too much popularity at the moment, although all are held in great respect. (Who would you say is missing from the list?)

An obituary creates a brief flurry of attention. A controversial biography revives interest for a while among the literatti if not the general public.

The Hollywoodisation of your life works best, though it seems you have to be as loopy as a carousel (ala Iris or Sylvia) if you want to achieve big-screen immortality.

But books which still have something to say to future generations will eventually be rediscovered. And that in the end is the acid-test of a classic.

A Novel in a Year

Here's something good - and for free!

Novelist Louise Doughty shares her secrets about the craft in the Telegraph and invites readers to share their thoughts and some writerly solidarity on a message board. The series is now in it's fifth week, but the past articles are archived on the site ... and it's all good stuff. Today Doughty talks about passion being the beginner writer's greatest asset:

It's disastrous for anyone's art when they stop being hungry.

Great First Lines

Saras said that she'd once been told on a creative writing course that the first line of a story should make you spill your coffee. Whilst not actually wanting to get my books any more messed up with food and drink than they already are, I have to agree that a whole lot of promise has to be coiled up in those first few words.

A sort of meme thing about best first lines seems to be being passed around among litbloggers : Edward Champion (whom I found via this post on the subject by Bud Parr) seems to be the guy who kicked off the challenge in his search for:

... an opening sentence so utterly irresistible, something that is so unquestionably curious and so absolutely tantalizing that you, as a reader, simply must read the whole thing!

And I, of course, am only too happy to pass the challenge on to you!

I think my favourite has to be the opening of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock and remember the pleasure with which I settled down to read it:

Hale knew they meant to murder him before he had been in Brighton three hours.

The opening line of marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is another classic:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

And then there's the audacity of Burgess in Earthly Powers :

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

I love too the way that Katherine Mansfield begins some of her short stories as if she's picking up the threads of an earlier conversation, so that you feel invited into a confidence, which is a pretty neat trick, if you think about it. The Garden Party for example begins:

And after all the weather was ideal.

Etgar Keret's short short stories have irresistible first lines and this I think is a big part of the joy of reading him:

That night when the daemon came to take away his talent, he didn't whine or argue or put up a fuss. (From One Last story and That's It)

In Hell, they put me in a cauldron of boiling water. (From Katzenstein)

In June, after the plague of frogs, people began leaving the valley in droves. (From Plague of the Firstborn)

Dad wouldn't buy me a Bart Simpson doll. (Breaking the Pig)

If you want to waste some serious time here's a fun literary quiz about first lines, try this. (I scored 44 out of 66 which I don't think is too bad since most of it was guesswork!) And if you want even more, the American Book Review lists 100 Best First Lines from Novels here.

Bud Parr points out, this pondering on favourite first lines is more than a little dangerous:

I find myself thinking about the great books I've read, thumbing through them, trying to resist dropping everything to re-read them. Should I pop open a bottle of wine?

In my case I'm suddenly overcome with a terrible sadness for books once owned but lost along the way. Gaps in my collection that need to be filled.

Poetry and Healing

I was intrigued by Christina Patterson's proposition in the Independent the other day that poetry might be the new prozac.

The article brought together several areas that I'm interested in. Poetry of course. Then the link between depressive illness and creativity, and the use of creative writing as therapy.

Patterson argues that whilst poetry is increasingly being heralded as a panacea for many ills including depression, it doesn't actually seem to have helped mentally-ill poets like Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, or Sylvia Plath.

But here I think that here she's got her argument back to front: surely the desire to write poetry is often a symptom of manic-depressive illness, as sufferers tend to delight in language play (punning, rhyming, repetition, torrents of words) and have a sense of divine inspiration. (Patterson might note that Lowell was saved in the end, not by poetry, but by lithium.)

But there is no doubt that writing poetry is good for the health! Patterson cites a joint study between the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Department of Health which suggests that writing poetry boosted levels of immunoglobin A (i.e. the antibody that helps you fend off illness). Write poetry and you won't fall sick so often, is the bottom line.

I decided to google up the other studies she mentions and found much interesting stuff along the way:

Dr Robin Philipp, an occupational physician at the Bristol Royal Infirmary studied the therapeutic properties of poetry writing over several years and found that writing poetry can lift depression in nearly three-quarters of cases:

The study, found 70 per cent of sufferers felt better writing poems and eight per cent improved so much they came off anti-depressants. ... Researchers believe writing poetry forces people to confront their emotions, an essential process in overcoming mental torment. ... Poetry helped them articulate disordered thoughts.

There's plenty of other poetry-in-healthcare projects listed on the Poetry Society website if you want to read further.

The Poetry in the Waiting Room Project is an interesting initiative based on the premise that reading poetry is good for your health. Small poetry pamplets are supplied to doctors' waiting rooms and readers are encouraged to keep them. As Patterson points out, it is difficult to substantiate the health benefits from such an approach. But I think that even without the health benefits, getting poetry into the hands of the population at large is no bad thing and could lead to an addiction! (Never mind the patients, this initiative just might be good for poetry!)

I do agree with Patterson's conclusion that poetry for healing is not the same thing as poetry for art. But perhaps in rare cases the two things could overlap? ...

Related posts:

Touched with Fire
Obituary for Egolf
Creative Writing as Therapy