Friday, April 30, 2010

The Greenest Way to Read

Which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book? The New York Times has the answer for you after carrying out life-cycle assessments of both.  But, the article concludes :
All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library.
Then again, for how much longer will your local library (even supposing you have one in the first place) have books printed on paper?
(Readers' responses to the article are here.)

Khairulz Sex Manualz?

When you ban a book you simply advertise its presence to would-be readers. Khairul H goes shopping on Amazon.com for titles banned here and underlines the fact that The Home Ministry is in fact setting up a list of absolutely must-read books for Malaysians.

When downloading ebooks becomes a common way to buy books - how on earth can any ban be put into place then?

Times' Mega Book Fair

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Happened up at Times Mega book sale in BSC after finishing at the hairdressers, and ended up spending way too much. 30-90% discount on books and some very good titles.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Poetry Improves Patients' Emotional health

When people listen to words, there is a chemical change in their bodies. ... Poetry does not have any side-effects, and you can always get a refill.
Diane Kaufman, assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at University Hospital in Newark is one of growing number of physicians and therapists who use "poetry therapy" to help their patients cope emotionally with their illness reports Rohan Mascarenhas in New Jerseys The Star-Leger.

In the picture (left) poet John Fox discusses the amputation of one of his legs with audience members at a Poetry in Medicine Day at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School.

Maintaining Confidence

For those of you who write, there's a great piece on Forbes.com (found via BookRabbit on Twitter) about how successful writers maintain their confidence. Alan Rinzler, Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass (an imprint of John Wiley) points out that :
To write well requires energy, discipline and a sense of humor.
And he offers some sterling advice to writers to help them soldier on through periods of doubt, - among them :
Even if you don’t love what you’re turning out, keep putting those words on the screen or down on paper, regardless. What may feel like a massive writer’s block may be only the need to pause, or to work out the story on an internal, unconscious level. You can always polish or delete what you’ve written, but sustaining the discipline will be encouraging and ultimately valuable. You will actually build confidence by sticking to the task at hand.

April/May Readings@Seksan

I found that with much else going on, I ran out of Saturdays in April to hold Readings.  It's on though, with an excellent bunch of readers.  Hope you can make it.

Date: Saturday 1st May, 2010
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

Map

The readers for this month are:

Ike Ong
Leon Wing
Karl Hutchison
David TK Wong
Imran Ahmad

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

(For enquiries contact Sharon 017-2644956, sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Wahid's Mobile Bookstore

Shirley Heng sent me this link to a very moving YouTube video of a 9 year old Indian boy called Wahid who sells pirated books on the streets of Mumbai to support his family.  Notice that one of the most popular books he is selling is Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

Three Friends on Frank O'Connor Longlist!

Biggest congrats to friends longlisted for the Frank O'Connor short story award : Wena Poon for The Proper Care of Foxes; David T.K. Wong for Chinese Stories in Times of Change and O Thiam Chin for Never Been Better. (All three books are sitting on my dining table been read in rotation! And if you should want copies of your own, they all should be in our local bookshops.) 

The total longlist is 54 strong this year (comprising 26 women/ 28 men; 21 Americans, 12 British, 6 Indians, 3 Canadians, 3 Irish, 2 New Zealanders, 2 Singaporeans, and one each from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bulgaria, China, US Virgin Islands. 

David TK Wong, incidentally, is appearing at Readings@Seksan this Saturday and reading an extract from the new novel he is working on.

Postscript :

The longlist for the Edge Hill Short story prize has also just been announced.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

A Thoroughly Chaotic Writer of Neatly Plotted Stories

Her less-than-refined writerly day began with finding her notebook, which surely she'd left right there. Then, having found a notebook (not the one she'd used yesterday), and staring in stunned amazement at the illegible chicken scratchings therein, she would finally settle down to jab at elusive characters and oil creaky plots. ... Christie's promiscuous note-taking meant that any one novel or play might be distributed over multiple notebooks and many, many years.
I thought I was a chaotic writer but didn't expect the same to be true of such a neat plotter as Agatha Christie!  In Slate magazine Christine Kenneally, a great fan of Christie's work, pours over Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks : Fifty years of Mysteries in the Making. She finds that :
The contents of the notebooks are as multi-dimensional as their Escher-like structure. They include fully worked-out scenes, historical background, lists of character names, rough maps of imaginary places, stage settings, an idle rebus (the numeral three, a crossed-out eye, and a mouse), and plot ideas that will be recognizable to any Christie fan: "Poirot asks to go down to country—finds a house and various fantastic details," "Saves her life several times," "Inquire enquire—both in same letter." What's more, in between ominous scraps like "Stabbed through eye with hatpin" and "influenza depression virus—Stolen? Cabinet Minister?" are grocery lists: "Newspapers, toilet paper, salt, pepper …" There was no clean line between Christie's work life and her family life. She created household ledgers, and scribbled notes to self. ("All away weekend—can we go Thursday Nan.") Even Christie's second husband, the archeologist Sir Max Mallowan, used her notebooks. He jotted down calculations. Christie's daughter Rosalind practiced penmanship, and the whole family kept track of their bridge scores alongside notes like, "Possibilities of poison … cyanide in strawberry … coniine—in capsule?"
Most surprising of all, it seems that Christie did not always know who the killer was when she started writing her crime novels, but allowed herself the space to try out different possibilities. I always thought that an outline of the plot had to come first when writing this particular genre (I know that this is how Elizabeth George works, for example.)

John Curran's book also includes two previously unpublished Poirot stories and sounds like a must-buy for anyone who loves Christie's books.  I'm fascinated by the creative process, love to study writer's notebooks, and will add this to my wishlist.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Alan Sillitoe Dies

British Novelist Alan Silitoe has died aged 82.

He was one of the Angry Young Men* of British fiction who emerged in the 1950s and drew material from their disaffection with traditional British society, and is best known for his novel Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1958) which was also filmed and starred Albert Finney.  (See the trailer here.)  His short story The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner was also filmed with Tom Courtenay in the lead role. He also published several volumes of poetry, children's books and plays.

Silitoe came from a working class background.  He left school at 14 and worked in a bicycle factory in his native Nottingham before serving in the RAF. He was posted to Malaya during The Emergency as a radio operator and said about it: 
I didn’t want to help in this war. If I had had an opportunity to help the guerrillas I would have done so.
He was invalided out of the service with TB and later drew on his experiences for a novel, The Open Door.

Postscript :

More on the Angry Young Men from The Telegraph.

Imagination is a Place

No, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t run short of imagination. You can get jaded, myopic and maybe sluggish. But imagination is...  it’s more a place actually, or a lab. Stories are infinite. You help yourself to as much as you want. You. Your kid. The human mud of your marriage. It’s all material. For that to run dry — it’s unthinkable. It would be like a fish worrying about water when it’s in the sea. The world has infinite plots for me.
Great quote from Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell who is interviewed by Patricia Nichol on The Times website and talks about why he enjoys anonymity. His latest work is a historical novel set in feudal Japan.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Bookshop Just for Women

So what do you think of this idea - a bookshop especially for women?

Elizabeth Tai writes that MPH Bookstores has introduced Malaysia’s first “women concept” store which is at The Curve :
To begin with, the outlet’s books will be chosen for their appeal to women. There will be everything from women-centric business and management books and autobiographies on prominent female leaders to chick-lit and cookbooks. EspresSOUP is a little corner where you can relax with a cup of coffee and a good book. ... There will also be other products with female appeal, such as wedding stationery, to name just one. Brides-to-be will be glad to know that stationery specialist MOOF will be bringing in its exclusive designs, which will only be available at The Curve outlet.
I think it is a clever marketing strategy, especially as The Curve already has a big branch of Borders and the branch of MPH does need to differentiate itself.

Bookshops also do need to reinvent themselves as destinations which customers associate with a pleasurable experience, if they are to survive especially as we move towards the age of ebooks.

This sounds like a place where women might go to treat themselves and get away from the pressures of the day and that's good and I like the idea of the books club, talks and workshops:  it's bookstore "squidginess", for sure.

But, I do have some reservations.  First, I personally don't like segregation of the sexes. Men need their spaces to relax and hang out too.  

And secondly I don't like the cliched assumptions that women should like certain things whether in terms of decor (usually frilly, flowery pink things) or in the choice of  books.  The concept of women's bookshops is nothing new, but around the globe most have been independents which promoted feminist and/or lesbian thought.

Furthermore, it seems to me that there is an increasing de-emphasis on selling books and a move towards the store becoming a gift shop that also sells books. 

I will go check it out the next time I go shopping at The Curve ... and I hope the EspresSOUP corner serves decent coffee!

Anyway, what's your reaction to this?

Friday, April 23, 2010

Schools Get Reading Material and Michelle Donates Her Books

This is certainly a big step in the right direction .  As World Book and Copyright Day kicks off, The Star reports that 1,000 secondary schools are each to get reading material worth RM1,000 to encourage youngsters to read. Primary schools will be targeted next. Hope that all the schools in the country eventually benefit from this initiative and that this isn't a on-off donation.  Up and down the country school libraries need stocking well if we are to have a younger generation of readers.

And if we had any doubts about Reading Ambassador Datuk Michelle Yeoh taking her task seriously, she is planning to set up a corner for her books in the National Library.  She also says that she reads 10-15 books a month, mostly work related.

Former prime minister Tun Dr Maha­thir Mohamad  has also been appointed a campaign ambassador.

Malaysian Maverick Cleared for Sale

The Home Ministry took 4 months to make up its mind, but now Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain has been approved for sale and should hit the bookshops by early next week, The Star reports.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Dasgupta Wins Commonwealth Prize


Playing catch-up with the literary award news, I'm afraid.

The overall Commonwealth Writers Prize this year went to British-Indian author Rana Dasgupta for his novel Solo which recounts the life and daydreams of Ulrich, a one hundred year-old blind man from Bulgaria.

According to the Commonwealth Foundation website :
The judges chose Solo for its innovation, ambition, courage and effortlessly elegant prose. A remarkable novel of two halves, this is a book that takes risks and examines the places where grim reality and fantastical daydreams merge, diverge, and feed off each other. Solo, the judges concluded, is a tour de force, breathtaking in its boldness and narrative panache.
(Read a review here on the Guardian website.)


The first book award went to Australian author Glenda Guest for Siddon Rock which the judges praised  for its :
... rich cast of odd characters and blending of the everyday with fantasy. Behind every door in town lurk secret desires and wild imaginings. The novel, they concluded, deftly delves into the hauntings and disjunctions of settler Australia, and in its fable-like quality captures the laconic mannerisms of the Australian outback.

Imran and the Post 9/11 World

(Moving this to the top of my blog to remind you all.)

Imran Ahmad whom I met at the Ubud Writer's Festival in 2008 is in town on business and has kindly agreed to give a talk. He's a wonderfully warm and funny speaker and I enjoying his book very much at the moment :
Imran Ahmad author of Unimagined – a Muslim Boy Meets the West will be giving an entertaining and insightful talk entitled Islam and the West: Living, Travelling and Getting Published in a Post 9/11 World.

He will give a personal account of his experiences growing up in the Cold War era, dreaming of being a writer, and the profound changes he experienced after 9/11. His emotions during his frequent business travel to America transformed from joyful anticipation to nervous apprehension. He discusses the ‘lazy tribalism’ which drives us towards polarization, dehumanization and demonization, and the need for a ‘re-humanization’ of the relationship between the Islamic and Western worlds.

His hilarious account of his journey to publication reveals how the motif of ‘Islam vs the West’ is very hard to break – especially when it’s profitable. Also, how following your dream entails doing the necessary work and getting some good luck along the way.

Last year, Imran Ahmad embarked on a 14,000 mile drive around the United States in a hybrid car, conducting 41 speaking events in 39 cities, as part of his ‘re-humanization’ mission.

Venue : Instant Cafe House of Art & Ideas [CHAI], No. 6 Jalan 6/3, 46000 Petaling Jaya
Date : Saturday 24th April
Time : 5.30-7.30
Cost : Minimum RM20 donation towards the running costs of CHAI
Contact : Tel/Fax: +603 77848792 www.instantcafetheatre.com
info@instantcafetheatre.com

Monday, April 19, 2010

It's All White, Borders


After 5 years in Malaysia, Borders is celebrating with some tasty offers.  (Click poster up to size to read.) Congrats!

But the whiteness of the kids in the picture has been upsetting friends.  Daphne Lee asks on facebook : 
So how come there aren't any Malaysian children in the picture? Is this another case of whitewashing?
Amir Muhammad wants to know :
Does reading make you white?
Both of them got plenty of response to their questions.

I reckon the person who put the ad together just reached for a stock image without considering the reaction of Malaysian consumers.   But considering the reaction, one can only hope that a lesson will be learned.

No Fly Zone

In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies and fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea. ... The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.
A delightfully whimsical piece by philospher/author Alain de Botton, A World Without Planes, on the BBC website. Sometimes one does just want to turn the clock back to a time when things were simpler ...

Postscript :

And Carol Ann Duffy also sees a silver lining in an ash-cloud.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Tinkers Wins Pulitzer

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year goes to Paul Harding for Tinkers. According to The New York Times its :
... a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.
And the runners up were Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet :
...an imaginative collection of linked stories, often describing a memorable encounter between a famous person and an animal, underscoring the human folly of longing for significance while chasing trifles ...
and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin:
... a collection of beautifully crafted stories that exposes the Western reader to the hopes, dreams and dramas of an array of characters in feudal Pakistan, resulting in both an aesthetic and cultural achievement.
You can read about the recipients of the award in the different categories on the Pulitzer website. (And its great to see Hank Williams getting a special citation, isn't it?)

Postscript :

Tinkers has been acclaimed one of the strongest debut American novels, and it is heartwarming to learn that it was published by a small press. The Bellevue Press site has an impressive collection of  quotes about the book from a range of newspapers. There's also a very good interview with the author (dating from last year) on the Bookslut blog and you can read an extract from the novelhere.
.
In the comments Chet mentions a very interesting post by Ginny Wiehardt about the lessons we can learn from this winner. I was particularly intrigued by his writing process. He says he wrote episodes and then "collaged" them together:
I don't write the book in any order, I just literally wake up and write about whatever immediately strikes me as interesting. Usually I'm wondering, I have a question about something. 'What does she think at that point?' Or, 'What does he do?' . . . And I just start writing. Eventually, I have to have faith in the process, it happened with Tinkers so I'm hoping it will happen again, eventually everything ends up overlapping.
This is definitely a novel I must read.

I must say though the pallid cover does the book no favours on the internet - it looks completely washed out, doesn't it? Lucky though the book buyer who holds a first edition hardback copy of the book - prices are climbing.

Stories That Go Bump in the Night

My friend and writing buddy Eeleen Lee has a great post about things that go bump in the night which I think you may enjoy :
Thought I might save this post for Halloween, but then again, Halloween is a season for carnivalesque safe scares; you pays your money, enter the ghost-train ride and emerge on the other side unscathed. The ride is easily forgotten and the memory is disposable. ... Alison Flood's article in The Guardian set me thinking about horror/supernatural fiction. Readers cite the usual horror suspects (King, Poe, Shirley Jackson...) but I remember as a reader that my literary scares came from reading short stories in old anthologies borrowed from libraries or unearthed in clearance book sales. I discovered new names and old names; wonderful tales by one-hit wonders and stories by writers that you'd normally would not associate with horror/ supernatural fiction.
And to find out what gave Eeleen goosebumps go here.

We've talked about out scariest stories before, but are there any more you would add to the list?

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

If It's Not a Good Read ...


I am often amazed by how sloppy the books by massive names are ... Sometimes we took a deep breath before agreeing that probably this book, had it been written by a debut author, would not have been looked at.
Richard Lea in The Guardian quotes Anne Fine one of the judges for the IMPAC Dublin Literary award : Philp Roth, Salman Rushdie and José Saramago are among those who failed to make the shortlist this year.  and I think that we would wholeheartedly agree with her criterion :
If it's not a good read, then it's not a good book
(But have to agree to differ with the judges about Joseph O'Neill's novel being a "good read".  Please do let me know, anyone out there, if you actually enjoyed it!)

The shortlist which includes works in translation  :
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Translated from the original French by Alison Anderson)

In Zodiac Light by Robert Edric

Settlement by Christoph Hein

The Believers by Zoë Heller

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

God's Own County by Ross Raisin 
Libraries around the world selected the books for the longlist as usual. The National Library of Malaysia nominated Rainforest Tears. (More here.)  I am sure that Paul Leslie Smith and his publisher Marshall Cavendish will be thrilled at having made the longlist. I'm surprised that there was no publicity about this.

When Publishing Changes

Print books are never going to go away; but the current distribution model will. 2012 could be a year of disaster, not because of the Mayan calendar, but because of traditional publishing's inability to deal with the impact of technology, and their arrogant refusal to adapt. As long as publishers cling to the belief that they're the only game in town--employing a business model that has not significantly changed since the early 1800s--it's a matter of when, not if; and that when fast approaches.
writes Michael A. Stackpole in the Huffington Post, commenting on book industry consultant Michael Shatzkin's theory that the publishing industry will crash by the end of 2012.

We're talking about when and not if the industry changes and it's scary stuff for those in the book business.

Among the changes that Shatzkin  posits - books will appear in e-book format first, and if they get a good enough response and reviews, will then be printed as physical books.  There will be far fewer bricks and mortar bookshops as sales move online. There will be far more authors self-publishing and cutting out the middleman.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Burgess Rebooked

Some heart-warming news for an Anthony Burgess fan :
Beautiful Books has announced that in the autumn it will be reissuing three out-of-print Anthony Burgess titles: Tremor of Intent, 1985 and One Hand Clapping. They will be produced as if they were new works, with a full marketing and publicity blitz. The publisher Simon Petherick is very excited. “Ever since I had to look up the word ‘catamite’ when I read that famous first line of Earthly Powers in 1981,” he says, “I have been a Burgess fan.”
More here on the publisher's website.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Wena Wins Willesden

Congrats to Singaporean author Wena Poon who has won Willesden Herald's Short Story Prize with a piece called The Architects. The results were announced at a special event last night Charles Dickens' house, 48 Doughty Street, London, and equal runners-up were Willie Davis and Henrietta Rose-Innes.

I like this quote by author/poet Richard Peabody from the back of the collection of finalists' stories (left) :  
In my next life I'm coming back as the brainy talented author of "The Architects." Talk about brazen, submitting a story about a contest to a writing contest. Does it work? Check. The focus might well be on writers—the same dynamics of love, jealousy, sex, and mentors, applies. New York City is captured in amber. Check. Foreign-born exiles get their due. Check. Authentic dialogue squeezes out sparks. Check. Jokes? Check. Do the juggled balls remain in the air? Check. Yes, I want to be this author, who like a sly child with an Erector Set creates miraculous buildings out of thin air."
Am quite impressed that the prize is a mug!  (I love mugs and always drink my tea from them.)

GeneGirl on Reading Retreats in Rural Italy

You've probably heard of writing retreats, but what about a reading retreat?


When my good friend GeneGirl told me that she was going off on one in Italy and offered to blog it the chance was too good to pass up, so here 'tis :
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul, said Franz Kafka.

Break away from it all in rural Italy. At least that is what I did when I headed off to Castello di Galeazza to spend eight days at a reading retreat. The castle boasts over 3000 books, arranged alphabetically and in a library that begs you never to leave.
The castle itself is adorned with frescoes, gardens, goats, chickens and woods behind with an ancient ice house. You could laze about in the library reading; grab a book of the stairs in the kitchen (strategically placed beside loads of alcohol) or swing about on the hammocks outside.


I arrived with expectation of reading away after having checked out the reading list on galeazza.com but instead spent my time gardening, buying a goat, wining and dining and making new friends.


Clark Lawrence who started the idea of a reading retreat runs the castle and the retreat. He feeds, cleans, houses, entertains and will teach you how to garden, rear goats; speak Italian perhaps or anything else that may catch your fancy.
Besides, you may just be lucky and end up catching one of the musical concerts that Clark arranges in the castle regularly. I was bag piped away by the genius of a Gregorio Bellodi with his Irish pipes. He had decided that it was an instrument that sounded nice and went ahead and learnt it.
If music and books and the fantabulous amount of food and wine does not do it for you, saunter around the castle appreciating the art. Artists come over to the castle to paint and if you are lucky enough you may be able to purchase their work. A piece I wanted badly had already been purchased. Each bedroom carries the work of an artist which you would appreciate if not caught up with the stacks of books laying about.
There is an inscription over the door at the library at Thebes: Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.

That is what Castello di Galezza did for me, salve with its medicine chest.

(Got a story about books or reading to share? Why not guestblog a post? Email me at sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Malaysian Poets for Rhino

Here's an interesting call for submissions which actively courts Malaysian poets:
RHINO Translation Initiative - Call for Submissions

As part of our ongoing interest in international poetry, RHINO has begun a three-year effort to encourage submissions from poets around the Pacific, particularly those in language groups and/or from countries less frequently represented in North American poetry journals.

Each year of the initiative, we will target two or three countries for special outreach. In the first year, RHINO is focusing on poetry from the Philippines and Malaysia. Although the initiative is highlighting poetry-in-translation, poets from the Philippines and Malaysia are also welcome to submit original poetry in English. Of course, we will also continue to consider poetry-in-translation, as well as our usual English language submissions, by poets from all countries.

RHINO editors Angela Narciso Torres and YZ Chin will serve as special editors for outreach efforts to the Philippines and Malaysia, respectively.

Background:

RHINO is an award-winning, eclectic, independent, annual poetry journal in the US of more than 33 years' standing. Based in Evanston, Illinois (near Chicago), we publish poems, flash fiction/short-shorts (<1000 words), and poetry-in-translation from around the world that move, experiment, provoke, play, compel and/or sing. Our regular call for poetry, as well as the Founders' Contest submission period, is April 1 - October 1.

RHINO receives 3000 - 5000 poems yearly. From those, 80-100 poets are selected annually.
You can read the guidelines for submission here.

Bernice in the Caribbean

Congrats to Bernice Chauly who has been invited take part in a combined writers' tour organised by Winternachten to the Dutch Carribean and Suriname.

A Sense of Belonging, is the theme and for two weeks, from 13 to 24 April  Bernice will be performing her work for audiences (including students and school pupils) in Sint Maarten, Curaçao, Aruba en Suriname alongside writers Bas Heijne (Netherlands), Yasmine Allas (Netherlands/Somalia) and Iman Humaydan (Lebanon).

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Peake's Pictures


I'm always fascinated by authors who are also artists and one of my very favourites is Mervyn Peake of Gormenghast fame. The Guardian features a slide show of his work to celebrate the acquisition by The British Library of the author's 39 Gormenghast notebooks, his complete set of original drawings for Lewis Carroll's Alice books and personal correspondence with author.  More about the collection here.

Taking Malaysian Food to Manchester



Yesterday I got invited along to the Malaysian launch of Chef Norman Musa's book Malaysian Food at Hotel Impiana.

Norman is the creator and Executive Chef of Ning restaurant in Manchester, which also boasts a cookery school, the first of its kind, I think, in the UK. I'm in favour of anything that teaches the Mat Salleh's what they are missing if they don't have great Malaysian food in their lives.

(And yes, Rob and Elaine in Manchester, I did ask him if he cooks vegetarian dishes in his restaurant and he says yes, even vegan, so trot along and have a makan for me.)

Now I'm a sucker for cookbooks, and although I've got my favourite Malaysian recipes (learned from my husband and a sister-in-law) down pat, I'm sort of stuck in a bit of a culinary rut, so am grateful for my copy of this.

Most of the recipes are Malaysian standards like rendang, nasi lemak, fish curry, prawn fritters, but there are a few things I haven't tried my hand at yet (murtubak, those pretty little Malay kueh), and the recipes are very simple to follow and don't contain a daunting list of impossible to get ingredients (even in the UK provided you can do a quick supermarket run to somewhere like Wing Yip.)  I really like the way that Norman tells us what ingredients he substitutes in the UK because I love to cook there when I go back and making compromises is often miserable and things don't taste right.

But this is more than a cookbooks and I enjoyed the commentary too - especially the description of a Malaysian market and all the good things you can buy there, and the photos of the food, as well as more arty black and white shots of Malaysian faces.

This book would make a very nice gift, especially for someone who doesn't yet know too much about Malaysian food but is raring to have a go.

I enjoyed meeting Norman after the event, and got my copy of the book signed.  It was great to meet so many friends from the bookshops too, and make some new ones.  And we got great goody bags of ingredients including tons of Adabi curry powder ... so now I have no excuse not to cook the dishes!

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Harapan


The Saya Anak Malaysia blog has a very nice write-up about Sunday's panels for Malaysia Forum, which makes me sound a whole lot more coherent than I thought I was. Here's me with Pete Teo and Fahmi Fadzil who had interesting things to say about music and film in Malaysia.

For Love of Books

While we debate who should be "reading ambassadors" to stir interest in reading in Malaysia, an article in The Jakarta Globe tells us an inspiring story about an ordinary Indonesian woman, construction worker and mother of two, Kiswanti, who has been able to drive home the message that everyone deserves access to books.

(Thanks, Amir, for posting this link on my Facebook page today.)

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

The End of Publishing?



Boing Boing comments :
Here's an adorable, tricky and clever video on the future of publishing, courtesy of the Penguin folks, who produced it for an internal presentation and then released it into the wild after everyone loved it. Be sure to watch to at least halfway, when the clever gets visible.
(Found this via Zafar Anjum on Twitter.)

Monday, April 05, 2010

Sell Your Soul to the Devil, Will Travel


This map from Lapham's Quarterly [via] of how some of the world's best known stories (including the Faust and Oedipus legends) have travelled over the centuries is absolutely fascinating.  Would we nowadays call writers plagiarists if they borrowed a plot?  This certainly doesn't seem to have worried authors like Thomas Mann and William Shakespeare.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

The Death of Independent Bookshops

The death of independent bookshops is just one symptom of a much wider crisis in publishing. Discounted books, online bookselling and the advent of ebooks are destroying old patterns of reading and book buying. We are living through a revolution as enormous as the one created by Gutenberg’s printing press – and authors and publishers are terrified they will become as outdated as the monks who copied out manuscripts. How this happened is down to ambitious editors, greedy agents, demanding writers and big businesses with an eye for easy profit. Combine that with devilishly fast technological innovation and you have a story as astonishing as the credit crunch – and potentially as destructive.
Sameer Rahim in The Telegraph mourns the loss of yet another independent London bookshop, and wonders whether the writing on the wall for literature in a piece aptly called Apoca-Lit:
We are living through a moment when all the balls have been thrown in the air and no one is sure where they will land. In the digital age, will publishers and agents survive in their current form? Derek Johns argues that “authors need agents as first readers and financial advisers” and someone will have to collate and distribute books whether in bound or ebook form. But will they? How long can it be before Tesco (which already has a 10 per cent share of the book market) stops dealing with fussy publishers and brands its own books? The ebook is also changing things dramatically. The iPad arrives in this country next month and looks set to put the Sony Reader out of commission. Perhaps more significantly, ebooks will allow writers to bypass agents, publishers and bookshops by launching their work on the web or exchanging it quickly among themselves. The extra costs involved in manufacturing books will inevitably come to make them seem a luxury and make the bound book as obsolete as vinyl. ... Without some form of institutional support, there is a risk that only the trashy and the brilliant will thrive. That might sound like a bracingly efficient way of doing things, but the wonder of books is that no one can ever be sure how important they might be – or who might start slowly and then turn, eventually, into a genius. The careers of many authors show that the mercurial and the eccentric often take a long time to be appreciated. Abolishing the gatekeepers – however excessive or peculiar they may be – will not help reveal all those hidden talents to public view. Instead, the danger is our bookshelves will come to resemble a long line of branded baked beans.
In case you think this is an alarmist view look at what Simon-Peter Trimarco, manager, of the Kilburn Bookshops says about the business shutting down:
I'm trying to put down my thoughts about where I see the industry going, and realize that I think the whole industry is going to fail in the next couple of years. Dillons, Ottakar's, Hammicks have all gone; Borders went bankrupt in December; Waterstone's has obviously been struggling for ages; most independents have closed, or will do soon; and those stalwarts and new shops which (we are told) are "thriving" are situated in out-of-the-way places and in very affluent neighbourhoods with no competition for the mass market.

Soon there won't be enough shops for publishers to get a new title stocked and sold - then they'll start failing too. We’ve had to suffer the online folk like Amazon and the big chains and supermarkets demanding huge discounts in order to discount themselves to oblivion. 
And he foresees that :
... once almost all the bookshops have closed, Amazon, or some similar mega-company, will start opening little Browsing Bookshops. It'll be like TescoMetro or Starbucks: first put all the other shops and suppliers out of business, then go in there yourself and tell everyone what a great job you do, a great service to the "consumer", that we‘ve never had it so good.

Previous posts about Independent bookshops here.

When Pretty Faces Just Aren’t Enough

Yeoh and Dr Sheikh Muszaphar are not selling cars or soft drinks – we need more than just a pretty face to promote reading. We need reading ambassadors who read, and who are already actively involved in promoting literacy and reading.
Pretty faces aren't enough when it comes to choosing reading ambassadors says Daphne Lee in StarMag, picking up the debate :
The United States has a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, while Britain has a Children’s Laureate. Both posts acknowledge the importance of encouraging children to read.... An important criterion in the selection of the National Ambassador is his/her “ability to relate to children”. The ambassador must also be able to communicate “well and regularly” with young people. And both positions require respected authors or illustrators.
But before we should even be thinking about such a position, she says, we have to create better access to books, and children should be read to on a daily basis by their teachers. (This is for sure something that helped me to fall in love with books.)

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Malaysia Forum

Tomorrow morning at 9a.m. (ouchy early but to link up with the audience in the US) will be taking part in a panel discussion on Arts, Literature and Education with Pete Teo, Lim Soon Heng, Fahmi Fadzil as part of the Malaysian Forum.  You will be able to watch it live here.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Writing From The Rim

Dina Zaman forwarded this call for submission, and the writers among you should be interested :
Griffith REVIEW 30: Writing from the Rim
Summer fiction edition
Publication date: November 2010
Deadline for submission: 25 June 2010

Griffith REVIEW is publishing its second annual summer fiction edition in November.

Writing from the Rim will focus on the Pacific region – from the Americas to China, Japan, South-East Asia, the islands of the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand. What binds us, what pulls us apart, how can we make sense of such a diverse region connected by as vast roiling ocean?

Fiction is one of the best ways of making sense of change, and this region is one of the global epicentres of change, which has an impact on the lives and imaginations of people in countless ways. Writing from the Rim aims to capture this with insight, flair, elegance and humour. It will predominately feature Australian authors, at home and abroad, but it is also open to writers from New Zealand, the countries of the Asia-Pacific and the Americas. While it will be mostly fiction, the editors will also consider memoir and essays that touch on these themes in an imaginative and original way.

The winners of the second annual Griffith REVIEW Emerging Writers Prize will be announced in Writing from the Rim. This is for two emerging writers who have contributed to Griffith REVIEW in 2010 in fiction and non-fiction. The prize includes a week-long fellowship at Varuna and manuscript appraisal, and is generously supported by Text Publishing.

So if you have a new story, or an excerpt from a longer work in progress, that you think would work with this theme, Griffith REVIEW would love to hear from you.

Please email submissions to Deputy Editor, Erica Sontheimer, at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au.

For more information visit www.griffithreview.com.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

New Creative Writing Courses

My creative writing course Getting Started will be running again soon - two time slots are available for this 10-session course :

Tues 10-12 noon (start 20 April)
Thurs 8-10 p.m. (start 13 May)

Full details of location, cost and what the course covers on the Learning Works website here.

Places are limited because group size is kept small so that everyone receives individual attention in a warm, supportive atmosphere.

I am also developing second level courses for those who have completed the first course, and the first is called Who Are You?  Somebody! and it focuses on personal writing.

Please contact Eileen at 012-207 2845 or Dennis 012-267 8298 or email mylearningworks AT gmail DOT com for further information or to reserve your place. You can also drop me a line at sharonbakar@yahoo.com if you have any questions.

When The Home Ministry Steals Your Books

I've known about the Home Ministry opening packets of books in the mail and confiscating them on whim for some time, but have usually lacked a concrete example to put before you. (The worst example I heard of before this was a friend losing the books she had ordered from Amazon.com on the subject of ovarian cysts, which she wanted to read up on prior to her surgery. Now if that isn't shameful, what is?)

Subashini provides not one but two examples of books that were taken en-route to her from Malaysian online bookshop AcmamallShe writes on her blog :
Some time back I was told that my order of Laini Taylor’s Lips Touch Three Times was detained by the Home Ministry after I had placed the order and paid for it. Acmamall was most accommodating about issuing a refund, but I haven’t stopped foaming at the mouth about being informed that I simply couldn’t purchase any book I wanted as I initially thought I could. ... I’ve been unable to fathom what makes Lips Touch Three Times, a young adult book that’s been critically lauded in most American press, a subversive book, or indeed, one that is a threat to national security or morals. Is it the goblins? Are they afraid that reading this book will prompt a rash of young Malaysians to want to make out with pontianaks? Are they afraid it will encourage a kissing epidemic?

I have no idea.

I told myself to calm down, life’s too short to get raging mad at EVERY damn thing (wrinkles, sour facial expression, etc.), and chalked it up to one very small loss as a result of being Malaysian. Other Malaysians were dealing with far worse problems – lack of income, land, home, citizenship; lack of access to rights to see their own babies, rights to a fair trial, rights to drink whatever they damn well please without being whipped. Not being able to read a book is no big deal, really.

Or is it?

I placed my next order for Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory with trepidation. I told a friend that it will most likely be ‘detained,’ but I really hoped I was wrong. I REALLY wanted to read it. But sure enough, I get an email today from the Acmamall customer service informing me that the book has indeed been detained by the Home Ministry. And if you head over to Acmamall’s website, you’ll see that the book is now listed as ‘Not for sale in Malaysia.’

I felt anger at that very instant – again, being told what I’m allowed to read and not allowed to read just makes me blindingly angry. Even my parents have never told me what I could and could not read.

... With King Kong Theory, reviewers have said that the author, whether or not you agree with her stand, has presented a brash, bold and thought-provoking perspective on modern-day feminism. ... I mean, these are the subjects I like to think about and read about. Maybe I’m the only sad sod in all of Malaysia who’s upset about the Home Ministry detaining King Kong Theory because… well, what the hell kind of book is it anyway?!? But that shouldn’t be the point. I’m prevented from reading a book for reasons I don’t even know of.

I wonder what made the authorities deem this book unfit for Malaysian eyes – is it the fact that the author was formerly a prostitute, and made a highly-controversial (if not exactly acclaimed) movie on the complex interrelations of sexual desire, abuse, and power? Do the authorities even know this? (I’m of the belief that their brains are puny; small enough to hold only recycled thoughts and prosaic wishes – such as the nature of, “Harap boleh makan nasi lemak petang ni…”) Are they afraid that Malaysian women will, en-masse, decide to prostitute themselves in an attempt at self-empowerment? Are they afraid that Malaysian women will want to migrate to France and prostitute themselves after reading this book (the author is French)? Did they simply look at the title and conclude that King Kong, being the product of American capitalist Hollywood minds, has no place in Malaysia – that a King Kong theory usurps the revered position of our local orangutans?

Again, I have no idea.

Well, I’m not being honest here. I suppose I have an inkling. Books like this one make people think; but more alarmingly, it makes people question the status quo. Police states don’t want its citizens thinking and questioning anything – especially not if it’s a police state pretending to be a multicultural, peaceful, free-thinking democracy.
I hope Subashini's impassioned plea is heard by those who need to hear it.

Meanwhile if you or your friends have any books confiscated in the post do let me know so I can blog it here and get the word out.