Persistence

Getting published by foreign-based major players is a big challenge for Malaysian writers because unlike countries such as India, we do not have many prominent writers whose works have been published or translated for an international audience. ... You need to be persistent and willing to accept criticisms. Once you find a willing publisher, you must put your ego aside and be ready to go out and convince bookstores to carry your book. You really cannot just leave it to the publisher’s marketing department or your agent. ... In an ideal world, if your book is good, it will sell itself but this isn’t an ideal world — no one will come knocking unless you tell them what you have.

Tan Twan Eng in The Star's Metro North dispenses advice, and talks about his love for Penang and his next novel, set in Cameron Highlands and due to be published next year.

Calling Wannabe Playwrights

Here's an interesting variation on the NaNoWriMo put-yourself-under-appalling-pressure-and- just-squeeze-a-ridiculous-number-words-out scenario :

Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April.

As part of a donation-funded nonprofit, Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; there are also no valuable prizes awarded or "best" scripts singled out. Every writer who completes the goal of 100 pages is victorious and awe-inspiring and will receive a handsome Script Frenzy Winner's Certificate and web icon proclaiming this fact. Even those who fall short of the word goal will be applauded for making a heroic attempt. Really, you have nothing to lose—except that nagging feeling that there's a script inside you that may never get out.

Who: You and everyone you know. No experience required. What: 100 pages of original scripted material in 30 days. (Screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, and graphic novels are all welcome.) When: April 1 - 30. Every year. Mark your calendars.

Where: Online and in person (if you want!). Hang out in the forums, join your fellow participants at write-ins, and make friends by adding writing buddies online. Why: Because you have a story to tell. Because you want a creative challenge. Because you’ll be disappointed if you missed out on the adventure. Because you need to make time for you.

How: Sign up. Tell everyone that you are in the Frenzy. Clear your calendar. (US participants: Get your taxes done now!) Start some wrist exercises. Have fun!

The 5 Basic Rules of Script Frenzy

1) To be crowned an official Script Frenzy winner, you must write a script (or multiple scripts) of at least 100 total pages and verify this tally on ScriptFrenzy.org.
2) You may write individually or with a partner. Writing teams will have a 100-page total goal for their co-written script or scripts.
3) Script writing may begin no earlier than 12:00:01 AM on April 1 and must cease no later than 11:59:59 PM on April 30, local time.
4) You may write screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, comic book and graphic novel scripts, adaptations of novels, or any other type of script your heart desires.
5) You must, at some point, have ridiculous amounts of fun. Still unclear? Check out the website at Scriptfrenzy.org

Literary Berlin

More and more, the city is expanding on its historic role as an incubator of books. Award winners and anonymous scribblers, locals and expatriates, everyone in Berlin has a book in him and everyone with a book in him seems to have roosted in Berlin. ... The teeming masses of authors are supported by a superstructure of foundations and grants and ubiquitous antiquariat (used-book stores) seemingly on every corner, not to mention the noble cultural villas, like the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin and the American Academy in Berlin, both on the same lovely lake — the Wannsee — near where the poet Heinrich von Kleist killed himself in 1811 after first shooting the incurably ill Henriette Vogel.

Nicholas Kulish writes about the literary health of Berlin in The New York Times. One can't help but be envious. Foundations ... grants ... used bookshops ... cultural villas ... *sigh*

Rowling and Others Angry Over Piracy

A whole bunch of authors, among them JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett, are up in arms over the fact that their books appear on "social publishing site" Scribd.com, and can be read for free. Readers can also download the text and edit it as they see fit.

The text was probably scanned in an entered manually, because the titles involved have not yet appeared as legitimate e-books. (Though the message here is plain - e-books need to be made available much more quickly.)

The company says it is prepared to immediately remove copyrighted material when they receive notice from the copyright holder, but says that it relies on the community policing itself.

Nevertheless, internet piracy is one more thing for authors and publishers to worry about, and is a problem that isn't going to go away. No longer does copyright actually protect you before your material is ripped off.

Some publishers though, are using Srcibd to post first chapters of books they are promoting.

Saying Thank You

Blogging about books doesn't make money - but one of the perks is that bookshops/publishers/distributors/authors are very generous in giving me copies.

I've been a bit lazy blogging about donated books in the past, but am going to try to turn over a new leaf - and if I haven't time, energy or brain space to actually review them - at least I can feature them and let you know what's out there. Follow the links to find out more about each title.

The stack above came from distributor Pansing who are incredibly kind to me! Topping the pile is Mario Vargos Llosa's Bad Girl in which one of the masters of postmodernism takes possession of the plot of Flaubert's Madam Bovary, and makes it entirely his own. (Reviewed here by The New York Times).

Several of the books are historical novels. There's Ken Follet's historical epic World Without End, a sequel to his best-seller Pillars of the Earth, which takes place in the same cathedral city. The China Lover by Ian Burma is set in the movie industry in Shanghai during World War II and in postwar Tokyo. While The Lost Army by Valerio Massimo Manfredi is another historical novel - this time exploring the darker side of the Greek conquest. Narrated by a female camp follower the book tells of the katàbasis (return) of the Greek mercenaries of Xenophon's famed 'Anabasis'.

The two books that interest me most are Crime, in which Irvine Welsh tackles the topic of paedophile rings. It is hailed as a return to form for the author and Neal Stephenson's Anathem, shortlisted for this year's Hugo awards. The latter is set in the far-future on an Earth-like planet, Arbre, where scientists, philosophers and mathematicians—a religious order unto themselves—have been cloistered behind concent (convent) walls. It's a huge read - almost 1,000 pages, but looks fascinating. (I'm debating with myself - do I have the stamina to make this climb?)

At the bottom of the pile is a book I really will treasure - William Shakespeare on the Art of Love : The Illustrated Edition of The Most Beautiful Love Passages in Shakespeare's Plays and Poetry. It is also a stunning edition, bound in green silk, printed on quality paper and filled with photos and reproductions of paintings. I'd say that it would be the perfect Valentine's gift, but then you'd have to wait till next year to buy it for your sweetheart.


If there's anyone out there who would like to write a review for their own or this blog on any of these books, do let me know!

The Neglect of Literature from Sarawak

There's a very interesting academic article about the neglect of Malaysian literature in English from Sarawak up on Guat's blog. (Part 1 of the article here.) It's written by Patrick Yeoh who teaches at Unimas. Perhaps the most interesting reason Yeoh gives is :

... the apparent lack of a felt need by Sarawakian writers of literature in English to be linked to mainstream Malaysian literature in English in any way: they write what they know, feel and are concerned about – and these have no conscious Malaysian-ness.

It really is true that we hear very little - even here about - what is being written and publsihed in East Malaysia, and it would be really nice to make some links - even virtual ones.

The Shape of a Novel

Structure is such an underestimated aspect of writing that people don't even mean the same thing when they talk about it. Sometimes the word seems almost synonymous with plot, but there's a distinction. At its simplest, plot is what happens; structure is the order in which it happens, and the timing. Whether you're dealing with a thriller or a densely literary novel, structure is designed to make the story engrossing, convincing and unputdownable. "When you read a novel that isn't quite grabbing you," says James Scott Bell, author of Plot & Structure, "the reason is probably structure." There can be more than one structure in a story. In www.criticalreading.com, Dan Kurland talks about linear progression, with its building of suspense, unfolding of character, and resolution. But there is another structure: the patterns of actions and interrelationship of characters. You could also add the pattern of themes and imagery, and an aesthetic whole where everything clicks into place.

Jane Sullivan of The Age attends a fiction masterclass and ponders the structure of novels.

The three-act structure she mentions works extremely well for most fiction and for films as well. Those of us who were lucky enough to attend Jeremy Sheldon's workshop on plot when he unveiled his version of this, called "The Sheldon Curve" - honed from his experience of working with movie industry and with authors. If it seemed a bit formulaic and had the rebels inside us wanting to rip up the handouts, he more than adequately supported his theory with reference to numerous films and novels - even invoking Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence. Just to play devil's advocate, we threw novels at him (no, not literally!) which we felt didn't fit the neat framework so obviously - my examples was Underworld by Don De Lillo, which I feel doesn't really have a plot as such.

But that doesn't mean of course that it lacks structure. As Sullivan says :

... structure is all about grabbing your readers: teasing and bamboozling them a little, perhaps, but luring them inwards and onwards.

and de Lillo does that very well indeed.

Shih-Li Talks with Herself!

I won’t over-dramatise about how hard it was to write. It wasn’t like some artist suffering for their art sort of thing! Yeah, time was the only struggle I had because of work commitments. But I enjoyed the whole process. ... It’s like having a really long two-way conversation with yourself!

Ripples author Shih-Li Kow is interviewed by Intan Maizura Ahmad Kamal in The New Sunday Times today.

Second-Hand

For second-hand bookshops have a special aura. It's not just the book - it's what you might find scrawled in a margin, or hidden between the pages; it's the name you can almost read on a flyleaf. It's the book still in good condition but that has clearly been well-loved, that you can imagine has already been passed from hand to hand before it reached you, that you might love too. It's not a first edition, no, but something that's been hard to find until you stopped, by chance, into this second-hand bookshop, and were suddenly glad that someone had been generous enough to send a beloved book out into the world again.

Erica Wagner on the magic of second-hand books in The Times.

Missed Author

Caribbean-American author and creative writing teacher Brenda Flannagan is interviewed in StarMag by Martin Vengadesan. She visited schools in Terengganu to talk to children :

about literature, history and living joyfully

and was apparently in KL to do a reading. I'm sad I didn't know about that ...

Totalitarian Reads Part 2

Self-nominated minute-taker KayKay put a lovely write up of our book club discussion of Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 on our e-group, and I hope I don't mind if I share it with all of you. (He also reviewed the novel for The Star.) :

As I sit and write this, buoyed by generous lashings of wine and sated with multiple helpings of string hoppers with delicious "sodhi" and chicken curry, I keep thinking if a thriller is an apt choice for a book club discussion. After all, as a genre, it is severely restrictive in the sense of what it needs to accomplish. It MUST thrill, pure and simple. Fancy wordplay, fleshed out characters and atmospherics, those tropes favoured for lengthy dissertations, are in a thriller, purely secondary to it's ability to keep the readers hooked to a plot that, out of necessity, must be breathlessly exciting, pacy and preferably twisty with multiple reversals before a riveting denouement that ties up all loose ends.

Looking at my jottings of the various opinions put forth in our as usual febrile discussions of Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, one common factor that stands out is that it's not an especially well written book, making it's inclusion in a Booker Long-List that much more puzzling. As writers like James Lee Burke, John Connolly and Thomas Harris ably demonstrate, good writing needn't be concomitant to an engaging plot. So why this book over other far superior ones made the Booker long list cut?

As Sham (in her book club swan song) pointed out in a summation reeking of contempt, lots of things happen in this book, and she longed for it to happen in a better written one. Ditto Uma and Jessica who felt the writing was contrived.

As someone who devours thrillers (I average one every fortnight) it now comes to a point where unless a skilled hand is behind the telling, I can usually see a twist coming a mile off, as I did here, echoed by Diana (our new member) who didn't find it engrossing in the least and found the ending a little too pat.

Sharon took issue with the multiple points of view on display in this book while Alina felt the violence very dark and gratuitous (although I must interject here and say this is pretty much de rigueur for most thrillers being written today) and the book's tone hollow while finding Smith's depiction of an oppressive regime anything but compelling.

In addition to being a lovely host, thanks to Alison for pointing out the "gay" sub-text in Child 44 (Vasily's obsession with Leo, persecution of homosexuals etc), something my all but dormant "Gay"dar would never have picked up (I frequently pause in typing this to slap my forehead).

Taj and Alice probably encapsulate my thoughts best in finding the book a thoroughly entertaining read with nary a wasted word. It has a gruesome beginning, engrossing middle and a twisty end with doors left wide open for a sequel.

I pride myself on soundbites, but it's Sharon who delivered the best one for the night; after the constipation of overtly literate books, this au fait airport thriller debut from Tom Rob Smith is a perfect laxative:-)

I am actually missing Child 44 now I've finished it. It was such a lovely easy romp of a read - just what I need at the moment - and the dramatic tension never flags. It should emphatically not have been Booker longlisted even, because it really isn't literary fiction. (Though if it hadn't been nominated, would I have read it?)

But I did very much enjoy it as a thriller, and was even able to forgive the improbable workings of the plot. It would be the ideal read for a very long flight, and I expect to see a really good film made from it soon. (KayKay says Ridley Scott is on the case.)

Here's Tim Rob Smith reading from and talking about the book :



Incidentally, the next read the group has decided on (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) also takes place - at least partly, under a very oppressive regime, in a climate of fear - this time in The Dominican Republic so there is still no escaping this accidental theme that seems to have wrapped itself around us.

March Readings

Admission free and everyone very welcome. Please pass on the invitation to anyone else you think might be interested.

I shall have some free books to give away too!

"Readings" is the birth-child of Bernice Chauly, lovingly fostered by Sharon Bakar.

For enquiries contact Sharon 017-2644956 (please note new number), sharonbakar@yahoo.com

Donald On BFM

Another podcast from BFM 89.9! This is time it's Donald Kee of MPH Bookstores talking about the company's commitment to improving the country's readership.

Totalitarian Reads Part 1

Although we don't intend this to happen, and although our books are chosen each month by different members, we often find our book club reads seem to somehow fall into themes. 2008 was the year of the dysfunctional family (We Need to Talk About Kevin, Evening is the Whole Day), and 2009 seems to be shaping up to be the year of books set in totalitarian regimes!

Last month we tackled our first graphic novel together, Persepolis by Marjane Satrappi, which got a firm thumbs up from every member of the group. The book is a a coming-of-age story with a difference, a memoir recording what it was like to grow up in Tehran in the 1970's and '80s, and live through the Islamic revolution then through the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war.

Despite the bleakness of the setting, it is though the humanity of the book which wins the reader over. Marjane is a very ordinary kid, though precocious and more than a little rebellious, trying to make sense of what is happening around her. Women are forced into wearing headscarves, thousands are arrested, her own uncle is executed.

Marjane is sent overseas by her parents for her own safety after she gets in trouble at school, but she is lonely and vulnerable in Vienna and the usual growing-up pains that all teenagers endure are greatly exacerbated. At one point she's sleeping rough on the streets, on drugs and contemplating suicide. She decides that it is better to live with her family under an oppressive regime than to endure this sense of dislocation, and returns to Iran. More than this I won't reveal as I really hope that if you haven't read the book, you will.

There were many episodes in the book we all really loved including Marjane's conversations with God, who comes and sits on the end of her bed to chat; her portrait of her grandmother, who sleeps with jasmine flowers crushed into her bra so that she will always smell good; and of course the part where her parents risk arrest at the airport to smuggle in a pop poster for her.

There is a film of the books (The Complete Persepolis is actually both parts of the story) and it won a "Prix du Jury" at the Cannes Film Festival :



Our most recent oppressive regime read was Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 set in Stalin's soviet Union. But since this piece is growing longer, and I'm starving to death as I tap at the keyboard, I think I will move to another post to tell you about that one!

New Classics to Win Back the Blokes

Following the shock-horror-gasp revelation the other day that women are better readers than blokes, and Jean Hannah Edelstein's plea on The Guardian blog, Bookninja is announcing a contest to "remasculate" books in order to repatriate male readers.

You need to change the title and basic plot summary (one sentence, max) of a famous book—and if the book is by a woman, “masculate” her as well. There are bonus points for reinventing the cover (as in the funky remake of Iris Murdoch's The Sea at left.) More inspiration here (though you may never recover from titles like The Ass is Singing by Boris Lessing!)

You can also join the Bookninja group on Facebook and if you want your literary updates intravenously instantaneously, you can subscribe to his feed on Twitter.

Anyway, off you go, and don't paste your great ideas here, go along to George's blog.

For the Love of Books

A couple of days back I was interviewed by Shazmin Shamsuddin on BFM89.9 The Business Station - and how nice, the podcast has appeared online! :

If you want to write - just do it!



Editing Malaysian writers



Book blogging and how it takes over your life! :

Dreaming on the Page

As an editor, I read so many novels featuring achingly dull dream sequences that I was poisoned for years against such books. Believe me, if you've only got three chapters to show off your novel, think twice about wasting them on reheated nocturnal ramblings.

But Stuart Evers at The Guardian Blog has found a few recent novels that have got it right.

My own favourite dream sequences are those in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, particularly Tereza's dream about her lover Tomas' women parading around a swimming pool while he casually shot at them from above. So much is said about her state of mind, and her fears, and the dream itself is hauntingly surreal.

The worst ... well anyone who writes "But it was only a dream" at the end of a story deserves to be ritually disemboweled on the altar of the gods of literature! Did any six words create greater disappointment for a reader?

Anyway - what fictional dreams have stood out for you?

Putting Independent Bookstores on the Map ...

... quite literally!

The Millions offers a "new and improved version" of their fascinating walking tour of New York's independent bookshops. Even if you will never visit the city, you can indulge in an enjoyable bit of bibliotourism from a distance!

(Thanks Grace for sending me the link via Facebook.)

Sylvia Plath's Son Kills Himself

It was very sad to read today that Nicholas Hughes, son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, has committed suicide at the age of 47.

The Guardian reports that he had carved himself out a successful scientific career, but :

... ultimately he could not escape the legacy of being the offspring of one of the most famous and tragic literary relationships of the 20th century.

Sylvia Plath was famously very ill with depression and also died at her own hand. Depression often runs in families, and Sylvia had at least one other close relative who suffered from it (according to Kay Jamison's Touched with Fire). But Judith Flanders in The Guardian quite rightly has a go at those who would sensationalise these deaths, calling them a kind of curse of poetry.

The picture shows Sylvia with baby Nicholas taken from The Daily Mail which has a very good piece.

Nicholas was immortalised in his mother's poetry, including in this poem, Morning Song written just months before she died:

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry

Took its place among the elements.


Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

Confessions of a Serial-Shelver

Are you a slow worm, an avid reader, a double-booker or a serial shelver?

The Observer reveals news of (yet another) study into British reading habits - though somewhat annoyingly doesn't reveal the source of the data. Anyway, these are the findings from a survey of 2,000 readers :

... nearly half of women are avid readers who cannot put a book down once they begin it and who reliably get through a long list of titles in an average year. Men, on the other hand, are much less likely to keep up this sort of pace. Twice as many men as women admitted that they never finish a book.

... Forty-eight per cent of women can be considered to be Page Turners, or avid readers, compared with only 26% of men. Slow Worms are those who spend a long time reading, but who take their books very seriously and always finish them. They can often manage only one or two books a year. This group was made up by 32% of the male respondents and 18% of women.

Serial Shelvers have shelves full of books that have never been opened and are not likely to be: 17% of women and 20% of men fall into this category.

The Double Booker has at least two books on the bedside table. These are the butterfly-minded consumers who start a new book in the middle of another and claim they can easily switch from one to another. The gender divide here disappears completely, with 12% of both men and women in this category.

See yourself on this list? I'm a steady reader, neither slow worm nor avid; a serial shelver of the worst kind; more than a double-booker because I have more than one book on the go at any one time (though only one main I'm focusing on).

How about you?

(If this post appears on the site http://goodpfbooks.com/ it is without my permission.)

Blog Content Theft

It is deeply upsetting when you find that someone is stealing the content from your blog without having asked your permission, and even more upsetting when you know that they are harvesting that content continually using a bot so that they can make money from advertising.

It happened to me before and I managed to resolve it though it wasn't pleasant to have to have a ding-dong match with an Irish bozo who laughed at me for being stupid enough to have a Creative Commons License. (I changed the kind of license.)

Now it's happened again. This is the blog and although I haven't checked very far back, every single post I've put up here has appeared there. Other bloggers from elsewhere are getting ripped off too. And none of their work is being credited to them.

This post will no doubt be swept up and put there too, which is why I'm writing it!!!

I only discovered by accident this time that my posts were appearing elsewhere since his blog is hidden from Technorati. I strongly advise other bloggers to do regular checks by googling keywords from their posts.

Update :

A response from Tushar Mathur ... who says he is not the person stealing from my blog, but a victim too :

Everything Finance said...

Hi Sharon,

This is Tushar Mathur.

The website http:goodpfbooks.com is NOT my site.

A few months ago I was approached by the owner of that site via email asking for a link exchange. I agreed to that.

Now I see that he doesn't even have my link anymore. So I have also removed his link from my blog.

I have also sent him an email about removing your content.

Can I please request you to remove your post about me? Since its not true.

I'm a credible Personal Finance blogger and well respected.

My content gets stolen all the time. But now I have put mechanisms in place so that every post automatically gets my website link and copyright info.
Many big Financial companies contact me to review their products.

Thanks for listening,

Tushar Mathur

March 24, 2009 9:32 PM

Update (25/3/09) :

My content has been taken off the blog, which I'm relieved about. The perp (whoever it is) still continues to scrape posts from other blogs, and I'm sure there will be other unscrupulous people along doing the same.

Nother Update :

The owners of the Book Lovers Guide blog have realised that their work is being scraped by the same person. (Thanks Chet for spotting this.)

Hugo Award nominations

The nominations for this year’s Hugo Award for science fiction have been announced. The award covers several categories, and these are the nominees for best novel :

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi

You can find links to information about each of the books here.

Variety SF has links to the prize-winning short fiction online, so you can enjoy some excellent writing without having to spend on a book!

Malouf's Magic

In almost all writing, you've got to trust that what's getting said gets said before you know what you've said. It's not about knowing what you want to say and then getting it said.

David Malouf, arguably Australia's greatest living writer, turned 75 a couple of days back. He shares his thoughts about writing with Miriam Cosic in The Australian. I particularly liked this :

I want books to unfold as if they were dreams and even to have the logic of dreams ... I deliberately don't plan where the writing is going so that things can happen with the same unpredictability, with the same process of association rather than logical unfolding. That provides something for the reader as well: the reader has something like the same sense of discovery that the writer does. As a writer, discipline for me is to learn more and more how to fall quickly into that state.

Second Novel Syndrome

With Tash launching his second novel and a number of others working on theirs, it's timely to ask whether the second novel harder to write than the first?

Definitely yes.

With the news that The Time Traveller's Wife author Audrey Niffeneger getting a US$5 million deal for her second novel, Luke Leitch looks at the pressure successful authors are under to complete their second novels.

The Times also has a list of authors (including Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, Anna Sewell and Arundhati Roy) who found it so hard to write a second novel ... that it never happened. (I also blogged about this here.)

And there were, of course, the second novels which did nowhere as well as the first.

But then, by way of compensation, there were the second novels which were truly great ... including James Joyce's Ulysses, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Jasper Rees in The Telegraph also writes about the dreaded second novel syndrome. He quotes Stephen Fry's theory about second novel syndrome :

The problem with a second novel is that it takes almost no time to write compared with a first novel. ... If I write my first novel in a month at the age of 23, and my second novel takes me two years, which have I written more quickly? The second of course. ...The first took 23 years, and contains all the experience, pain, stored-up artistry, anger, love, hope, comic invention and despair of that lifetime. The second is an act of professional writing. That is why it is so much more difficult.

But as Malcolm Know writes in The Sydney Morning Herald :

... true SNS can only exist where the first novel has been hugely successful. All writers know that if you haven't had a big bestseller, it's harder to get published next time, no matter what you write; and if you have had a big bestseller, you will be published, no matter what you write. There's a catch both ways.

The difficulties are not just about writing the book, they are also about promoting it. Jan Dalley, literary editor of The Financial Times and a judge of the Encore Award for Second Novels says:

The second novel is well known to be much more difficult ... Even those who have had success with their first novels - sometimes especially those who have - find second novels very hard. Nobody is interested in them any more as brilliant young things. They are now launched on their careers and they've just got to get on with it.

Dally also thinks :

Relative neglect of the second novel is a consequence of the overpraising of first novels, and it's partly because of the cult of the author in our press ... Far more attention is paid to authors than to their work. That is catching serious writers in a bad trap.

Whatever the reasons, the second novel tends not to be an easy ride, so our thoughts are with our friends who attempt this particular high-wire act in the public eye.

Asia House Festival and Tash's UK Launch

Britain will be celebrating its first major literary festival dedicated to Asian writing in May. The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature runs 11-22 May and features over over 25 authors,
highlighting writing from ten Asian countries.

Some of the writers appearing :

Amit Chaudhuri, Sir Mark Tully, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Ziauddin Sardar, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Christina Lamb, Alice Albinia, Kenan Malik, Patrick Cockburn, and BBC journalists Frank Gardner, John Simpson and David Lyon.

There are also some pre-festival events and these include the UK launch of Tash Aw's book Map of the Invisible World on May 7th, where the author will be interviewed by Karim Raslan. If you happen to be there (and I hope to be) let's go give the fellow a big cheer.

Rafil's Guidelines for Children's Book Award

In line with the spirit of the NEP, there must be a minimum 51% bumiputera ownership of the works, and involvement in the creation of the works at all stages, i.e.: conception of idea, authorship and typing. If you are an individual, non-bumiputera writer, you MUST partner 2 (two) bumiputera individuals or companies, incorporate a writing body and register with Melayu.

In the creation process of the work, at least 51% of the woolgathering/writing/typing MUST be done by your bumiputera partners. At the end of the writing project, you must submit a report describing how many words were typed by each author. At least 30% of the complex/big words need to be attributed to the bumiputera writers. e.g., somnambulist, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, etc.

In addition to that, at least 51% of the characters in the work MUST be bumiputera. Special consideration shall be given to stories with bumiputera protagonists.

I was in the midst of sending out the publicity for new Saturday's Readings@Seksan and happened to google Rafil Elyas' name. Totally hilarious piece Melayu's Guidelines for Children's Book Award published last November in The Nut Graph popped up. It wouldn't be satire if there weren't more than a grain of truth sprinkled into it.

If you need more appetite whetting to entice you along next Saturday, here's a song from Rafil's band Panda Head Curry.

Janet Tay on PopTV

Janet Tay talks to Fahmi Fadzil of MPH talks about editing Urban Odysseys :

14 of the Best

The longlist for the Man Booker International prize, awarded every two years to a writer for their contribution to fiction on the world stage, has been announced. The contenders this time round are :

Peter Carey (Australia)

Evan S Connell (USA)

Mahasweta Devi (India)

EL Doctorow (USA)

James Kelman (UK)

Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

Arnošt Lustig (Czech Republic)

Alice Munro (Canada)

VS Naipaul (Trinidad/India)

Joyce Carol Oates (USA)

Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)

Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya)

Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)

Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

Says Chair of Judges Jane Smiley, she and co-judges Amit Chaudhuri and Andrey Kurkov :

... all read books by authors we had never heard of before and they have turned out to be some of the best books we’ve ever read. ... It makes me wonder who else is out there untranslated into English.

Who's your money on this time?

Preeta for Orange!

A big cheer for our Preeta once again, because now she's on the longlist of another of the most prestigious international literary awards - the Orange Prize! (I notice this year the word Broadband seems to have been dropped from the name - just as well really.)

Here's the 20 strong list :

• Debra Adelaide - The Household Guide to Dying
• Gaynor Arnold - Girl in a Blue Dress
• Lissa Evans - Their Finest Hour and a Half
• Bernardine Evaristo - Blonde Roots
• Ellen Feldman - Scottsboro
• Laura Fish - Strange Music
• V.V. Ganeshananthan - Love Marriage
• Allegra Goodman - Intuition
• Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness
• Samantha Hunt - The Invention of Everything Else
• Michelle de Kretser - The Lost Dog
• Deirdre Madden - Molly Fox’s Birthday
• Toni Morrison - A Mercy
• Gina Ochsner - The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight
• Marilynne Robinson - Home
• Preeta Samarasan - Evening is the Whole Day
• Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows
• Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife
• Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans
• Ann Weisgarber - The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

You can find out more about each of these titles on the Orange Prize website.

Okay, the stats : American authors predominate (9/20) ; 6/20 are first novels (including, of course, Preeta's); four authors have been previously longlisted, and two of those reached the shortlist. Random House has more authors on the list than any other publisher (7/20).

Toni Morrison's is clearly the name spoken in most hushed tones ... but the British press is focusing on perhaps the most unlikely heroine of the list - Birmingham social worker Gail Arnor whose novel - a fictionalised account of the about the aftermath of Dicken's death - proves once again the dynamism of the tiny Tyndall Street Press. Some surprising names not on the list inc Helen Garner and Zoe Heller.

And the most common theme seems to be exile and migration.

Tomorrow, I bet, the bitching will start about how dare there be a woman-only literary prize, as it does every year. No-one has got around to starting up the Banana Bonanza for Blokes yet to shut these people up.

The shortlist will be announced on 21st April and the shortlist for the Orange Award for New Writers on 7th April. The winners of both awards will be announced at a ceremony on the 3rd June.

Fingers crossed for Preeta once again.

Clearance Sale Haul

I took myself off to the MPH Clearance Sale yesterday. The fiction had been well and truly picked over, but there was plenty of stuff that I wanted, including three very useful books on writing.

I thought my real prize was Margaret Atwood's Writing with Intent : Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose but sadly I've just discovered that I have the book already under a different title Curious Pursuits (the British and Australian title). There was also a a Canadian edition containing many of the same essays called Moving Targets. Let the book buyer beware! Looks like this is a copy I will pass on - maybe at the next Readings.

I also found Sudanese author Leila Aboulela's The Translator, which looks my kind of read.

And cookbooks of course ... how can I resist? I wanted to buy up a whole lot more.

I was happy to see so many people buying books - the place was packed out, even on a weekday, and folks were veritably shoveling books into their baskets. And it was dusty, oh so dusty ...

So what did you guys get?

What Are YOU Reading?

So ... what are you reading, guys, and is it something you'd recommend to the world?

I must confess to feeling like lighter reads at the moment. For me that usually means non-fiction. And I find it easier to take my book out of the house than to be distracted by things I need to do at home.

Today I had a lovely long lunch at the P.J. Hilton with the excellent company of Elizabeth Gilbert. Or at least her book Eat, Pray, Love.

It was actually my Christmas tree present from someone in our book club, and perhaps not something I'd have otherwise chosen for myself - a travel book as much about an internal journey for healing in the aftermath of a painful divorce and a failed love affair, as it is about the places she visited.

Structured to resemble a string of prayer beads, the books falls into three sections of 36 chapters each. She takes a year out of her life spending four months each in Italy (to enjoy a love affair with the language and enjoy the best of the food); India (where she confronts inner demons in an ashram); and Bali, Indonesia (where she plans to spend time with a traditional healer ... except that life seems to have other plans for her).

Sure, Gilbert is a bit of a flake sometimes, but she is very good company warm and funny, and actually pretty wise. Although she doesn't get to see an awful lot of each country (in India she never leaves the ashram, and in Bali it's only at the end of her stay that she leaves Ubud to see the beaches!), the real pleasure is in her descriptions of the characters she meets and the conversations she has. She's willing to open her heart and learn, willing to bend down to listen.

I enjoyed the Bali section the best as she lands up in Ubud which is of course a place I know well, and I think she describes it with clear insight, including her observations about the expat community.

Anyway, I look forward to the next journey she takes me on, and will also be slipping copies of this book to a few friends I know will enjoy it.

I'm also reading The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Parker - another book which fell into my hands serendipitously. This scruffy old volume (1931!), ex-library, and broken spined, was rescued from a flea market by a friend who always brings me scavenged books. She's more than a little bit wicked, and her little verses, which look so tame and domestic at first, really do bite back. I should though slip this copy in the microwave, I think, as I'm sure there are all kinds of microbes hanging out among the pages.

My next read is Child 44 by Tom Rob-Smith. Our book club members chose it and I have barely a week to get through it now. I did begin it and got mightily put off by a cat being hunted for food when I think one of the starving humans should have sacrificed his body for the sake of the rest and let the moggy be! (I really am going to set up that Society for the Prevention of Cruetly to Fictional Cats.) Am not overly impressed with the writing - it's a bit simplified reader, and just hope the plot makes up for it. Even a few pages in I'm quite shocked that this made the Booker shortlist - where got standard lah?

Still, will try to read with an open heart and let you know how it goes.

So over now to you guys! Make me jealous.

You're Just Too Ugly To be Published!

Bookgasm has a nicely tongue-in-cheek post listing* 50 Reasons No One wants to Publish Your First Book . I'm sure Eric Forbes would heartily approve of some of them, including :

• There’s this thing called punctuation. You might want to look into it.
• It’s not technically a novel until you’ve written it down first.

But he might be too polite to tell you :

... your author’s photo is going to alienate readers. That’s right, dude: You’re too ugly for literature.

Much more sensible is this post about why most manuscripts really do get rejected on Glenda's blog.

(*Thanks, Chet, for the link.)

Gravy for a Kept Woman?

I lifted this from Facebook :

Silverfishbooks, Sang Freud Press dan Sindiket Sol-jah, dengan berbesar hati menjemput anda sekalian pencinta fiksi berbahasa Melayu untuk bersama memeriahkan sidang pembacaan naskhah DUA LAUK dan PEREMPUAN SIMPANAN.

Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009
Time: 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: Silverfish Books, Jln Telawi, Bangsar Baru

Readers include:

D'ianadi
Wani Ardy
Taf 'Tifani' Teh
Ila Syazwani
Dila Raden
Wahida Rahim
Alina Abdullah

Further enquiries : dvinecomedy@hotmail.com

Congrats to Sufian Abas and friends for getting this new collection off the ground. The title is a wee bit hard to translate directly into English. (But this bluff-full Mat Salleh will have a go anyway and mangle a beautiful language.) Lauk means the dishes, curry and so on, eaten with rice as part of a Malay meal. A perumpuan simpanan is a kept-woman = mistress. And in this case it seems she's only been left two dishes to eat with her rice. (But why? I am intrigued to find out the answer to this! And if they are delicious lauk, such as I feel perfectly capable of cooking myself, should she still feel deprived?)

No doubt Sufian will be along to tell me I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely. Never mind.

We also have Readings@Seksan that Saturday afternoon, but I will try to finish early so that anyone who wants to walk up the road to Silverfish will be able to get a second dose of things literary that afternoon!

Amit - The Publisher's Nightmare

I reacted against this professionalising of the author, in India and in Britain ...

Indian author Amit Chaudhari confesses to being something of a publisher's nightmare to Sophie Harrison in The Guardian. His new novel The Immortals is in nine years.

Particularly interesting in the interview is the comparison between Chaudhuri's

... slender, focused novels ...

and the

... grandeur, whimsicality and pickle factories ...

of Rushdie and his followers, which :

... represents a kind of hallucinatory cliff behind which we cannot see.

I came across Chaudhari's work when he was a guest at our first KL Literary Festival, and was stunned by the meticulous observation and the humanity of his writing which transported me into the same space as his characters.

I have owed him an apology since the festival so post it here.

There really was a balls up with the programming which I was supposed to be in charge of and thought I had sorted out okay. But the nice Mr. Raman decided during the event to shoehorn a couple more readers - folks that he had published - into each slot at the very last minute. It would have been okay ... but both these guys ran over their allotted time and ignored my notes and wild wavings. (I'm studiously avoiding names here because they are guys I really love and they deserved their moment in the sun. Only I wish I had known earlier that they were to be accomodated in the programme.)

Amit's slot (his second appearance in the festival) was scheduled for the very end of the afternoon. I had found a good moderator (or so I thought) for the session - a woman who had studied his work and was a tremendous fan, and she was going to interview him one on one. I told her before the session began the timing she had to work to.

And then the pair of them, up on stage, totally ignored it!

Amit is so interesting, I'd have loved him to speak for hours, and the woman interviewing him certainly knew her stuff and was asking the right questions ... but the ballroom at the Rennaisance was only booked till 6 and there was a wedding dinner taking place that night so the hotel staff needed to move in pretty sharpish to get the place set up so I could give him only 45 minutes. Tops.

The couple on the stage ran over ... by ten minutes ... by 15 minutes ...

I tried to catch their eye.

The hotel staff began to move into the room. I ran over to them and begged for a few more minutes. Not possible.

I started to gesticualte wildly from the back.

The hotel staff began to move tables.

Members of the audience angrily turned round to shush them.

The hotel staff became increasingly and I think deliberately noisier.

The couple on stage were now 25 minutes over time ... having a really cosy chat ...

I picked up the mic and asked the speakers, if they could just wind up the session.

The audience got all angry with me and one woman (a major sponsor) told me to sit down and shut up!

I was by now in tears. I looked around in vain for Raman to help. For anyone who would tell me the right thing to do.

Amit was relectant to end, but said he would close with a reading. He read ... not one of his beautiful descriptive pieces, but a very odd poem about ... shit! Was this a polite and controlled expression of his anger?

And then it was over, and shit was exactly what I felt like! I bawled my eyes out in the Ladies. I had not slept in a couple of days for worrying about everything and all that had to be released before I could face the world again.

But there was the next event to attend ... it was the wonderful production of Riding the Nice Bus over at Zouk, and it went so well that my spirit was completely smoothed again.

And this is why I won't ever be an organiser for a literary festival again, and take my hat off to anybody who does the job. And especially if they manage to remain calm under extremely adverse circumstances!

Our Lady of the Metaphors

My Facebook buddy, Maximilian Loh, tagged me on his note to share this wondrous classic of overwriting (Click to enlarge to readable size.) :

Because bad writing has to be shared. And pointed-and-laughed at. ... This has to be the worst description of a person/character that I have ever come across, in fiction or not. Hopefully, you'll have as many laughs as I did while reading this.

The original blog entry is here on vadonavan's page on Live Journal and stirred up a lot of comment ... and even some attempts to paint a portrait of the character described, including this one dubbed Our Lady of the Metaphors.

The extract is taken from is the second volume of a fantasy tetralogy Bronwyn : Silk and Steel by one Ron Miller. It managed to muster one and a half stars on Amazon.com.

Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as saying of it :

Ron Miller is unfairly talented.

Though he was probably talking about Miller's ability to cause enormous mirth.

Silk and Steel deserves to become a cult classic ... and I desperately want a copy!

English and Inheritance

I don't write like my mother, but for many years I spoke like her, and her particular, timorous relationship with language has shaped my own. There are people who move confidently within their own horizons of speech; whether it is cockney, estuary, RP or valley girl, they stride with the unselfconscious ease of a landowner on his own turf. My mother, Rose, was never like that. She never owned the language she spoke. Her displacement within the intricacies of English class, and the uncertainty that went with it, taught her to regard language as something that might go off in her face, like a letter bomb. A word bomb. I've inherited her wariness, or more accurately, I learnt it as a child. I used to think I would have to spend a lifetime shaking it off. Now I know that's impossible, and unnecessary, and that you have to work with what you've got.

As a working-class refugee in a posh girl's grammar school, burdened with my parents shortened vowel sounds and North Midlands dialect words (and yes, it also took me time to learn that you don't say skelington and chimley!) I can completely identify with Ian McEwan's struggles with the English language which he describes in The Times.

It's not only non-native speakers who have to wrestle with it, y'know!

Bolaño Wins Book Critic's Circle Award

On Thursday the US Book Critics Circle announced the winners of its awards in several categories for books published last year.

The fiction prize was taken by Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 :

... a tale of love and violence set within the framework of the fictional town of Santa Teresa, Mexico, that’s widely regarded as the late author’s masterpiece...

The book was described by fiction committee chair Marcela Valdes as :

... a virtuoso accomplishment that ranks with Moby-Dick and Blood Meridian as one of the trenchant and kaleidoscopic examinations of evil in fiction.

Tim Martin in The Telegraph profiles one of the :

... most important and adventurous authors of our time.

Bolaño died in 2003.

Why Jane Eyre Needs the Kama Sutra

If fictional character went into a modern-day booskstore, what would they buy? Would, for example, Huck Finn pick up The Dangerous Book for Boys? Would Eliza Bennet go for Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus ?

The guys at Publishing Weekly started it and then Alison Flood on The Guardian blog decided to play along. Among her suggestions :

Perhaps the Kama Sutra might help out poor, repressed Jane Eyre, and she'd realise there's more to life than Mr Rochester. And if Juliet had been following The Rules (wait at least three dates before you sleep with him) would it all have gone so wrong?

Scarlett O'Hara, I think, would have adored chick-lit, so let's load her up with Marian Keyes and Jilly Cooper. (She'd also be a closet fan of the misery memoir – reading about dreadful childhoods would no doubt have made her feel better about her own problems).

I can see Atticus Finch relaxing with John Grisham. And I bet Sherlock Holmes would have got on well with a good Agatha Christie - although maybe he'd have preferred to steer clear of cosy mysteries in his time off, testing his vast intellect with something a little more erudite – The Savage Detectives, perhaps?

And your favourite characters? What would they be buying?

With Many Thanks to my Two Cats ...

The Acknowledgments page cannot make a bad book better, but it can ruin a good one.

Jonathan Black reckons in The American Spectator [via and via] :

Did I say "page"? Section is more like it. Names upon names. Artists' colonies. Intrepid editors. Copy editors. Mentors. Foundations. Librarians. The upstairs neighbor. Research assistants. Personal assistants. People who read drafts. The mom who sparked the great endeavor. The dad who would have been proud. The agent, brilliant and prescient, as well as the best friend any writer could have. Speaking of friends…who are all these people? How many drafts did the author circulate? Isn't writing supposed to be a grim and lonely pursuit?

And finally—drum roll, please—the spouse. Longsuffering, dreams of medical school up in smoke. These husbands and wives are saints! In a writer's darkest hour, when the black dog descends, they're toting laundry and hunting for typos. Never will they cry, "Harold, for God's sake, another year? What about the landscaping? What about Maudie's tuition?" Not all spouses, it need be noted, survive the second or third printing, let alone the paperback version. The dedication to "my fantastic wife and children" morphs into "For my family." The soul mates and life companions move on, optimistically to other writers, to be crowned again with syrupy praise.

A wonderful list of book dedications can be found archived on the McSweeney's website. William F.E. Morley spent years making a collection of those he considered particularly amusing or clever Here are some classic ones :

Gothic Birdhouses, Feeders and Baths

"This book is dedicated to my children, Robin and Jay, who, like little birds, will soon spread their wings and fly, fly away. May you soar unshackled away, away. Fear not the hunter's blast."

The Moldova Lonely Planet Hiking Guide

"My dear Brendan, upon every hillock, atop every spire, below the darkened skies, your image was my faithful companion during my long journey into this Bessarabia. It was, indeed, the most faithful you've ever been."

The Unauthorized Rod Steiger Companion

"Ahh! Peerless and misconstrued, inimitable Rod Steiger. You were the contender, you were the heat of the night, you made Amityville much less horrible. Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, for surely God will take you out in his surrey. Oh yes, my friend, the one with the fringe on top. "

Telephone Triage Protocols for Nursing Assistants

"To the family of Steven Hofford, words cannot express my deepest regret. Please accept this training manual as proof that I will not rest until every nursing assistant understands that patients rarely make jokes about life-threatening emergencies over the telephone."

Housebreaking for Sugar Gliders

"Sara. Tiny packages often contain great love. Tiny packages sometimes leak their contents upon the rug of life. Tiny packages rarely withstand angry feet. I forgive you."

Just for fun, why not write the dedication for your novel (the one that hasn't been written yet) and post it in the comments!

MPH Clearance Sale

Some welcome news for book lovers on a budget :

Regional Commonwealth Prizes Announced

The regional winners of the Commonwealth Prize have been announced, but are not yet up on the official website. (Will append them as soon as.)

Sadly, our Preeta didn't get the Best First Book Prize for the South East Asia and the South Pacific region - that went instead to New Zealand's Mo Zhi Hong (left) for Shanghai Shark :

... the story of young boy's rite of passage as he enters into the bustling, cosmopolitan street life of the contemporary Chinese cities of Dalian and Shanghai, under the tutelage of his uncle, a professional pickpocket.

Mo was born in Singapore, but grew up in Taiwan, China, Canada, the US and New Zealand. he worked as a software developer in New York, and later as an English teacher in north-east China, before returning to New Zealand. He lives in Aukland.

You can hear an interview with him here.

The region's best novel prize went to Australian Christos Tsiolkas who won against some very stiff opposition. His novel The Slap :

... begins with a four-year-old child being slapped at a barbecue in Melbourne's northern suburbs by someone who is not a family member. The uproar that follows is seen from the points of view of eight distinctly drawn characters and puts family loyalty, friendships and social ethics into a fierce crucible.

Jhumpa Lahiri won the Europe and South Asia Heat Best Book Award with Unaccustomed Earth, her collection of stories which has been sweeping all before it, and was praised by the judges for its :

...lyrical, meticulously crafted prose, with the moving and memorable treatment of the diasporic experience coupled with her significant achievement in extending the form of the short story

Mohammed Hanif won in the first book category for his novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes :

... a darkly comic tour de force which takes as its starting point the plane crash which killed Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq. Praised for its "amazingly detailed and plausible portrayal of historical events", as well as its "great political insight and stylistic virtuosity" ...

This is the first time a Pakistani has been a regional winner.

The overall winners of the Commonwealth Writers Prize will be announced in mid-May.

The Last of the Great Story Tellers

National Laureate Muhammad Dahlan Abdul Baing, better known as Arena Wati passed away on January 25th from lung cancer and this afternoon special prayers are being conducted for him at a Majlis Tahlil.

Bernama reports that :

Arena Wati was born on July 30, 1925 in Kalumpang Kabupatan, Jeneponto, Makasar, Indonesia and went to a Dutch school in Makasar before it was closed when the war broke out.

He had used other pen names such as Duta Muda and Patria. He won several awards like the SEA Write Award in 1985 and was made a national laureate in 1988.

Arena Wati also entered the journalistic world in 1954 and was once an editor at Pustaka Antara.

Among his many works were Eno (1985), Syair Pangeran Syarif (1989), Syair Pangeran Syarif Hasyim Al-Qudsi (1989), Syair Perang Cina Di Monterado (1989), Burung Badai (1990), Turina (1991) and Citra (1991).

Even at 84 he was still working, and his trilogy about the struggles of the Malays in the archipelago, entitled BaraBaraya, is due to be published this year.

Johan Jaafar in the New Straits Times writes a moving tribute to the author and calls him :

... the last of the great story tellers ...

and compares him to Joseph Conrad (because of his long connection with the sea) and James A. Michener (because of his painstaking research). he was a prolific author and short story writer and :

His characters were convincing and alive.

How much of his work is translated, I do not know. But I was unable to find a single work available in English on the Internet. Anyone out there able to enlighten us?

Postscript :

WebSutera's profile of the laureate (in Malay).