Read Singapore!

So how do you build a nation of readers?

It seems to me that Singapore is so much more proactive than Malaysia, where much lip-service is paid to the importance of reading, but little actually happens in the end after everyone has done their hand-wringing bit about the two pages a year are supposed to read. (A myth that gets perpetuated ad-nauseam.)

I was interested to read on Channelnewsasia's website about a great project, now in its second year, called READ! Singapore. Its mission:

... to promote a culture of reading among Singaporeans ... (and) an opportunity to rediscover the joys of reading, by creating a common topic of discussion and conversation amongst the people.

The National Library Board organises a variety of activities and issues downloadable kits for folks wishing to start their own reading groups, which are apparently:

... popping up at the most unlikely places, even among hairstylists and taxi drivers.

This year eight books reflecting the theme Looking In, Looking Out have been chosen for discussion. Two of the books are in English (The Kite Runner, which I'd say is an excellent choice, and Tuesdays with Morrie), two are in Malay, two in Chinese and two in Tamil - so there's something for every language group. (Not to mention the political correctness factor!) The books were selected on the basis of their appeal for readers of different races and ages, and their ability to move readers emotionally. The books also had to be affordable, easy to obtain and easy to read.

More about the project and pictures of the launch on the Rambling Librarian's blog.

Related Post:

Get KL Reading? (27/1/06)

Anyone for Coffee Table Books?

Do you buy "coffee table books" (those big glossy, photo-filled tomes that cost a bomb) or have strong feelings about them?

Don't tell me, tell Eternal Wanderer who needs folks to interview for an article he's writing on the subject. More here.

Taking Snapshots

My friends Aneeta Sundararaj, Saradha Narayanan and A. Jessie Michael have just published a collection of short fiction together: Snapshots by is published by Oak, and available to buy here.

Biggest congrats for having the guts, gumption and gusto to get your project off the ground! I've not read it yet, but Lotus Reads gives a glowing account of it here.

It's gratifying to see that the creative writing workshop which was held at the KL Litfest a couple of years ago was the starting point for the collaboration. Craig Cormick and Satendra Nandan from the University of Canberra's Creative Writing programme ran afternoon sessions for keen writers and wannabe's at the Australian High Commission*. Craig encouraged the writers and edited the final selection.

Good luck now with getting the books sold!!

(*Okay, a touch of jealousy here ... I organised the workshops but couldn't attend because everything else was going on at the same time! Sob!)

Shaken and Stirred and Octogenarian

Thought for the day :

In the real world ... James Bond would now be in his eighties.

(What fun to write an adventure for an octogenarian 007!)

Frances Stonor Saunders reviews The Man Who Saved Britain by Simon Winder in Telegraph.

Riotous Writers

Amit Chaudari's poem, The Writers is just brilliant. Read it in the Observer.

Bet you didn't know your craft was so dangerous!

Dengue?

Oh dear. The "flu" most assuredly it isn't. (Despite my arrogant declaration the other day.) My doctor suspects dengue. I've reached the same conclusion. I've had it twice before (haemorrhagic the second time) and nursed my husband through it last year. The only reason it deceived me this time is that the fever isn't spectacularly high. But the body aches are severe, and I have no energy at all. Spent the weekend on an excellent painkiller which had me floating over rooftops and feeling totally at one with the cosmos, and this morning will go get a bloodtest done.

So will be back to blogging soon as I feel better.

And if not, I bequeath my library to the nation.

Of Daggy Sheep and Colonial Chaos

Ron and Eric, being much more on the ball than me, blogged days ago about Roger McDonald's winning Australia's premier prize for fiction: The Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Mc Donald's novel: The Ballad of Desmond Kale is set in early colonial Australia and about the attempts to bread sheep that will 'magically' produce fine wool. The book blurb promises a brilliant vision of colonial chaos.

I feel I have a vested interest in it already. A more dynamic branch of my family tree, the Shearers, emigrated to Australia and introduced the first merino sheep. And if you don't believe me, you can ask my Uncle Bill and my Canadian Cousin, Glen, who have spent years researching our collective history!

Anyway, there's plenty of excellent Australian fiction being written, but not a great deal seems to find it's way in to the bookshops here unless it gets picked up by an international publishing house or wins a prestigious award. Has anyone seen Kate Grenville's Commonwealth Prize Winning The Secret River in the bookshops here?

Ron and Dean? I'm promoting you to my official Antipodean correspondents and would love to hear your best recent Aussie reads. (You might as well do something useful if you're going to hang out here!)

You can read more about McDonald's win in the Australian.

Your Creative Side

A sort of postscript to my last couple of posts.

If you feel madly creative and are at a lose end, you might like to try out one of the following projects:

create a storyboard for a one-minute trailer of the book of your choice. (If you can't draw - like me - you can just describe it. If you want to go one better, make the video!)

or:

tell us about the "not book" you'd like to see on the market (or better still, draw the cover).

I will put the best efforts up on this blog so that you will gain eternal fame and fortune. And okay, I will rummage out a prize for the entries the readers like best.

(Doncha just love blogging where you don't have to ask an editor's permission to do these crazy things?)

Not George

The book on the left is an absolute must-read: George W. finally coming clean and admitting the massive cock-up he made in invading Iraq.

Naw. It's a tease of course. It's one of four free e-cards of "not-books" on Abebooks website to celebrate ten years of online second-hand bookselling linking 13,500 booksellers across the globe (including, you will be overjoyed to learn, our own Payless books).

Abebooks is a dangerous place for a bookaholic. It's fun to browse and every little itch for a particular title can be satisfied, and relatively cheaply. Every book I've ordered (and that's a distressing number) has turned up quickly and has fitted exactly the description on the website. It's nice too to sometimes find a bookmark inside with a description of the bookshop it came from: I like books with histories.

I'm slowly replacing books I've lost over the years, or which I read but didn't own.

VidLit?

Need an attention grabbing way to publicise your book? It seems that just as film trailers create interest in the latest movies, book trailers on the internet are the latest ploy in fiction marketing. According toElise Soukup in Newsweek :

Publishers and authors are increasingly commissioning trailers for books—some with dramatizations by actors that could easily be mistaken for movie trailers—that can be viewed on their Web sites and even aired on TV and in movie theaters.

The concept was initially pioneered in 2002 by Circle of Seven Productions (which cleverly trademarked the name "book trailers" so everyone else has to refer to them as "book videos").

The first mainstream publisher to have jumped on the bandwagon appears to be HarperCollins Canada. (Check out the video for Gautam Malkani's novel Londonstani and see if it tempts you to rush out and buy the book!)

The Book Standard recently announced the winners of a contest in which film students created videos for three new Bantam Dell titles. (I found the trailer for Stuart: A Life Backwards horrendously Pythonesque, though.)

Anyway, think the idea will catch on??

I Opened the Door and In Flew Enza

Sorry. That was one of my dad's lame jokes - a batty book title like Falling Body by Eileen Dover, or Heap in the Road by G.G. Donnit. It isn't funny. The only link with anything bookish I can come up with at present and being sick obviously brings out the infantile and trivial side of my nature. (Never very deeply hidden, I'm afraid.)

Frankly, you aren't going to get very much sense out of me this morning: I feel like a toxic waste dump and have been awake with a high temperature and severe aches since 3a.m.. I wrote several blog entries and book reviews and a book proposal in my head, but don't seem to be able to remember much about them this morning.

Was wondering why my energy levels have been horribly sagging over the past few days and put it down to my advanced age and the slow creep of decrepitude. (Ha ha!)

Yesterday I bumped into Marisa, my editor for Chrome when I was to buying emergency rations for my six starving cats (and in the interests of New Zealand rainforests purchased tins of possum and vegetable). I owe Marisa articles. I owe everybody articles! I almost wept on sweet, kind Marisa's shoulder, - everything seems so much of an effort. This in a week where I'd vowed I'd definitely get back into being a gym bunny and stepboard diva.

I'm actually relieved it's flu*. I don't mind it, actually. I will sit in my favourite chair and read without guilt. (Have finally got round to Shirley Lim's Sister Swing and am enjoying it.) I will eat blueberries for breakfast and my home-made wild mushroom soup for lunch.

And I will fortify myself with panadol and teach my creative writing class tonight. After a teacher-training career haranging my students for taking time off teaching for mild nuisances like period pains (the girls, that is, I didn't let the boys try that one on) I feel obliged to suffer stoicly myself. And my participants will be doing all the hard work anyway: I can just sit back and enjoy their stories!

*A pendantic note on Malaysian English. Malaysian speakers tend to refer to any sniffle as "flu", and to influenza as "a fever". There is a difference!

Life's a Beach

There's nothing as nice as a list of reading suggestions, and this being the season of the summer hols in Britain, the Guardian asked some of the biggest names in the literary firmament (including Monica Ali, Sarah Waters, David Lodge, Orhan Pamuk) what books they would be packing with their buckets and spades.

Picture: The perfect bibliochair for beach reading. From I Want One of Those. (And I really do!)

Update:

Readers of the Guardian seem to feel the list is pretentiou s twaddle.

Elsewhere Things

Some things to look at elsewhere.

If I could give an award for blogging above and far far beyond the call of duty, I'd have to give it to Lainie for her amazing coverage (with photos and even soundclips, for heaven's sake!) of the Panic Buttons - Culture and Crisis event at Actor's Studio. Now I feel I didn't miss a thing!

Aneeta picked up on my post on the struggles of Singaporean writer O Thiam Chin and inteviewed him for her How to Tell a Great Story website.

And local fantasy writer Glenda Larke has some great advice on writing a novel on her blog Tropic Temper. For the too-lazy-to-browse, here's Part 1 and Part 2.

I met up for coffee and a chat with Glenda before she left for Sabah. (Really sad that no-one from the Malay Mail was around to write a feature about spotting us in Bangsar Shopping Centre. I've always wanted to be featured in that column!).

We were talking about the way beginning writers see getting their first work published as the holy grail, and believe that all will be plain sailing once they get there. Glenda was telling me about her own experiences of the publishing world - a rollercoaster of triumphs and crushing disappointments which you can read about on her blog.

My thanks to all these bloggers for putting up great content.

The Poetry of Prejudice

The sky at dusk.

Flocks of birds flying home to roost? Streams of bats emerging from caves and roof spaces and tree tops to forage for food?

Which would you prefer the picture showed?

Examine your own prejudices with the D.H. Lawrence poem I've posted for discussion on the Puisy-Poesy blog.

High as Kites

Ugggh! It can't be after 10 a.m. already, can it? I don't know what Sham put in the (delicious!) chocolate mousse last night, but I've only just crawled out of bed feeling like yesterday's left-overs reheated.

(This after two different people told me yesterday "I don't know how you get up so early to post on your blog, day after day"! Sorry to sully my unblemished record. )

Maybe it was brain-burn-out brought on by all the intellectual discussion generated by our reading group meeting last night when Fiction&Friends met to discuss our book of the month at Sham's house - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

For those of you who don't know the book, it is the story of two motherless boys (Amir, the son of a wealthy buisness man in Kabul, and Hassan who is the son of their Hazara servant ) who grow up as inseperable friends. Then an act of violence, which Amir makes no attempt to stop, shatters the friendship. Amir's cowardice continues to haunts him, even after he has fled to America, married, and built a successful career as a writer. He is finally given the opportunity to confront the demons of his past in a perilous journey into war-torn Afganistan.

Extremely readable, the book got a firm thumbs up from everyone. Most had had an emotional journey through it, and used up plenty of tissues. (Though not cynical old me.) We loved the setting, which showed us prewar Kabul and gave us cultural insights into a country most of us know only from news bulletins.

(If you've enjoyed the book, you might like to read Khaled Hosseini's fascinating account of his real-life journey back to Kabul to find his father's house after the book was written, only to find how much art imitiates life.)

The dramatic "sin and redemption" theme, the almost stock-villain Aseef, and the obvious contrivance of the plot twists were explained neatly by my reading group buddies. "It's just like a Hindi movie," they all agreed, and being Bollywood fans loved the book even more for that.

Krishna provided the biggest laugh of the evening when he started talking about the events in "the third-half of the book" and couldn't see why we were all falling about. He should have been born blonde.

More Banned Books

Malaysiakini reported on Friday that eighteen more books have been banned in Malaysia by the Internal Security Ministry under the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984. (Thanks, Animah, for telling me.) The story can also be read on the Bernama news agency's website.

The 18 banned books (with links when I could find them) :

1. The Bargaining for Israel: In the Shadow of Armageddon (Mona Johulan, Bridge-Logos Publishers, United States (USA).
   
2. Islam (Mathew S Gordon, Oxford University Press (OUP))
3. Lifting the Veil (Trudie Crawford, Apple of Gold, United States)
   
4. A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (Bobby S Sayyid, Zed Books Ltd, UK)
   
5. Islam Revealed: A Christian Arab's View of Islam (Anis Shorrosh, Thomas Nelson Publishers, USA)
   
6. What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (John L Esposito, OUP)
   
7. Mini Skirts Mothers & Muslims (Christine Mallouhi)
   
8. The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Karen Armstrong, Harper Collins, UK)*
   
9. Kundalini For Beginners (Ravindra Kumar, Health Harmony, B Jain Publishers (P) Ltd, India)
   
10. Sacred Books of the East (Epiphanius Wilson, J-Jeiley Asian Educational Services, India)
    
11. Sharing Your Faith with A Muslim (Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, Bethany House Publishers, USA)
    
12. Cults, World Religions and The Occult (Kenneth Boa, Chariot Victor Publishings, UK)
    
13. Petua dan Doa Pendinding, Penawar, Penyembuh Penyakit (Awang Mohd Yahya, Unsie Publisher, Kuala Lumpur)
    
14. Hakikat & Hikmah 7 Hari Dalam Seminggu (Abu Nashr Al-Hamdanly, Pustaka Ilmi, Batu Caves, Selangor)
    
15. Pemuda Bani Tamim Perintis Jalan Imam Mahdi (Abu Muhammad, Penerbit Giliran Timor)
    
16. Kontroversi Hukum Hudud (Kassim Ahmad, Forum Iqra Berhad, Penang)
    
17. Risalah No 2 Dilema Umat Islam Antara Hadis dan Quran (Kassim Ahmad, Forum Iqra Berhad, Penang)
    
18. Siri 7 Amalan-Amalan Bid'ah Pada Bulan Syaban (Ustaz Rasul bin Dahri, Percetakan Putrajaya Sdn Bhd)

The only comment on the banning I could find was on Aiseyman's blog.

There is still no word from the government on why eleven titles (many of them books on Christianity) were banned last year, despite repeated attempts by the DAP to open up the debate. No doubt it will be the same story now.

Generating Income from Fiction

You can never short change a reader

editor Eric Forbes (below) reminded his audience at MPH Writers' Circle yesterday, urging them to write with passion and authority if they wanted to submit their work for publication.

Most of the manuscripts submitted to him are, he said, "mediocre", and his years in the job have taught him "how little good writing there is in Malaysia". He talked about what editors look for in a manuscript and how to prepare one for submission, and gave some sterling advice about writing in general. (Eric being one of the best read blokes I know, of course sprinkled in lots of literary examples.)


Off The Edge columnist and author Kam Raslan (below) was a thoroughly engaging speaker, and began with words of encouragement:

Writing is doable because people are in the business of publishing, and there are people out there wanting to buy books ...

He went on to underline many of the points made by Eric, particularly that the best way in to a writing career for a new writer is often with a proven track record of articles and columns in the press. (A show of hands showed that surprisingly few of the want-to-be authors of the Writer's Circle had had anything published at all!) I liked Kam's quote (he said it was from John Wayne in an old film):

You're not a writer until sombody tells you you are!

Local newspapers and magazines, he said, are pretty desperate for quality articles (which is why so much substandard stuff gets published here). Writing regular features and columns to a deadline teaches you good discipline, and the knowledge that people will read you means that you're forced to turn out decent copy. Feedback from readers is invaluable, and your columns can probably be compiled later in book form. (Kam did this with with Amir Muhammad and Sheryll Stothard in Generations: A Collection of Malaysian Contemporary Ideas described by a critic as " a smorgasboard of ideas and opinions on Nineties Malaysia".)

I've mentioned before that Kam's novel is soon to be published by Marshall Cavendish in Singapore. Kam is realistic about book sales, realising that there is a very small market for fiction in English in Malaysia and Singapore, and a writer gets only 10-15% of the cover price.

But he's canny! For some months now, episodes from the novel have been appearing as columns in Off The Edge, purportedly reminiscences written by a certain Dato' Abdul Hamid bin Dato' Sidek!

Not only is this of course a great way to create interest in his work, but it also has meant that Kam has already started earning an income from his fiction. He also sees his novel as being a sales tool for the stage play he plans to base on it, which will be a way of generating more income ("and I don't have to split it!")

He also urged writers to "try to tap into the zeitgeist". He gave the example of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch which gave Hornby a ready market of Arsenal supporters, football fans, and folks interested in reading about surviving relationships.


There were plenty of questions from an audience hungry for still more information, and then there was all the informal networking that goes on. It was great to see so many friends there, both Writers' Circle regulars, and new faces to the meetings.

I also met novelist Shoba Mano (below: author of The Prodigal Child) for the first time. Shoba will be speaking at the next Writers' Circle Meeting, I understand.

Had a lovely lunch in Delicious with Kam, Eric, and Lydia Teh. All of us comparing our bookaholic symptoms. (Shan't divulge the shameful truths that came out!)

Related Posts:

Index: On the Local Writing Scene

Hardtalking Seth

It was so good yesterday to catch Vikram Seth interviewed on the BBC's Hardtalk Extra. Seth took time out from the Hay-on-Wye literary festival to talk to Gavin Esler about his memoir/biography Two Lives and the extraordinary lives that inspired it: those of his Uncle Shanti, (a dentist who had studied in Berlin lost his right arm in combat) and his Aunty Henny (a German Jew who lost her mother and sister to the death camps).

Seth also described how supportive his parents were when he decided to quit his job with the Economist and move home to work on his novel A Suitable Boy. He planned it to be just 200-300 pages long when he began it! In the end his parents patiently put up with him for the seven years it took him to complete the book, which grew to a marathon 1,400 pages (even after cuts). An obsession to find out what happened to the characters (many of whom were based on members of his own family) compelled him to complete it. (He describes himself as lazy!) He thanked his parents for their support by buying his mum books for life, and his dad whisky for life!

Seth came across as a really nice guy ... intelligent, warm and funny. As I've said of other favourite writers, the kind of guy you'd like to spend time down the pub with.

Bibliolbibuli's ultimate accolade!

Related Post:

A Suitable Heavyweight (27/8/05)

Sneaking in the Fiction Agenda!

The MPH Writer's Circle goes ahead tomorrow in the Booker Room at MPH 1 Utama at 11a.m. I think Oon Yeoh and I got our wires crossed a bit. I remember him telling me that I was organising it and the topic was Fiction (and yes, I checked back to original information I had) but then I got an e-mail from MPH saying the topic was 'Non-Fiction'. Mysterious!

My not-so-secret agenda anyway is to sneak in more discussion of writing fiction which tends to get downplayed by the "Yes, but it doesn't make money, just write a book about how to become an instant billionaire" argument. We need good fiction writers here for sure. You just may not make a fortune from your efforts!

Anyway, it still looks like it will be a very interesting and useful session. Eric Forbes, an Editor with MPH Publishing Sdn Bhd will talk about what publishers are looking for and what to do (or NOT do!) when submitting your manuscripts.

And I've managed to persuade Kam Raslan into coming along to talk about the writing and publication of his first novel with Marshall Cavendish in Singapore.

Confession

This confession on Francesca Beard's blog made me smile:

Some writers love writing. Each morning is a positive hand-clapping, chest-soaring pleasure, their imagination a veritable magic box just waiting to be flung open - let's see what's inside! I hate those people.

I know what's inside my head. A few sordid but common-place misdeeds. Fear of change. Random bits of general and 'personal' information. I make things up, cobbled from stuff I notice in the vicinity and things I've stolen from others. I don't have writer's block. I'm just lazy and cowardly.

The truth for me is, writing is full of fear, fear of failure and fear of the unknown and fear that maybe, the world is crazy and senseless. But if you held a gun to my head, how my fingers would fly over the keys, tipppetty tappetty wooh!

Don't you just hate how someone can write about hating writing - so eloquently!

Shakespeare and Monkey Win Awards

The Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction was last night carried off, not by Alan Bennet's Untold Stories, as many had expected, but by a biography partly inspired by the film Shakespeare in Love. American academic James Shapiro's 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare was described by Peter Kemp in his Sunday Times review as :

... the product of marathon scholarship, inspired insight, narrative flair, astute surmise and searching intelligence ... (it) brings Shakespeare’s outer and inner worlds, and the interplay between them, alive with such thrilling immediacy

Meanwhile, poet Nick Laird has won the Betty Trask Award for his "lad-lit novel" Utterly Monkey.

A reviewer in the Independent describes it as:

'a novel that combines lad-lit staples – car chases, pub crawls and beautiful women – with grown-up savoir faire.'

Masterful Toibin Wins IMPAC

It was pretty much on the cards that Irish writer Colm Toibin would take the IMPAC Dublin Prize for The Master, which received more library nominations than any other book. And yesterday, he did.

The novel is a portrayal of 19th-century novelist and critic Henry James, which the judges praised for its "crisp, modulated writing". They said:

[The book's] preoccupations are truth and the elusiveness of intimacy, and from such preoccupations emerge this patient, beautiful exposure of loss and the price of the pursuit of perfection.

Related Post:

Award Fatigue (9/4/06)

Lydia's Title

Lydia needs a title for her new book, and offers an autographed copy. Find out more here.

Smuggling Swans

I think China would be a healthier and stronger place if the truth were open to scrutiny. The Chinese have a right to know what happened to their country and I believe that Chinese society is ready to take this on because facing the truth can’t be as hard as living under him (Mao) ...

Jon Halliday, the historian husband of Jung Chang said to me when I interviewed the couple last year.

Now Chang's best selling biography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China which tells the story of three generations of women (her grandmother, her mother, and herself) under Mao's regime has finally been translated into Chinese. Chang hopes that, despite the book being banned, copies will find their way into mainland China. Full story in the Guardian.

Become a Fully Certified Censor

This from The Borneo Bulletin via Brudirect.com via The Literary Saloon:

In conjunction with the Reading Month, the Language and Literature Bureau (of Brunei) has organised several workshops to benefit the public.

One of them is a workshop on censorship, which commenced yesterday at the Lecture Hall of the Language and Literature Bureau. It is being organised by the Activities Committee.

The workshop, which will run until June 14, will discuss the proper methods of censoring an article, material or any related matter without altering the content of the subject.

Speakers from the Language and Literature Bureau, Islamic Dakwah Centre and Internal Security Department have been invited to present methods and guidelines at the workshop.

There will also be visits to the Package Receiving Section of the Postal Department at Old Airport in Berakas, as well as the Censors and Publication Control Department of the Islamic Dakwah Centre.

Upon completion of the course, the participants comprising personnel from government departments will each receive a certificate.

How sweet!

Illustration nicked from www.artlex.com

Related Posts:

Index: On Censorship

MPH Search for Young Malaysian Writers

MPH has launched its annualcompetition for young writers. Click on picture to read details.

Dan Brown's Trial by Magazine

Thought the plagiarism charges against Dan Brown were now over and done with? Now, it seems, he faces trial by magazine.

In the July issue of Vanity Fair, Seth Mnookin raises new questions about the originality of The Da Vinci Code and takes up the cause of Lewis Purdue who lost a court case against Brown in the US courts earlier this year. Purdue claims that Brown's book was a rip-off of his own novel, Daughter of God. (I hadn't realised before this that the publisher Random house was suing Purdue, and not the other way around.)

According to The Age, The Vanity Fair article lists several points of similarity between the two books, among them:

... the key to the mystery is hidden in artworks, there are Swiss bank accounts, and there is a shadowy group in the Catholic Church. In Perdue's book, an art collector is murdered to protect the secret. In Brown's book, a curator is murdered to keep the secret.

When Ed Condren, an English professor at UCLA, performed a textual analysis of Perdue's work and The Da Vinci Code for Vanity Fair, he concluded:

I didn't think there was any question the one borrowed from the other. Daughter of God and The Da Vinci Code employ identical narrative strategies. These novels share the same background story, not only in the personages and events they refer to, but more important, in the identical ways they distort these historical events to support their nearly identical stories.

John Olsson, the director of Britain's Forensic Linguistics Institute, says of the book:

This is the most blatant example of in-your-face plagiarism I've ever seen. It just goes on and on. There are literally hundreds of parallels.

And it also looks as if Brown lifted an exact passage from Leonardo's Lost Robot, written by academic and robotic expert, Mark Rosheim.

There's also the suggestion that Brown's wife, Blythe, who did much of her husband's research may have sent Purdue mysterious e-mails under the name Ahamedd Saaddodeen. Quite what these e-mails were about I haven't been able to find out online.

But as they say, the plot thickens.

*Picture nicked from Florence Photo Gallery.

Related Posts:

Index: Rogues Gallery of Fakers and Plagiarisers

Novels to Inspire Writers

You learn about writing by reading, of course. But some novels address writerly issues: I thought this list drawn up by The British Council's Literature Matters team was fun and might help you with your own magnum opus:

Jill Dawson – Wild Boy
Beg, borrow or steal a plot. Plenty of great novels are based on real events and Wild Boy is the perfect example of how to take a blurry historical event and turn it into fascinating and compulsive fiction. Based around the first documented case of autism, it explores early attitudes and medical approaches to the condition.

Marian Keyes – The Other Side of the Story
For an insight into handling the bitchy, cut throat and not-for-the-faint-hearted world of publishing and literary agents, pick up a copy of the latest from one of Ireland’s sparkiest novelists. As well as exploring issues around guilt, infidelity and depression, not to mention sex and shopping, Marian Keyes' latest will guide you through the many and varied machinations involved with publishing a book.

Toby Litt – Finding Myself
Another witty insight into the world of writers as the hideous Victoria About sets up a literary hideaway in deepest, darkest Suffolk, intent upon creating a Big Brother type setting in which to spy on her companions who she intends to use as inspiration for her next novel. Possibly not the best way to endear yourselves with your friends and loved ones, but if you’ve hit a wall with your plot development, it might just offer a way forward.

Iris Murdoch – The Book & the Brotherhood
Now this is the way to go. Appear intellectual and clever to a group of your friends and they might just offer to sponsor you to write a book that they think is going to change the world. However, you’d better come up with the goods, or they might turn nasty as the protagonist of Murdoch’s novel found out to his cost. Still, nice work if you can get it.

Reshma S. Rhia – Something Black in the Lentil Soup
This comical and irreverent account of poetic rivalry should help to prepare anyone shortlisted for a literary prize. Featuring a host of sneering and sniping writers, hanger-onners and scholarly big cheeses, if it wasn’t for the money, the fame and the possible British Council trips overseas, it may even make the more tender-hearted among you run for the hills at the mere mention of the words Man Booker/Forward/Orange.

Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle
If anything is likely to terrify a writer out of their writer’s block, I Capture the Castle is it. This tender story of a young woman’s coming of age is also an entertaining and inventive account of what happens when her father, who has achieved some literary fame with his first novel, is blocked and slowly but surely brings his family down into his pit of despondency with him. Their inventive cure for his literary lethargy may just be worth a try should things get desperate.

Barbara Trapido – Frankie & Stankie
Write about what you know is the long-standing piece of advice offered to fledgling writers. Well, it took Barbara Trapido a long time before she followed that advice, but her 6th novel neatly captures her South African childhood and is an absorbing piece of personal and political history.

Barbara Vine – The Blood Doctor
If biography is your bag, then the latest from Barbara Vine may offer some inspiration. Wading through the complex and mysterious family secrets of a Victorian doctor, historian and biographer Lord Nanther uncovers a number of unsavoury details that bring into question the role and the integrity of the biographer, conflicting loyalties and what we can ever really know about another person.

Also well worth reading on this site is novelist David Pearce's take on taught creative writing courses (he's less than impressed) and advice on alternative paths to publication.

The Bangsar Baru Tatler

The social page of the Bibliobibuli blog recording the happenings of yesterday.

Met up with Dreamer Idiot (below) for a cup of tea at Bangsar Village. How strange to have a friend and share a blog (Puisi-Poesy) with someone you've never met in real life. We had tons of bookish and poetic things to talk about, and then I took him over to Silverfish where he acquired even more books (note the Kino bag in hand). It was a pity he could not stay for Lakshmi Pamuntjak's reading, but next time he is in in town we must organise something poetic and fun.

If Dreamer Idiot was shy-shy all you have to do is point a camera in Pang's direction (below) and he's posing. He wants you to appreciate the words on the back of his t-shirt.


Thai artist-activist Chumpon Apisuk brought along Kumjing:

The lady even has her own passport. Discover why here.


But the star of the show was of course Lakshmi (snapped later at Devi's Corner) who read from a couple of stories in The Diary of RS: Musings on Art which I enjoyed very much. I bought a copy of Ellipsis, her collection of poetry.

There was a q&a after the reading and the conversation strayed onto the fact that Indonesian writers have been feeling very isolated over the past 10-15 years, and are little recognised in the West because of the language barrier. Few writers write in English (Lakshmi and Richard Oh being among the exceptions) and translations are limited. It is surprisingly difficult to find copies of Indonesian books in Malaysia, even though the two countries share a common language.

Exploding Bodies

"Uh, how do you make a man, you know, go ka-boom?” The university chemistry professor sounded puzzled over the phone.

“What do you mean by . . . ka-boom?”

“You know . . . make him blow up.”

“You mean like spontaneous combustion?”

“No, it’s got to be a chemical equation. Like when you mix nitromethane and ammonia, and it goes ka-boom.”

The professor’s voice was suspicious. “Who did you say you were again?”

Local writer, Xeus (aka Lynette Kwan) talks about the challenge of researching her collection of short fiction, Dark City in the Star and how it lead her to find out about toxicology, prostitution, the inner workings of prisons and exploding bodies. I can see she had great fun!

Lynette has just started a blog.

Dumpees

Books I dumped halfway and don't feel bad about dumping.

(I am wearing bullet-proof underwear so no mortar fire, okay?)

The Alchemist Paul Coelho - all that predigested wisdom got right up my nose.

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway. I tried to read this many years ago. Just didn't feel that the writr wanted me in his book. Later though, I did enjoy The Old Man and the Sea.

Thus Spake Zarathustra - Niezsche - A boyfriend insisted I read it. (He thought my brain needed improving.) When I saw how much Niezsche distrusts and dislikes women, I decided that since he was wrong about half the human race, he couldn't be trusted on much else. (Should have dumped the boyfriend too.)

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - I did read it through once, but got totally stuck the second time, despite liking episodes in it very much. I sat back at a reading group meeting and listened to everyone else praising it and wondering what was wrong with me. It's a great book undoubtedly, but not one I connect with.

Soul Mountain- Gao Xingjian - another reading group choice. Only 2 out of 10 of us managed to get past the opening chapters. I did like some episodes, but overall found it incredibly slow, miserable, meandering and plotless. To add insult to injury, towards the end of the book the guy actually has a good laugh about his book being unreadable! If anyone has any doubt that the Nobel is awarded on a political rather than a literary agenda, this clinches it.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I was supposed to read this as a set book at school. I hated the petty living room world of the novel. (I was into adventure, science fiction, historical romance.) I refused to go past the first couple of chapters. My English teacher (wise woman!) just said that if I couldn't get on with it, I should leave it, and gave me another novel to read instead. A couple of years later I came back to the book and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Crash by J.G. Ballard. Stomach turning.

Ulysses - James Joyce. God knows I've tried, and I love parts of it, especially Molly Blooms soliloquy. But can I read it from beginning to end? Nope. Not even after sixteen million attempts.

Books I struggled through but wish I'd dumped:

The Famished Road - Ben Okri - At the time this won the Booker there was a joke that someone had put a prize voucher in selected copies of the book, but no-one claimed them. Although I very much liked the Nigerian setting, the novel seemed to me a rip-off of Amos Tutola's classic The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the bush of Ghosts (well worth reading) from which it borrows its surrealism and cast of ghosts ... but it's another horrid, overlong, plotless meander.

Great Apes - Will Self. This book has one of the most exhilarating first chapters I've ever read - I actually went back to reread it twice before moving on to chapter 2. The basic premise of the book is fascinating: the central character is transformed intio a chimpanzee and so is everyone else around him. The first part of the book was a joy, but the joke wears progressively thinner as the book goes on. It would have made a great novella, but the pressure to make it a book length thing destroyed it.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. Another reading group read. (See how risky the whole business is?) I felt like I'd overdosed on french fries and jelly beans.

Your turn! What are your dumpees?

Postscript

Just thought of one more unreadable to add which will probably have the rest of you screaming. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. I dug up this review I'd written on Amazon:

This was such a disappointing read after all the hype. I'm giving up halfway through, and passing my copy to someone who may appreciate it more. The first part of the book was so hackneyed that I found it laughable - I was not at all convinced by the love story. I got very annoyed by Faulk's omniscient narration, the viewpoint constantly flitting from person to person. As other reviewers here have pointed out, Faulks has a tendency to "tell rather than show", which deprives the reader of much of the pleasure of reading. I also found that I couldn't care less about the characters, particularly Steven, who remains vague and shadowy. That I stuck with the book so long is testimony to the fact that Faulks recreates the scenes in the trenches so well. Both my grandfathers fought in WW1 and I am so hungry to know more about what they experienced. But maybe I'd be beter off reading a good history book.

Poetically Yours

More poems to read and discuss over at the Puisi-Poesy blog. Dreamer Idiot has put up Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish, and Sham has just added Sleep Stealer by Rabindranath Tagore. Your comments are very much valued, even if you just say what you like, dislike about the poems ...

I find that when I come across a new poem, I need time to reread it, digest it, live with it a bit before I feel ready to talk about it.

A Grim Present, and Uncertain Future?

Depressing reading or not, thanks Ron for this link to Grumpy Old Bookman's prognostications about what the future holds for book retailing and the novel.

There's a tremendous amount in the post (more a treatise than a blog post!) and I think I'll be picking up some of the points (especially about growing new writers, print-on-demand and the future of the bookshop) to toss around myself in future posts.

GOB predicts nothing short of the death of the novel, as reading loses ground to other more accessible media. And in the shorter term, he predicts the growth of print-on-demand booths replacing the traditional selling of books.

Michael Allen has also very generously made available a free e-book On The Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile which demonstrates "that success for writers and publishers is governed by randomness (chance) to a far greater extent than is generally realised" and to outline some survival strategies for book-trade participants. Essential reading.

Another Shot

If you don't win one literary prize, hopefully you get a shot at another! I'm happy for Ian McEwan whose Saturday has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize after losing out so badly in the Booker stakes.

And while Sarah Walters lost out to Zadie Smith in the Orange stakes, I'm sure we'll be seeing The Night Watch on the list for other awards later in the year. (It will eligible because it was only published this year, unlike the other Orange shortlisted books.) It is that good, believe me. John Ezard in the Guardian reckons it has a "formidable chance" of taking the Booker or the Whitbread.

I'd have hated to be a judge for either the Orange or the Booker with so many strong titles to choose from. And I am still perplexed by Robert McCrum's article on the novel losing its way. I am one happy reader and will let you know if that changes.

Related Posts

His Saturday - My Sunday (4/9/05)
The James Tait Black Shortlist Announced (3/5/06)

Selamat Hari Kunzru!

The joke's been going round. The Visitor may have started it. The Machinist was slow on the uptake.

But today I'm celebrating Hari Kunzru because my inteview with him (a much fuller version than the one that was in the Star) is up on the Kakiseni website. Enjoy!

Nipples and Nirpal

Spotted in Times, BSC, autographed copies of Tourism by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal - one of this year's hottest debut novels in the UK.

Says Bookmunch about the novel:

Tourism is not a book that is big on plot or structure, but what it is expert in is the accurate and often biting portrayal of people in London’s expanding middle classes and the racial tensions that often underlie a rather harmonious perception of this group of intellectuals and professionals. Looking beyond the nipple that is on the front cover, the blurb reads that the main protagonist Puppy has left the immigrant neighbourhood of Southall to mix with the metropolitan elite of London society. Puppy is tormented with nymphomaniac desires, only ever concentrating upon his ‘quest for pussy’ and is plagued with regret over disappointing his Indian matriarch mother. He is hopelessly infatuated with the enigmatic Sarupa, but instead settles for her best friend. He cannot find a job, and instead procrastinates by smoking weed and sleeping around. I refuse to give away the shock ending and leave it to your imagination, but I was certainly left very satisfied by this little treasure of a book.

Now that sounds like a book worth reading. However, I think the cover of the book is a disgrace. There's a very visible nipple peeking through that very sheer white blouse. Where on earth were the censors with their black pens? I demand a big blodge of felt pen to cover it!

But what I really want to know is how come the guy (presumably enroute from the Sydney Writer's Festival) just snuck in and signed his name for Times without the rest of us getting to know? Would have loved to have grabbed him for an interview! Especially after reading the low-down-and-dirty about him revealed by his wife, columnist Liz Jones:

... he binge eats, he nearly squashes the cats in bed, he lies around all day, he spends all her money, he emits cabbagey smells, he spent their wedding night with his mates ...

Mindless gossip? No, it is important to know such details about writers. If we emulate them, the good luck will rub off on us too and we'll be published by a big-name UK publisher.

I'm off to brush my tongue.

Zadie for Orange

This year's Orange prize has been won by Zadie Smith for her novel On Beauty which also made the 2005 Booker shortlist.

I've now read 3 of the shortlisted novels (most recently Sarah Walters The Night Watch, which is still sitting in my head and I will tell you about anon), but Zadie is still on my to-be-read shelf, an enjoyable experience anticipated. (After a couple of have-to-reads.)

Picture (nicked from the Guardian) shows Zadie standing in front of a portrait of E.M. Forster: her novel is a contemporary reworking of Howard's End.

Rejection

Yes, rejection hurts.

I found this great little film on Ron's blog and dedicate it to all those who did not get their stories into the Silverfish collection.

The Poet and the Bubur Ayam

Indonesian author, Laksmi Pamuntjak, will be at Silverfish Books this Saturday to read from her poetry and short stories.

Lakshmi is an acclaimed journalist and food writer. Her book of poetry, Ellipsis, was chosen as one of the Books of the Year 2005 by The Herald, UK and her book of short fiction The Diary of RS: Musings on Art was published in April.

Sample her writing here ... and please do scroll down and read the little story about the lovers and the bubur ayam - it's a gem!

The event kicks off at 6.30p.m. at Silverfish Books, 67-1 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru. Admission is free and all are welcome but please give Phek Chin/Vasantha a call at 03-22844837 to book a place.

Scary Stuff

The Visitor tells me that the world is going to end tomorrow (06/6/06) so it might be a suitable occasion to write about some chilling reads. (I like to be topical.)

Terence Rafferty in the New York Times ponders the attraction of horror stories in The Thinking Reader's Guide to Fear and goes on to list some of the latest and best supernatural fiction.

Meanwhile, Colm Toibin in the Guardian writes about one of the most chilling stories ever written: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, which was filmed in 1961 as The Innocents (left) and utterly totally terrified me as a child.

Anyway, take comfort: the world can't end tomorrow because they're announcing the winner of the Orange Prize.


Related Posts:

Satanic Synchronicity 29/4/05)
The Comforts of Horror (31/5/06)

The Real David T. K. Wong

Though I may have toasted David T. K. Wong a few months ago for setting up a fellowship that annually funds a South-East Asian writer to do the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, I knew nothing about the man himself.

But then Yang-May Ooi met him at a party and got a chance to find out. Do read.

Respect Books!

For those unclear on the concept ...

(Click to enlarge, then click to enlarge some more ...)




(From Quill April 2005)

Shrink-Wrap the Parents!

Why do so many of the bookshops in Malaysia wrap their stock in plastic, a practice which discourages browsing?

Last week in StarMag, Nurindah Yunos who works in the children's area of one of the largest bookstores in Malaysia highlighted the problems that bookshops face:

I witness many acts of rudeness every single day, especially during the weekends. It wouldn't surprise me if I get a heart attack one day! Many kids step on books, handle them roughly land even tear the pages or steal the free gifts that come with some books. And what do the parents do? Nothing. Sometimes I feel like screaming at them, telling them we are a business entity and not some public library! My favourite response is to go up to the misbehaving child and say loudly: “Hey dear, please handle the book nicely and pass it to me after you are finished with it. And if you damage the book, mummy or daddy will have to pay for it.” When the parents hear the word “pay'“, they always tell their kids to put the books back on the shelves. We have tourists asking us why we wrap all our books. Well, we have no choice. Until our people know how to appreciate books, we will have to keep wrapping them up. Once, my colleague saw a girl tear a page from a magazine. When she asked the girl to pay for it, guess what, the mother argued that her child didn’t do it. When that didn't work, the woman insisted on paying only for the page that her daughter tore. Hello? If I tore your dress, can I just pay for that bit that was torn? Sorry, but I always feel like laughing out loud when people say we Malaysians have good manners and are civilised.

And this week another bookstore employee calling herself Helpless Bookworm took up the theme:

For bookstore staff, weekends and public holidays are a constant headache, no thanks to selfish customers who disrespect books and other people’s property. In short, the whole store becomes a “tsunami-stricken” zone. Books and magazines get strewn everywhere. It is an eyesore to see them on tables and display shelves, or atop rows of books. ... Despite the reminder to “Please ask staff for assistance to unwrap this book/ magazine”, some readers will tear off the plastic covers then stuff them in any available space. Some parents obligingly unwrap books for their children. One mother had the audacity to utter the four-letter word to an employee who advised her not to do so – right in front of her young son. And, to rub salt in a wound, parents let their little “terrors” meddle with buttons, fragile gadgets and playing cards by themselves. No supervision at all. Some adults have been caught switching the price tags of items. There are cases of customers camouflaging an expensive book with the jacket of a lower-priced one. You don’t need rocket science to understand why there are so many missing and damaged pages and items in the store. For instance, audio books with no compact discs. During one stock-check exercise, we found a rotting chicken bone stashed behind some books! There also were books with visible water stains, rendering them a total loss. Having experienced all these, I have no qualms about blaming irresponsible parents for their rude children.

The April 2005 issue of MPH's Quill magazine had photographs of stock ruined by customers (below - click to enlarge):

In the same issue Renee Koh writes about the need to respect books:

Damaged books means losses to bookstores, which in turn translates into even lower margins, and in the end, it is you, the genuine customers who will loose out, whether price-wise or because all the books will be wrapped up...

Customers need a course in book-browsing etiquette, it seems. Or maybe we should just shrink-wrap the errant ones!

Troubaganger Anniversary Show

The Spoils!

My loot from the Pay Less Warehouse sale yesterday. Went with Sham and we had such fun! I hadn't expected there to be so many desirable books - and for next to nothing.

There was such a carnival atmosphere. Everyone shovelling books into huge cardboard cartons with big smiles on their faces. Me piling book after book into Sham's box: "You must read this. And this. And this. And this." And then doing the same thing to all the other people standing around looking at the fiction. Never mind that we hadn't been formally introduced.

Met Raja Ahmad Aminullah, my poet/publisher friend. Thor Kar Hoong of Skoob Books was there with arms full. A very nice young man came up to ask me "Are you Sharon?" Turns out he's one of the silent readers of this blog and enjoys the book recommenations.

I found hardback copies of some of the books I have in tatty paperback and filled in gaps in my library with books by Philip Roth, Barabara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Carol Shields, Ann Patchett and others. 16 lovely books for RM49!!

Free-Falling Fiction

Singaporean writer O Thiam Chim wrote to me a few days back to tell me about the publication of his first collection of short fiction, Free-Falling Man.

Ever interested in the path to publication for local* writers I asked him to tell me something about the background to the book. He told me that he got the idea for the collection whilst doing his B.A. In English language and Literature, but:

... the stories had been germinating in my mind for a while before that, bits and pieces of different stories coming together, gelling and expanding, certain story plots growing clearer and clearer.

He believed in his book so much that he quit his job and spent seven months writing:

... it was a very tough time for me, emotionally and financially. Emotionally, as I was debating inwardly whether I could actually write these stories, and I had to wrestle constantly with negative thoughts about my writer identity and my ability to put down in words the ideas and thoughts in my head. Financially as my savings started to peter out four months after I began this project. I was living day by day on the essentials, stuck in my room, drafting and writing frantically, willing my stories to be completed before I was totally broke.

After completing his first draft, he then went back to full-time work and freelance writing. Then:

Fast forward. In early 06, I took up the manuscript and began to work on these stories again. I think with the passage of time, I began to read my stories anew and see them with different eyes. I knew I had to be brutal with my stories and I did major surgery on them. It was a painful experience, as any writer can testify.

He approached a writer friend for advice on how to get his work into print.

He recommended some local publishers and I sent my manuscript to these publishers. Out of the four or five publishers ... only two responded. One rejected my manuscript based on the taboo subjects I touched on in some of the stories, and the other had stopped publishing local titles and advised me to seek other avenues. ... I was not discouraged but continued to seek for help and advice. The same writer friend, who had published his second book with a small print press in the US, iUniverse, told me about his experience with self-publishing and its advantages and benefits.

The "tipping point" for O was the fact that "iUniverse has already an on-going relationship with major online booksellers like Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Booksamillion" which meant that selling his work would be easier.

The company has several packages to choose from:

... each with its own terms and conditions. I chose the Premier package which comes with initial editing, and a book cover design among other things. It cost about US$699.

But his feelings about the service are mixed. The initial design for the cover was so dreadful, O decided to hire his own designer. And then he found that there were some hidden costs and he actually needed to pay about US$200 more for his proofreading and editing.

His twenty free author copies were sent out to overseas and local reviewers, and when he purchased another batch for sale he discovered it an expensive business, what with shipping costs and the Singaporean taxes.

O says he is now peddling his books from bookshop to bookshop "and it is really hard work".

I think what this story underlines is that local writers who want to self-publish need an awful lot of stamina to get their books out there.

I do hope that after all his struggles, the book does well for O.

*Perleeease do not give me anymore of that "Singapore is not local" crap. Basically, we share the same publishing and distribution fishtank, so let's be nice to each other.

Corpses

Meanwhile, over on the Puisi-Poesy blog, Leon has posted something quite ghoulish ...

I am going to carry David Harsent's poem Snapshot (1) round with me today to ponder some more before I post a comment ...

An Easy Way In

There are readers who want to read seriously but need an easy way in, in the form of a list of books that are well-written and enjoyable, but not too lengthy or difficult.

The best list of books of this kind I've come across is the list of Easy Reads on the British Council's EnCompass Literature website. It includes reviews of fiction and poetry, as well as links to related websites. Many of the titles on the list are available at the British Council Library. (I put them into the last shopping list I prepared.)

Here's a little taster picked at random:

Douglas Adams The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
William Boyd Fascination
Anita Brookner Hotel du Lac
Mavis Cheek Janice Gentle Gets Sexy
Carol Anne Duffy The World's Wife
Heln Fielding Brigit Jones Diary
Anne Fine All Bones and Lies
Esther Freud Hideous Kinky
Susan Hill A Bit of Singing and Dancing and Other Stories
Nick Hornby About a Boy
Alexander McCall Smith The Number One Ladies Detective Agency
Tony Parsons Man and Wife
Meera Syal Life Isn't all Ha Ha Hee Hee
Fay Weldon Watching You, Watching Me

See? Nothing dumbed down or pulpy about this list. Good stuff, just easier good stuff.

Readership needs to be grown. We all know the school system here doesn't do enough to make this happen, largely because of a lack of funding for school libraries, partly because of a lack of willpower. Many, if not most school-leavers have not learned to fall in love with books, and if there isn't a reading culture in Malaysia, someone has to create it!

I actually think that the bookshops should play a more active role in promoting titles of this kind. (Instead of, she says cynically, giving so much space to Dan Brown, patron saint of marginal readers.)

And talking of well-written popular fiction, Nick Hornby, a writer I enjoy very much, talks about his novel A Long Way Down at The Age website.

Related Post:

Literature for the Sub-Literate (4/3/06)