New Year Wishes

Each age has deemed the new born year
The fittest time for festal cheer

Walter Scott

Wishing you a very happy one and a joyous New Year!

Respice Prospice ...

... was my school motto, and means quite simply Look Back, Look Forward. And that's exactly what we want to do when we come to the end of a year, let alone a decade, in books.

The Times has a great list of literary quotes of the year : Rushdie dishes the dirt about a former girlfriend, Julian Barnes displays monumental ignorance about how a mobile phone works ... and who would want to know Patricia Highsmith after this?

Anabel Wynne in The Guardian looks back even further and compares the "noughties" of the C21st with the first decade of the C20th, and sees a preoccupation in both with the post-apocalyptic :

The first decade of any century is a blank canvas: we don't know yet what the picture will look like. As a result, the last 10 years have seen a surge in works that contemplate some kind of holocaust or apocalypse. Among others, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Pesthouse by Jim Crace and of course Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood all deal with the possibility of human disaster on a monumental scale. ... One hundred years ago, the picture was the same. The War of the Worlds catapulted HG Wells - already an established writer - to fame in the UK and the US.

And what exactly was on that list 100 years ago? Reading Copy blog has that list.

Claire Armistead looks forward to 2010 and reckons it :

...looks set to bring the men back to centre court. Ian McEwan and Peter Carey both publish new novels – a replay of the 2001 Booker, perhaps, when Carey pipped McEwan to the laurels.

And we can, of course, expect a lot more "looking forward to" lists in the coming weeks.

City of Stories : The Workshops

Long awaited news from British Council :

City of Stories is a project under the British Council’s Creative Cities programme, with the aim of demonstrating through the arts how a city is inclusive of many different voices, with the city at the heart of the innovation and creative process. In February 2009 we ran a series of creative writing workshops in partnership with MPH and London based Spread the Word, and are back again with a second series of workshops and events to further bring out the best of new Malaysian writing.

SARAH BUTLER’S TALK on “SO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER?”
- A TALK on BECOMING A WRITER
13 January 2010, 8:00pm – 9:30pm, MPH Bookstore One Utama

Ever wondered what it’s like to be a professional writer? Harbouring ambitions of being the next Booker prize winner? This talk by Sarah Butler will inform a curious audience on the process of creative writing and to inspire budding writers and expose them to the life of a professional writer.

Sarah will talk about her experience as a writer; from what inspired her to go down this path to how she got to where she now. She will be sharing some examples of various kinds of writing projects she’s involved with including residencies and public art commissions.

Deadline for application is 10 January 2010


SARAH BUTLER’S BEGINNERS WORKSHOP
15 January 2010, 10:00am – 4:00pm, MPH Bookstore One Utama

Get started, keep going…

A fun informal day for people new to creative writing, and those wanting to refresh their creative energy. We will look at how to generate ideas, how to silence our internal critics, and how to keep going once we’ve got started. Come prepared to write, experiment, meet other local writers and have fun; leave with a wealth of new ideas.

Sarah Butler writes novels and short fiction. She has been published in anthologies (Route, Tindal Street Press, Pen and Ink Press, Monsoon Press) and journals (including pulp.net and Litro), and has held various residencies, including writer-in-residence on the Central line, for Art on the Underground. Sarah lives in London and runs UrbanWords , a literature consultancy, which specialises in projects using creative writing as a way to explore and question our relationship to place.


ARDASHIR VAKIL’S BEGINNERS WORKSHOP
22 January 2010 , 10:00am – 4:00pm, MPH Bookstore One Utama

Come to this day with no expectations of who you are, what you will achieve or whether you have any talent as a writer. Expect only to participate strenuously in a range of stimulating activities that require you to write, talk, listen, read and think. We will be looking for where transformation might be possible. This course aims to send you away, full of yourself and full of new ideas about who you are in the world.

Ardashir Vakil was born in Bombay and now lives in London. He was educated at The Doon School in Dehradun, India and at Cambridge University. He has taught English at several London comprehensive schools and currently teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. His short stories have been anthologised and broadcast on BBC Radio. His first novel, Beach Boy (1997), charts the adventures of 8-year old Cyrus Readymoney who lives in Bombay. It was translated into eight languages, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread First Novel Award. His second novel, One Day (2003), is set in North London and was shortlisted for the Encore Award.

Application criteria for both workshops:
 First time writers who are writing for pleasure or/and just starting
 Might be in a class or writing group
 Workshop fee is RM30 (including lunch)

Terms & conditions:
* Workshops are open to participants aged 18 years old and above
* All workshops are limited to 15 participants only

Deadline for application is 10 January 2010
ADVANCED WORKSHOP
MPH Bookstore One Utama

12 January from 7:00pm – 9:00pm with Sarah Butler
14 January from 7:00pm – 10:00pm with Sarah Butler
16 & 17 January from 10:00am – 4:00pm with Sarah Butler
20 January from 7:00pm – 9:00pm with Ardashir Vakil
21 January from 7:00pm – 10:00pm with Ardashir Vakil
23 & 24 January from 10:00am – 4:00pm with Ardashir Vakil

A two week course for people who have begun writing or who have been writing for some time. The course will start, both in week 1 and week 2, with looking at where you have got to with your writing and sharing what you have done so far with the group.

Please come prepared with a short extract (2-4 pgs) of your best work. You should be prepared to allow time to develop new ideas, experiment with form and voice, and be keen to gain skills in constructive criticism. We will look carefully at each other’s work, but we will also take a careful look at examples of other people’s writing to see how voice, structure and language can be used to maximum effect.

For week 2 we will require you to bring along a text that has been an inspiration to you as a writer (2-4 pages long), to introduce and share with the group. You will work alongside other motivated writers to push your writing to the next level. We aim to enrich your repertoire as a writer by generating new ideas, working on drafts and finding routes to your true voices and your strong subjects.

Application criteria for all both workshops:
 Published writers (short stories, articles, )
 Trying to improve specific aspects of their writing
 Trying to get to the next stage in their careers
 Workshop fee is RM200 ((including refreshments and lunch)

Terms & conditions:
* Workshops are open to participants aged 18 years old and above
* All workshops are limited to 15 participants only

Deadline for application is 10 January 2010


“SO YOU THINK YOU CAN WRITE?” - AN AVENUE FOR CREATIVE WRITERS…
22 January 2010, 8:00pm – 9:30pm, PJLA

From any background to showcase their work through a public “audition” process to help popularise writing and literature while providing a relaxed, informal platform to receive feedback.

It’s time to bring out your manuscripts or grab fresh pen and paper and give us your best work to see if the public and our panel of judges think you have what it takes. This is your chance to get honest feedback from those in the industry as well as your future readers.

Your work will be read on stage by professional actors –our friends from Instant Café Theatre– there’ll be drinks on hand, a relaxed and supportive atmosphere, and fame possibly waiting round the corner. If that isn’t enough, there’s even a prize for the best work…

Manuscripts are to be submitted in advance for the panel of judges to read.

Award for the Winner!
 Professional Development Planning with Spread the Word (UK) that gives you the space to step back, review your priorities and devise a route forward to get to where you want to be

Terms & conditions:
* All manuscripts must be submitted are limited to 1500 words only

Deadline for application is 10 January 2010

You will need the application form from British Council to apply for the workshops, so please drop an e-mail to Joanne.Low@britishcouncil.org.my to ask for it. (I also have a copy of it I can forward to you so contact sharonbakar@yahoo.com).

2009 - The Year of the Short Story

2009 has proved that rumours of the death of the short story – so often forecast that almost every review of almost every collection seems duty-bound to repeat and thus propagate it – are greatly exaggerated. The consensus running through the end-of-year reviews is that it's been a vintage year for short fiction, and I agree.

writes Chris Power on The Guardian blog and goes on to list many of the year's publishing successes.

And while there are still problems facing short story writers :

In the US it's commonplace for short story writers to get a deal for their first collection only on the proviso that a novel follows, a business practice that casts short story-writing as apprentice work. In the UK it's worse still, with story collections treated like dirty secrets to be snuck out in disguise ... with only a determined study of the back cover revealing the truth. And I don't know if it's a case of reading practices following publishing's lead or vice versa, but I'm constantly surprised and disheartened by the number of readers who tell me they don't read short stories, as if they were a homogenous type that could be not to your taste like, say, policiers.

he says he sees more reaon to celebrate than mourn :

Radio 4 broadcasts nearly 150 stories a year; the Atlantic's recent decision to sell short stories via its Kindle store inspires hope for a vibrant market for individually sold shorter works, while flash fiction and sites dedicated to the short story continue to proliferate online.

Well, if 2009 was good, let's hope 2010 ... and the whole of the coming decade ... will be even better for my favourite literary form!

(Cartoon by Tom Gauld.)

Kindle Bells

On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books.

Amazon said yesterday that its e-book reader, the Kindle, had become "the most gifted item" in its history, and with that an e-book corner has been turned.

Best Asian Books of the Decade?

After my blog post about The Times list of best books of the decade, I got chatting to Adrienne Loftus-Parkins* about how there should be more Asian books on the list. I said that we should have a list of Asian best books, and Adrienne took up the challenge, writing to me later :

Hi Sharon,

Okay here is a first pass, nothing is in any particular order (yet) and its absolutely not ready for publication. I'm sending to get your input - particularly re the ones I haven't read (but am sure you have) and any others I don't know about. Please add whatever you'd like to, and mark the ones you completely disagree with. Then I'll take another pass at it.

Thanks, have fun with it.

Adrienne

PS You'll see that I've included a couple of British Asian books - occupational hazard of living in London!

The Best Asian Books of the Decade :

Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Temptations of the West – How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond by Pankaj Mishra

Silk Road by Colin Thubron

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta

Beijing Coma – Ma Jian

The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

The Temple-Goers by Aatish Taseer

Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw

The Last Song of Dusk by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

Inspector Chen Series by Qiu Xiaolong

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra ( but a touch too long)

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry ( not as good as A Fine Balance – isn’t it time he wrote another book?)

Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

The Golden Age by Tahmima Anam

Butcher and Bolt by David Loyn – excellent primer on Afghanistan

Greetings from Bury Park: Race Religion and Rock and Roll by Sarfraz Mansoor

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Snow by Orhan Pamuk (although I feel My Name is Red is better, this one is more relevant to contemporary Turkey)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

The White Moghuls by William Dalrymple

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts but could have been abou t30% shorter

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Descent into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

China Road by Rob Gifford

Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century by Will Hutton

God’s Terrorists by Charles Allen (fascinating although the author felt he could have done better)

Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism by Edna Fernandes

Khandahar Cockney by James Fergusson – eye opening book about the life of an asylum seeker from Afghanistan

I might not have suggest these but people suggested them ( ie I don’t think they are as great as other people do!):

Brick Lane by Monica Ali – not so sure about this one, but a number of people suggested it.

Persepolis: The Story of an Iranian Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

Ones I haven’t read but I understand are noteworthy.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

The Boat by Nam Le

Madwoman on the Bridge by Su Tong

Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan

Once on the Shore by Paul Yoon

The Calligrapher’s Daughter by Eugenia Kim

The Assassin’s Song by MG Vassanji

Imperial Life in The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

So now I kick the list over to you - which books do you think should have been included on the list? Which titles would you vote for and why?

Postscript :

Let me also slip in this link to Asian Literary Review editor Chris Woods' list of best books of 2009 [via] which has some excellent Asian titles on it.

*A correction needed here. Adrienne's company is The Asian Word and the Lit fest is only one of Adrienne's products. She curates other Asian literature events at other venues in London (current projects are at the National Portrait Gallery and at Kings Place) as well as the first Asian women's literature festival which will take place in London in October / November and will be produced in partnership with the Pan Asian Women's Association (PAWA). More about these projects later.

Merry Happy Jollyberry

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

There's some good seasonal fiction to enjoy on the newspaper websites : Cinderella in Autumn by Hilary Mantel appears in The Guardian, while The Telegraph has The Dancing Master's Music by William Trevor.

The New Yorker, as always, has a good selection including Helen Simpson's Diary of an Interesting Year, including David Foster Wallace's All That .

Postscript :

Try a Christmas mystery from John Walsh who has a new Sherlock Holmes story up at The Independent.

(Picture by Loquacia Loon.)

Santa Uma

Is Umapagan Ampikaipakan Malaysia's answer to Oprah?

Meant to blog earlier about his excellent book broadcasts on BFM89.9, but since we are in the mood for all things jungle bells, I think you will enjoy this recording where he talks about his choice of Christmas books and lists some excellent seasonal reads you are bound to enjoy :



And here you can find plenty of other good stuff archived.

How Things are Changing in Books

The Jacket Copy blog looks at the decade in reading and asks How Bad Is It?.

Among those answering part of the question are Susan Salter Renolds who in Cutting Through the Din of the Dotcome Age looks at the way fiction has evolved over the last ten years, and observes :

Writers write what they write, a path up and out of one generation's burden, one strangulating set of cultural norms into the future, regardless. But fiction, generally speaking, has been affected by this shrinking market, this smaller pie, largely in the last decade. It is more interactive, in very subtle ways. It tries to do more with less. Plot twists can be interpreted in many ways. Reality is layered, archaeological. Perspective shifts. The narrator is hardly ever reliable. Voices labor under the weight of excessive irony. Morality is more elusive as well. The poor reader searches for truth like a needle in a haystack.

and David Ulin who looks at how evolving technology has affected how we write and read :

What has changed is our sense of text as fixed, not fluid, as something solid to which we can return again and again. That's the influence of the Web, of course, where story has no end and no beginning, and readers are not passive but play a determining role. This is scary to a certain way of thinking, but I want to look in the opposite direction, to suggest that what is more compelling is how this opens up the possibilities.

The Damaging Irony of Big Time Bookselling

Foyles is still the acceptable face of bookselling, probably because it is still unlike the predators that are now quietly consuming the book trade throughout the world. Conquering giants now want commissions of 60 per cent or more from publishers and then they ask a sum again to display the titles prominently. They strike bargains that enable them to sell three books for the price of two, like lavatory cleaners in a discount store, and much as they draw crowds to their jangling tills, the trail that they leave behind is of closed shops and hand-to-mouth publishers and unknown but probably good writers that do not have the pull of Dan Brown or Harry Potter. This is the damaging irony of big time bookselling; that it consumes the very trade it is meant to be promoting, and many, many books from small publishers never get to be read by the wider book-reading people. So who stands to gain, who stands to lose in this dog-eat-book world? Remainder books are big business now, big enough to have their own book fairs. Testimony surely to the growing value of shelf space in the bookshops that have to be cleared as quickly as books are being churned up by the big boy publishers.

Following the closure of Borders in Charing Cross Road, Wan Hulaimi (our Awang Goneng) writes a passionate piece about the demise of bookshops thanks to ruthless and ultimately short-sighted business practices. I love his description of the eccentric way Foyles used to operate. It brings back memories of when I used to make a pilgrimage down to London as a teenager, to visit what was felt by many to be the best bookshop in the world. (Pic on right - Charing Cross Road)

A Bookseller's Responsibility

Bookseller Abby Wong writes an interesting piece in today's Starmag about how Malaysians :

... are reading more and better books but are still dependent on booksellers’ recommendations and unbiased selections.

And she talks about an role of the bookshop, beyond just having the products available :

Indeed, booksellers – or rather, the book buyers who work for the booksellers – are readers’ readers, and they have a responsibility to love books, to read them and to make sincere recommendations to the public. ... Furthermore, I feel it is the lesser known books that bookstores must bring to their customers’ attention because while their authors might not produce commercial best-sellers, they are often better writers than those who shift thousands of titles at a time.

And then she goes on to list some reads that may well have slipped beneath the radar of local readers (and there is a 30% off voucher in the print edition, in case you decide to check them out.)

Her message to booksellers in general :

Instead of dreading the competition, why not start buying passionately to make Malaysian bookstores as attractive as candy stores to customers of all ages?

Fowler On Usage

... if idiom and grammar are in conflict, so much the worse for grammar. Thus he was cheerfully lax about “who & whom” and the placement of “only,” and he mocked the pains people go through to avoid ending their sentences with prepositions. When it came to the notorious split infinitive (e.g., “to boldly go where no man . . .”), he observed that those English speakers who neither know nor care about them “are to be envied” by the unhappy few who do.

Jim Holt in The New York Times pays tribute to HW Fowler whose A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (know fondly as just Fowler), first published in 1926, has remained one of the most important guides to the English language for writers. We know the book so well, but what do we know of the man?

And while I'm not the biggest fan of style guides to the language, the extract above shows that Fowler had the common sense to move away from the pedantic reliance on Latin grammar rules that bedeviled other traditional grammarians (and quite a number of people who write into the Star's Mind Your English Column!)

New Biog of Mahathir Isn't Reaching Shops

800 copies of an authoritative new biography of our former PM entitled Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times have been held up for the past three weeks at customs at Port Klang. Says The Asian Sentinel, the book written by former Asian Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Barry Wain :

... is a warts-and-all, critical but fair account of Mahathir's 22 years in power. It is certain to become an essential study for scholars seeking to understand the onetime premier's reign and its consequences. But maybe not in Malaysia itself unless the locals buy through Barns & Noble (available Jan. 10) or Amazon (Jan. 5) for US$60.75.

And the piece gives a lovely insight into how a book can be prevented from reading its audience without ever actually being banned by time time honoured practice of foot-dragging :

Foreign published books air-freighted into Malaysia often go through customs without being checked, or with only a cursory check at the airport. Books sent by ship or by land from Singapore are often stopped for inspection, however, which can mean customs officers spending weeks reading the material. Sometimes they just sit on the book, leaving the publisher with little option but to withdraw it or be faced with being hit with storage charges, leaving the book effectively banned without the government having to face criticism for formally banning it.

Aliran says that this is

... nothing short of crude and reckless censorship, although indirect, the effect is the same. It very undemocratically denies Malaysians reading material that should be made freely available to all and sundry. This book is of particular interest to citizens who are appalled by the disclosure that under Mahathir RM100 billion could have been squandered. They have been waiting anxiously to find out how this atrocity involving a mammoth, mind-boggling amount could have happened without anybody commenting on this extravagance.

(One silly silly line at the end of the piece :

But for readers who buy Kindle or another electronic reader, it's easy to get.

because of course there isn't a single e-reader for the Malaysian market as yet !)

More about the book on Anak Bangsa Malaysia's blog.

Update 27/12 :

This from The Star :

The book Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times is not being put through any additional scrutiny by the Home Ministry.

It has been withheld to undergo the normal process for any foreign publication, said ministry deputy secretary-general Datuk Ahmad Fuad Abdul Aziz.

“Studying the content is the usual process for any publication from abroad and the book written by Barry Wain is no exception,” Ahmad Fuad said in a statement yesterday.

He said this was to ensure the publication’s contents would not jeopardise national security and public safety.

He said the ministry had 60 days from the time it was submitted to decide if the book should be allowed to be distributed in the country.

Encouraging Writing in English on Both Sides of the Causeway

English matters. As a medium of communication, we reach the world with it and the world reaches us. That’s a fact we can’t ignore. Hence, Malaysians writing in English is a bridge for us to connect with the global audience. ... And, since English is a widely spoken language in the country, it’s a medium for us to connect with each other as well. ... Malaysian literature in English is unique to us. We wrestle with demons uniquely our own and our works reflect that. But are we seeing enough Malaysians write in English?

asks Rizal Solomon in today's New Straits Times. He says that he was stung into feeling guilty by Wong Phui Nam's words at the Singapore Writers' Festival KL press launch : wasn't he himself guilty of not really paying attention to local writing talent? He took the opportunity to talk to writers from both sides of the causeway at the festival.

Veteran novelist K.S. Maniam says (and I personally really applaud this) :

I think they have to break down this wall between writing in the national language and writing in English, Tamil and Chinese. We have to say all writing is Malaysian.

Maniam mentions some of the factors which will really help and encourage local writers - much more translation, workshops, competitions and awards.

Singaporean Wena Poon tackles an attitude problem:

Many Singaporeans complain there is no point producing art because there is no audience in Singapore; people won’t buy tickets or books. They assume the readers’ lack of sophistication and everybody gets depressed. That’s a non-constructive view ... Even in America, the typical layman doesn’t give a damn about the arts, poetry, theatre or novels; so don’t expect a heartlander to shell out for a book. You play to a certain audience, in every society. If you, as an artist, care about ticket or book sales, then it’s your job to figure out what readers want ...

Writer/artist Sonny Liew (whom I am ashamed to say has slipped beneath my own radar despite being nominated for the prestigious Eisner Award, while the recent French translation of his graphic novel Malinky Robot won the 2009 Prix de la meilleure BD award), quite rightly points out that things are changing for the better for writers with the Internet :

... which allows easier networking and online publishing, means there’s less isolation and less dependence on traditional forms of distribution and publication

Amir Muhammad says :

I never believe in ‘scenes’, just in individual writers. And on that note, there are a few rather strong writers indeed. Among fiction writers, Brian Gomez and Shih-li Kow are world-class and inimitably local.

As Rizal says at the end of his column, really it is up to all of us to give out local authors a chance!

I must add that I find it greatly encouraging to see space given to this discussion in the NST and hope there will be much more to come. Now that's a great way to boost local writing!

Share Your City Stories!

Here's a new website I think you are going to enjoy very much. It will feature stories all set in the city where many of you live, and best of all, those stories are going to be written by you!

(Roll of drums ...)

Launched today at The British Council - City of Shared Stories Kuala Lumpur.

As you can see, it is a map of the city, dotted with little red tags. Each tag is a very short story told in under 1600 characters. One is mine. (Look for the little tag stuck into Tropicana Golf and Country Resort!) Others in this first batch were written by Daphne Lee, Damyanti Ghosh, Liyana/Dizzy, Priya K, and Jerome Kugan. If you like what you read click on the I like this story button.

And ... if you think you can do better, go right ahead. Locate your story at a specific spot on the map and write or paste it into the space provided, and then it will be there for everyone else to visit. Your story can be in English or BM (or even, as we learned at the launch today in Chinese or Tamil).

The website is a part of the City of Stories creative writing project and is a sister site to the UK site, City of Shared Stories , run by the writers development organisation Spread The Word.

The project is intended to get Malaysians writing and enjoying short fiction, and I think it is going to be a lot of fun, so let's get that map covered!

A Short Post On Short Stories

Bookfox has an excellent list of best collections of short stories of the decade, and links to another list on the AV Club blog. The two titles both lists have in common are Pastoralia by George Saunders and Runaway by Alice Munroe.

Perhaps there are others you could add yourselves? I am surprised not to see Yiyun Li on the list ...

Lately ... the short story seems poised to get its due. This fall, a handful of collections from writers such as Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ha Jin have put a dent in the dominant view of short stories as an inferior cousin to the Great American Novel. And changing technology and reading habits have provided a boost for short fiction as more readers discover literature through online literary journals and Web sites, or download short fiction onto mobile devices

says Alexandra Alter in The Wall Street Journal. And indeed, The Atlantic Monthly is going to be the first magazine to sell short stories for the Kindle. The e-book format looks like it is going to give a real boost to the genre, and also to the novella.

One important bit of short story news I forgot to post - the BBC National Short Story Award was won by poet Kate Clancy for her story The Not-Dead and the Saved is apparently only the third piece of short fiction she has ever completed! Prospect Magazine has very kindly put the story up for us online to enjoy.

Gifts for Book-lovers and Newbie Writers

Here are some more great Christmas presents for the book lover - this time from The New Yorker*.

I loved the bookcase wallpaper (left - all the ambience, no dusting!) from Spring Designs, and Brian Dettmer's book sculptures. The Book City Jackets are a stylish way of hiding the real title of the book you are reading from the world (so yes, there is a way to read banned books on the LRT!).

The Lovely Rita bookshelves are gorgeous and I want them on my walls.

If it is the newbie-writer in your life that you want to buy a gift for, Margaret Atwood has produced a list of the 10 perfect presents.

One book I have to treat myself to (although it looks as if I'll have to trawl for a second-hand copy) is Mortifications : Writers and their Public Shame compiled by Robin Roberston. Says Atwood :

Everything awful that may happen to you in public has already happened to someone else, almost. Add to the list (I hope not).

(*This link was very kindly forwarded to me by Lydia Chai.)

The Would-be Murderer, the Modest "Amateur", and the Brilliant Single Dad

If she had not become a writer, she would have been a murderer, reckons Joan Schenkar, whose biography The Talented Miss Highsmith : The Secret Life and Serious Art was published this week. Calling her our most Freudian novelist, Schenker explains that :

To her, love and death are closely related. She tends to murder people in her novels where she made love in real life.

In the New York Times piece, we are taken on a walking tour of Highsmith's Greenwich Village, not only her physical neighborhood :

... but also the dark and desperate territory of Highsmith’s psyche ...

Highsmith is best known for Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first filmed by Hitchcock, and the second, which most of you I guess will have seen, by Anthony Minghella.

I'm just an amateur, really I am.

The incredibly modest 91 year old Diana Athill talks to Tim Adams in The Observer about how she still find it hard to consider herself a real writer since she enjoys writing so much, unlike the authors she worked with as a publsiher :

Writing is supposed to be torture isn't it? But I absolutely adore doing it.

Athill's latest book is Life Class, an 800 page compilation of her four books of memoir. (You can see her talking about the book here.)

Dear Daddy, to the world you are JG Ballard, celebrated and legendary author. But to us, your children, you are simply our own very dearest father, our best friend and our inspiration. We miss you so much

In a very touching obituary J. G Ballard's daughter Bea remembers her father who brought her and her siblings up as a single parent.

(Worth noting re. Peter Carey's switch off the TV Nanowrimo advice, Ballard saw TV as a positive influence and loved crime series, in particular CSI.)

Amir's Pre-Independence Reading Lists

Amir has an impressive list of pre-Independence novels in English set in Malaysia & Singapore up on his blog and is asking (for an upcoming book he is planning) :

a) How many have you read?
b) How many sound like something you'd like to read?
c) Any mistakes/omissions?

My answer to a) is - just one, the Burgess. I would be fascinated to find out more about all these titles ...

Launched

Playing catch up here with news of recent book launches.

One I haven't blogged about at all (and feel guilty for slipping up on!) was Amir Muhammad's tribute to our late great filmmaker, Yasmin Ahmad's Films.

The books was launched on 18 November at Sunway College because Yasmin had given a talk there just a few weeks before she died. Here's a recording of Amir's speech and you can read a bit more here :


Am planning to read the books alongside watching the DVD's ...

Below is a picture of Animah Kosai's daughter, Sarah, cutting the ribbon to launch Farish Noor's book What Your Teacher Didn't Tell You (another publication from Matahari books) at Central Market Annexxe. I took the pic from Liza Manshoor's Facebook page as my own attempt, taken from way back, was blurry and horrid.



The book was so hot off the press there was still steam rising from it. It is also an extremly beautifully produced book, illustrated throughout as you can see from these sample pages, and the content - which grew out of Farish's lecture series at the Annexxe - is fascinating on Malaysian culture and history, looking at it from fresh angles. (Small wonder then that Amir M managed to shift a record number of copies (149 copies in 2 hours!). Couldn't wait to start reading this and gobbled down the discussion of Hang Tuah going back on the LRT.

Here are a couple of videos from the launch - first very talented support act Dizzy & The, and then Farish's speech.






I also went along to Nik Nazmi's launch of both the English and Malay versions of his new book at Itudio Studio in Kelana Mall. (Here's Nik's account of the event.)The venue was bursting at the seems and handed out free saunas to all who were trying to crush inside (pre-requisite of being a politicians - you don't suffer from claustrophobia!). Selangor Chief Minister Khalid gave a very good speech and I appreciated the fact that he recited a poem by the late Usman Awang about the Malays.

I finished the book when I got home - it's very sensible and well-written, and as with Farish's book - you just hope that people will read and become that much wiser.

Biggest congrats to all.

The Stories Behind the Stories

Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

Stacy Conradt celebrates what would have been Dr. Seuss’s 105th birthday by telling the fascinating stories behind 10 of his most famous books. Green Eggs and Ham - though not a halal choice for some of you - is my favourite of the ones I've read.

Best Books of 2009

This is the time of year when the newspapers are putting out their best books of the year lists.

The New York Times Lists its 100 Notable Books of the Year, list is then whittled down to a top ten. Litlists does a great job of linking each fiction title to websites, extracts and "page 69 tests". (This is altogether a fabulous blog for those who love lists of books ... as I do.)

I haven't mentioned the Page 69 test on this blog before, but it is an intriguing way to test out whether you are going to like a book or not. The idea was first suggested by Marshall McLuhan, the guru of The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) who recommends that the browser turn to page 69 of any book and read it. Here's a whole list of Page 69's for you to try it out on ... and for homework see if it works for the books on your shelves!

Another excellent list of books of the year is this one from The Guardian where authors including A.S. Byatt and William Boyd choose 2009's beast reads.

Postscript :

It's all very well having lists of best books, says Sam Jordison, but a rollcall of worst books would give us a truer picture of the decade. Jordison plays devil's advocate beautifully!

Postpostscript (13/12) :

Jordison's list, now pages long, gets more exciting by the day, and not a literary great remains unscathed.

Lorna Bradbury in The Telegraph has an excellent list of bests of 2009 - plenty of worthwhile reading suggestions here. It was a very good year, for fiction, she says.

Best reading from an antipodean point of view - Aussie authors, including Alexis Wright and kate Grenville, talk about their personal favourites of 2009 in The Age.

Faber Firsts

At the heart of the process of choosing who to publish is, obviously, editorial taste, but it’s difficult to pin down exactly how we choose. It’s a hard thing to make scientific because so much of it is based on intuition, gut feeling and passion. The editor has to really want the writer and the book for something to come out of it ... In a literary business like ours, you find that success comes at strange moments for strange reasons. If you land a book at the wrong moment and the audience doesn’t turn up when you expect them to, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t be a success in the end. You never take on a book without believing that you can create success. When you invest heavily in editorial taste, like we do, you just have to believe in your taste and keep going.

Stephen Page CEO of publishers Faber & Faber is interviewed by Rouwen Lim in Starmag about how the company's amazing track record (which six Booker Prize winners and 11 Nobel Laureatesso consistently over the decades).

(But is Faber trading on past glories? That's an interesting question Sam Jordison asked on The Guardian blog back in May.)

F&F have just celebrated their 80th anniversary and are republishing 10 novels by some of their finest writers as part of the Faber Firsts series. The cover designers share the stories behind their iconic images. These are truly beautiful retro-looking editions and I want them so much!

Malays Moving Forward

I invited Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad to guest blog about his new book and launch tomorrow :

Alhamdulillah, my first book is now out. It is published in English and Malay as Moving Forward: Malays for the 21st Century / Mendepani Zaman: Melayu untuk Abad ke-21. It is published by Marshall Cavendish Malaysia. Having written various essays for many publications, I have long dreamt of writing a book. This effort itself spanned a few years (even before 8 March 2008) but I finalised the draft this year. The discourse on Malays in Malaysia is shifting in the 21st century. I argue about how Malays must move forward to survive and succeed in facing today’s challenges: the emerging new politics, forging a people’s economy, resolving the education question, the position of Islam in a multiracial society and the unravelling of the social fabric. While race will remain important as an identity, Moving Forward challenges the assumption of the racial zero sum-game as, ultimately, the future of the Malays cannot be separated from Malaysians in general. The book is dedicated to my parents. YAB Tan Sri Dato’ Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, the Menteri Besar will launch my book tomorrow. The details are as follows: Date: 8 December 2009 (Tuesday) Time: 3.15 PM Venue: Itudio Studio, 31D-2 Kelana Mall, Jln SS 6/12, 47301, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia (map at http://www.itudiostudio.com/about-us) Contact: Saifullah 0378063660 / saifullah@niknazmi.com Dress code: Smart casual / office attire The book can now be bought at RM24.90 at major bookstores including Kinokuniya KLCC and Popular Bookstores. Distributors can contact the publisher through Michelle Low tel: 03-5628 5928 or michelle@my.marshallcavendish.com.

I plan to go and maybe will see you there?

Adeline's Apology

One sad story came to light a few days ago. Yusof Martin sent me a copy of two PDF files. One of Adeline Lee's piece Define Happiness from her first collection, Lethal lessons and Other Stories the other of a piece called Happiness by Sarah Provencal from Chicken Soup for the Teenager's Soul IV. The similarities between the two could not be written off to coincidence. Raman had already discovered two weeks previously and had destroyed all copies of the book. (His note about it is on the main page of his website.) Adeline has written an apology which is now up on the Silverfish website. If you bought the book and want your money back, then you can contact her for a refund. My sadness is actually threefold. I feel very sorry for the publisher who took a risk on a new writer that he saw a great deal of potential in. Secondly, although Adeline did something wrong and unbelievably stupid, she is just 18 and this is a tragic way for a writing career to end even before it has begun. She does have talent and I hope that she is able to pick herself up and keep writing ... and eventually regain our trust. Thirdly, I am so sad that this disease of appropriating someone else's material and passing it off as your own is so widespread in Malaysian society. What really can be done about it? Isn't this something that schools and other educational instituions should really be drumming into kids? In this case the situation has been handled entirely appropriately. Don't we wish that these people (here and here) had had the guts to make the public apology they owed us? Shouldn't that infamous poetry book have been withdrawn and pulped? Postscript :

It is a hard lesson to learn. Nevertheless, stealing other people’s written work is no less a crime than stealing their mobile phone, car or any other materialistic appendage you care to name. The more serious crime, I believe, is the ethical crime involved with plagiarising; the lack of thought that taking another person’s creative endeavour, publishing it as one’s own, gaining plaudits for it, might be wrong.

See Yusof Martin's take on the affair. The picture of the extracts from the two books comes from his blog.

Authorly Artefacts

Cormac McCarthy's typewriter sold Friday at Christie’s to an unidentified American collector for $254,500. This is more than 10 times its high estimate of $20,000.

But why do we seem to venerate the artifacts of famous authors? (Remember, for example, Dicken's writing desk?) Do the buyers of such objects hope that glorious inspiration will somehow rub off on them? Do they hope that it will in some mystical sense bring them closer to the author.

Perhaps the latter. One memory from this year I will cherish is fitting my fingers to the keys of Anthony Burgess' typewriter and hoping to sense the ghost of the man ...

Where Ideas Come From

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?

(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't know who?)

Another important question is, If only...

(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)

And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...

Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose ('Well, if cats used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of the places ideas come from.

Perhaps the most annoying question that authors get asked by those who would like to write themselves is - Where do you get your ideas?, and Neil Gaiman tackles it just beautifully on his blog.

Farish Launches Another Book

Apologies for blogging this booklaunch a bit late, but I hope some of you can make it. I plan to go and I'm really looking forward to getting a copy of this :

FARISH NOOR’S “WHAT YOUR TEACHER DIDN'T TELL YOU: The Annexe Lectures Vol.1”

Book Launch

Sat 5 Dec, 8pm

Presented by Matahari Books

Admission Free

Matahari Books is proud to launch Farish A. Noor’s latest book “WHAT YOUR TEACHER DIDN'T TELL YOU: The Annexe Lectures, Vol.1”. The book is especially significant for us as it collects the texts of Farish’s free public lectures at The Annexe Gallery. Hurray!

Farish A. Noor might just be Malaysia's hippest intellectual. His gifts are on full display in these expanded versions of public lectures that he delivered at The Annexe Gallery, Central Market Kuala Lumpur in 2008 and 2009.

Find out how “racial difference” became such a big deal in Malaysia, and contrast this against the way our distant ancestors lived. Discover the hidden stories of the keris, Hang Tuah and PAS. There's also quite a bit of sex. Erudite, impassioned and sometimes just plain naughty, “WHAT YOUR TEACHER DIDN'T TELL YOU” is a stimulating plunge into aspects of our past that have been kept from us.

The 288-page book also contains dozens of sepia-toned photographs, many from Farish's own collection of antiques. There's even a bonus chapter! And it's printed on thick (128 gsm) fully recycled paper. Retail price: RM40 (RM5 off at the launch).

+

EVENT PROGRAMME

Launch by Sara (age 5), fairy kid
Speech by Farish A. Noor
Birthday cake for Amir Muhammad
+ Secret surprise!

This launch event is co-sponsored by The Annexe Gallery and The Other Malaysia.

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PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

If you can't make it to the launch but would like to pre-order an autographed copy, you are most welcome! Just deposit RM40 (free delivery within Malaysia) to Maybank 014105120512 (Amir Muhammad) and email your confirmation and address to matahari.books@gmail.com

This offer ends on the night of 4 December. Farish will autograph the books at the launch and they will be posted via registered post on 7 December.

A Compendium of Curiosities

Think you know everything there is to know about Malaysia? Think again!

Martin Cross of Edition Didier Millet sent me a copy of a new release the other day - Malaysia at Random. This little book has had me so entertained that I swear I'm going to go out and buy some more copies as Christmas gifts.

This book is a compendium of Malaysian trivia and curiosities on pages which look as if they could have come from a long-ago almanac. (The nearest comparison I can make is Schott's Original Miscellany.)

The last thing I want to do is give too much of the contents away, so I will chuck at you the questions on the back cover :

What is the main ingredient of torpedo soup?
How much is the Malaysian prime ministers' salary?
Where were the first fast-food outlets established in Malaysia?
How many taxis are there in Kuala Lumpur?
What are the most uncommon causes of death in Malaysia?
What does the "P" in P.Ramlee's name stand for?
What percentage of the emails originating from Malaysia is spam?
What are Malaysia's most valuable brands?
How do you artificially inseminate an elephant?

I laughed at all the descriptions (by Mat Salleh's of course) of what durians taste (and smell like) with Anthony Bourdain's assertion :

Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother

the wittiest. (Yeah it's true, but then so what?)

I laughed almost as hard at Dr. M's reply to the hapless British lad who wrote a letter expressing his concern about deforestation.

I'm very glad that I now know that it is an offence to ride of lead an elephant on a public road without the permission of the Chief Police Officer, because I would hate to be fined the mandatory RM50.

I know Malaysians will rejoice reading the list of items that can be classified as Intangible National Heritage (from Acar Buah to the writings of Za'aba).

I particularly appreciated the Malaysian food calories counter (6 pieces of the aforementioned durian - 357 calories!!), though i am not sure I know what to do with the information on goat breeding or how to torture my enemy to death with a nipah palm.

I could go on, but don't want to spoil the fun for you guys. So do go buy a copy as a gift, and read it yourself first!

Literary Winners

Have to some catching up to do with letting you know about recent winners of literary prizes. Petina Gappah has won the 2009 Guardian First Book Award for her short story collection An Elegy for Easterly. Claire Armistead, chair of the judges, praised the books as a:

...humane and disarmingly funny mosaic of life in Zimbabwe

You can enjoy the first lines from each story on Petina's website, and read about her feelings on winning the prize on her blog. Debut novelist Evie Wyld beat some pretty fierce competition (including Booker winner Aravind Adiga and Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2009. After the Fire, a Still Small Voice is :

... set in eastern Australia and tells a story of fathers and sons, their wars and the things that they will never know about each other.

PddQ8xLinAc >Louise Doughty, chair of Judges, described the novel as :

... a remarkable book. A sometimes poignant, sometimes comic story of a father and son who have so much in common but never quite connect, it is awash with fine images that linger in the mind. Wyld’s choice of subject matter is both brave and wide-ranging, from the wars in Korea and Vietnam to the back country of Eastern Australia, Wyld captures the inflections of male speech and male bonding in a way that feels both acute and realistic. Most importantly, she writes brilliantly, able to paint a picture or create a convincing encounter with a few deft, evocative strokes, in a prose style worthy of our very best writers. There is nothing 'first novelish' about this first novel. It's a fantastically mature book, never showy, a slow burn that drags the reader in.

Wyld was one of Granta's Voices of 2008, and you can catch her talking about her book on YouTube. Then there's the infamous Bad Sex Award in fiction, which I mentioned a few days back. This year it was won by Jonathan Littell. One extract from The Kindly Ones that the judges felt merited the award compares a woman's genitalia and :

a Gorgon's head ... a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks.

But the award is all about schoolboy sniggering, suggests Oliver Marre in The Telegraph :

It is funny – and also quite satisfying – to see the winner of the Prix Goncourt tittered at like this but the fact remains that his description of sex wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t worse, say, than his description of love or violence when taken out of context.

David Hewson has a very good piece on his blog called Do We Need Sex in Fiction, which I think every potential novelist, wanting to avoid the pitfalls, should read.

And This is the Secret ...

You have to treat this as the single most important part of your life. You do not need anything as fancy as inspiration, just this steady habit of writing regularly even when you're sick or sad or dull. Nothing must stop you, not even your beloved children. If you have kids you do what Toni Morrison did—write in the hours before they wake. If you wish to be a like the champion who swims for four hours every day of the year, you will need extraordinary will. You either have this or you don't, but you won't know unless you try.

Biggest congratulations to all those who finished this year's Nanowrimo with 50K words under their belt. Even if those novels never see light of day, they are preparation for the one that will.

Those who signed up for the biggest of all writing competitions have been receiving regular pep talks from famous authors. The final one was this one from Peter Carey which arrived in everyone's inboxes last night. If you want to be a published author, all the advice you need to suceed is here.

Tap Tap

More on the topic of typewriters :

The Guardian blog responds to the news of McCarty's auction with a piece about other authors and their typewriters. Julian Barnes says :

I think you need the technology that suits the way your brain works. Sometimes you need your thoughts to go down your arm in what feels like a direct feed via pencil or felt-tip to paper, sometimes you require a more formal "sit up and address a machine".

When I tried writing on a computer, it felt an inert business. I had no relationship with the machine; whereas my IBM 196c makes a nice hum, as if it's saying quietly: "Come on, get on with it" or "Surely you can improve on that."

I also found that, while the myth of the computer was that it made everyone write at greater length, and under-correct, because on the screen and in neat print-out it looks more finished than it is, I found that I was constantly over-correcting, ending up with something too tight and unflowing for a first draft.

Another piece on the blog lists Will Self, Don DeLillo and Frederick Forsyth as more authors who use a typewriter.

Says Self :

Writing on a manual makes you slower in a good way, I think. You don't revise as much, you just think more, because you know you're going to have to retype the entire fucking thing. Which is a big stop on just slapping anything down and playing with it.

And Fredrick Forsyth definitely has a point when he says :

I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again.

Worth browsing is the site myTypewriter.com :

Authors A-Z is an ongoing project featuring the lives, works, and typewriters of the most outstanding authors around the world. Created in 2004 by Kevin McGowin and Charles Gu for myTypewriter.com, the project is both a celebration and an exploration of writers and their writing machines. Consisting of more than 80 contemporary authors from Mark Twin to Ayn Rand, Authors A-Z is a growing project documenting the important role of classic typewriters played in the formation of literature master pieces.

May i just add the note, I used typewriters for many years ... and was Typex's best customer!

BTW, the image at the top is a sculture using old typewriters by Jeremy Mayer. More can be found here.

Postscript :

Worth reading also is George Tannebaum's post Tools vs Toys [via] :

Today, of course our tools are more sophisticated than typewriters. We can do sophisticated motion graphics and editing at our desks or on a plane. We can make type dance like Isadora Duncan on LSD. We can compose and record music. We can buy a $49 video camera and shoot stuff.

These are all things Mr. McCarthy can't do on his Olivetti. But they don't make us better than McCarthy. Because Mr. McCarthy's trade involves ideas.

So far no one has built a desktop app that produces those.

Typewriter for Sale, One Careful User ...

It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose. ... I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of 50 years.

I don't think I can better Patricia Cohen's headline in The New York Times - No Country for Old Typewriters. Yes, this is Cormac McCarthy's machine we're talking about, a :

portable Olivetti manual typewriter he bought in a Knoxville, Tenn., pawnshop around 1963 for $50

on which he has written, among much else :

more than a dozen novels, several screenplays, two plays, two short stories, countless drafts, letters.

It's now being auctioned off after McCarthy's friend and colleague John Miller offered to replace the aging machine. The proceeds will go the Santa Fe institute which both work for. The replacement McCarthy selected is ... a used portable Olivetti which cost around $11. There's a lot to admire in the simplicity of that, I think.

Bibliogifties

With Christmas just round the corner, what do you give the book lover who already has enough reading material stacked up to last 3 lifetimes (or as in my case 4)?

Check out some of the cool things available from The Literary Gift Company.

How about ... a handbag made from a book? (This would be the perfect present for GeneGirl!) :

Or a board game? (The object of this one is to beg, borrow or steal 6 books!) :


Or a piece of jewellery, like this banned books bracelet? :



Or maybe just a simple mug?


I'm thinking of inventing The Warehouse Sales Survival Kit (complete with energy tablets, collapsible shopping cart which doubles as a seat, and dustmask) for local booklovers ...

The World's Smallest Library

When a small English village lost its mobile library and public phone in the same week, the solution seemed obvious!