Sunday, March 25, 2007

Eight Pages of Booknews!

Wah! The Readsmonthly supplement in StarMag has doubled in size this month. What a great Sunday treat for the book addicted! (Next month we demand 12 pages.)

There's a story by Daphne Lee about a remarkable young man called Gerald Chuah who wrote a book about his favourite actor and films when he was feeling down and depressed in his early '20's. In the Eye of the Tiger: Survival Principles from Sylvester Stallone's Life and Films has finally been self-published by Chuah to coincide with the release of Rocky Balboa, the sixth film in the Rocky series.

The article tells how Chuah managed to pass the manuscript to Stallone when he was in Singapore, and how Jackie Stallone (Sylvester's mum) supported the project, even appearing at the launch with Chua. And now famous motivational speaker and author Bob Proctor has offered to publish the book internationally.

But Tan Siow Chin reviews the book in the supplement but seems decidedly underwhelmed by it. And while I'm so glad that Chuah has the courage to believe in his dreams, I'm horrified to think that anyone would put out a self-published book which isn't properly proofread, let alone carefully edited.

Among the other reviews: Dina Zaman's I Am Muslim is reviewed by Farish Noor, Amirul B. Ruslan reviews Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski (and whilst I don't think the book sounds like my cup of tea, am impressed with the 17 year old reviewer! Keep writing, kid!); Ooi Si Min reviews No Dram of Mercy - Sybil Kathigesu's memoir detailing how she gave medical aid to both civilians and members of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army; and (surprise surprise!) Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil talks about her reading, reveals herself to be a Hanif Kureishi fan (me too!) and reviews very nicely Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb. My dear friend Kaykay seems now to be writing under his real name as Krishna Kumar, and reviews Hannibal Rising.

And there's much much more!

*(The book is also included in Faces of Courage which was until recently a "restricted" book).

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

the point is, hentai is kind of cool. take note.

Anonymous said...

sharon dear, good to c u the other night. must have longggerrrrr catch-up session soon.

btw, nst has an interesting little article on small bookshops today.

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Sunday/LearningCurve/20070324140433/Article/index_html

bibliobibuli said...

anon - have i missed something??? nothing in this post relates to hentai. and each of us to out own tastes.

marisa - lovely to see you too. thanks for the tip. i read the nst today but never look in learning curve so missed that. will go back and take a look.

Josette said...

Hi Sharon, thanks for commenting my blog.

I was very thrilled to see so many pages in today's Reads Monthly too! Yes, we really should ask for more pages in future. And if only they had this Reads Monthly thing twice a month! Well, it would not be called Reads Monthly then. =)

I really applaud The Star for making the effort to inculcate the reading habit among Malaysians. They are definitely doing a fantastic job!

Lydia Teh said...

Sharon, lots of goodies in Starmag today. Hey, that anon made that same comment in Xeus's blog. Wonder what s/he's up to...

Anonymous said...

Not this anon... I think he misposted... probably got both comment windows up and entered into the wrong one :D

Amirul B Ruslan said...

Thank you for the kind words regarding my review. I hope it's the first of many.

-ABR [http://amirulb.vox.com]

KayKay said...

Dear Sharon, would have loved to keep the KayKay monicker but the Star editor isn't too fond of bylines that stray too far from your actual name! Thanks for the support girl!

bibliobibuli said...

josette - thanks. let's hope thios continues

amirul - great. it makes me very happy to see all these very talented very young (to an oldie like me anyway!) writers coming up. just keep writing.

anonymous - i wrote nothing about hentai anywhere ...

kaykay - so now you are outed!

Anonymous said...

No.. I meant the comment window from the other blog :D

Anonymous said...

Sylvester reminds me of American Author Clifton Lambreth who just published Ford and the American Dream!