Booker Longlist Announced

The longlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced just a short time ago.  Apparently this  "Booker's Dozen" of 13 books was selected from a total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges. 

Peter Carey - Parrot and Oliver in America 

Emma Donoghue - Room 

Helen Dunmore - The Betrayal

Damon Galgut - In a Strange Room

Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question 

Andrea Levy - The Long Song

Tom McCarthy - C 

David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Zacob de Zoet  

Lisa Moore - February 

Paul Murray - Skippy Dies

Rose Tremain - Trespass

Christos Tsiolkas - The Slap 

Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky

 I'll post links to each of the books and the general discussion later.


Afterthought :

Yes - where IS McEwan????


Postscript :


John Self twittered a summary for lazy journos :

Hooks to hang your Booker story on: 1. List very white. 2. One's a sequel. 3. No McEwan. 4. Not many new names. You're welcome

Our July Readings (Part 2)

Yes, we had Readings@Seksan at the beginning of July, but now I'm trying to get the event back to the end of month mode.  Besides Fasting Month begins in August, so this will be our last chance this side of Hari Raya.  Do come along to support.

Date: Saturday 31st July, 2010
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map)

The readers for this month include:

Chuah Guat Eng
Su-Lynn Boo
Ruhayat X
Ainul Aishah & Mamat
Jayzuan **

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)

*Thanks Lydia Chai for the poster
** Jayzuan will be reading himself, this Saturday!

Cross-Border Book Trade

Malaysia and Singapore are just simply two funny, intertwined brothers. Can’t find it here? Just cross the border and get it. Good simple free trade, but keep our freedom away from the Big Brother, hopefully. 

guansin's post on the Airkosong blog about book-banning and cross-border book trade is spot on, and thank goodness for it. And with Shadrake's arrest, he says :

Booksellers in Malaysia, time for your contribution to the freedom of Singaporeans now, and make money from it.

Absolutely!

Sentenced to Reading

Can being sentenced to a reading course actually turn the lives of an offender around, perhaps even save his life? 

Experiments in the US seem to indicate that this may indeed by the case, writes Anne Barker in The Guardian, and looks at a rehabilitation programme called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) which runs across the US and has achieved some spectacular results with thousands of offenders, and at a very low cost.

Now a new programme called Stories Connect is running in UK prisons, though it has not yet been used as an alternative to sentencing, and the University of Exeter is also using it with people in the community with drug and alchohol programmes.

The testimonials of students on both programmes are pretty inspiring, and should reaffirm for us all just how powerful and important reading is, and why it needs to be part of all our lives.

E-Book Milestone

An important landmark in the e-book revolution has just been passed, with Amazon announcing that for the first time sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website.

David Teather in The Guardian says :

Amazon claims to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books over the past three months. The pace of change is also accelerating. Amazon said that in the most recent four weeks, the rate reached 180 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks sold. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said sales of the Kindle and ebooks had reached a "tipping point", with five authors including Steig Larsson, the writer of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and Stephenie Meyer, who penned the Twilight series, each selling more than 500,000 digital books. Earlier this month, Hachette said that James Patterson had sold 1.1m ebooks to date.

But there's good news for lovers of the physical book, he says, apparently sales of hardbacks are up 22% this year in the US.

Elsewhere, David Carnon looks at what Amazon aren't telling us about the surge in e-book buying, and  Larry Dignan reckons it is the introduction of the i-Pad (and not the Kindle) that is driving sales.

Damyanti's Dilemma

How fair is it for a local publisher to offer these terms to writers submitting work to their anthology?  My friend and writing buddy Damyanti Ghosh writes that CCC Press :

... want to retain the right to abridge my work and to continue to publish it not just for one year, but till they decide to let it go out-of-print. ... And in the meanwhile, they are going to charge sub-licensing fees to any publisher who decides to publish the story again, including, hypothetically, my own anthology!

Any publisher has of course the right to set their own terms, and a writer can elect to accept or refuse those terms.  

If you are a new writer who needs the exposure and could benefit from getting your name out there (especially in an international anthology), you might be happy to accept such conditions, but if, like Damayanti, you see writing as a career path, are finding success elsewhere, and plan to compile your work into a book, this may not be the best deal for you.

Choices!

I'd advise Damyanti to take her story elsewhere - what about you?

(This was the original call for submissions.)

Singapore Arrests UK Author

I must express my concern over the arrest of author Alan Shadrake (75) in Singapore on defamation charges and contempt of course following the publication of his book on the death penalty in the city state.  Once A Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock was launched Saturday at the Post Museum.  The report against him came from the Media Development Authority.

 It sounds like Shadrake opened up a bag of worms the authorities would rather have kept tightly closed, particularly regarding serious inconsistencies in sentencing. The blurb reads :

Over the past few decades, investigative journalism has come to mean the kind of brave reporting that exposes injustice, wrongdoing and, above all, the abuse of power. Alan Shadrake’s hard-hitting new book cuts through the façade of official silence to reveal disturbing truths about Singapore’s use of the death penalty. From in-depth interviews with Darshan Singh, Singapore’s chief executioner for nearly fifty years, to meticulously researched accounts of numerous high profile cases, Once A Jolly Hangman reveals the cruelty and imprudence of an entire judicial system. At the same time he displays a touching empathy with the anguish of the victims and their families. This important book should be required reading for human rights activists everywhere.

The Online Citizen looks at what exactly might have rattled the Singapore authorities. 

The book can be purchased in Malaysia from Kinibooks and SIRD, but in Singapore, although the book was not banned, bookshops were ordered to take it off the shelves.

But there's always a positive side to book banning - it invariably highlights the books we really ought to read, and I hope that as a result of his arrest, the issues highlighted by Shadrake will be debated in a larger arena.

Postscript (20/7):

Shadrake has been released on bail.

Paper Heritage ... For Sale

News of an intriguing exhibition and sale from Badan Warisan (Malaysian Heritage Society, No 2, Jalan Stonor, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, heritage@badanwarisan.org.my) which starts tomorrow and runs till August 14 :

Warisan Kertas 2: Exhibition & Sale of Old Books, Maps and Ephemera

by Popular Picture History Resources

This is the only exhibition and sale in Malaysia specifically devoted the Malaysia 's paper heritage. Tell your friends and colleagues. We are sure you will find something of interest. Run by Johan Nicholson, this year's edition boasts of a wider variety of material.

CATEGORIES YOU WILL FIND:

History, nature, reference, economics, applied science, fiction, travel and tourism, education, language, politics, sociology, children’s, official and unofficial reports.

PREPARE FOR THE amusing, fascinating, obscure, important, controversial, biased, and misguided!

Follow the link above to read about some wonderful rare offerings. The books I would like are the ones for mems!

Asiatic in June

The June edition of Asiatic, IIUM's literary journal is up online with some very interesting articles, (there's a focus in this issue on the the work of Tagore), reviews and poetry. I found the interview with Malaysian laureate Anwar Ridhwan worth reading though it dismays me that he quotes Wong Phui Nam declaring Malaysian writing in English dead without making an attempt to counter it or move beyond it, when in fact there is plenty happening. 

If you want to submit to the journal, here is the information you need.

Why Book Blurbs are Crap

Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same. Walls have been pulled down, barriers broken, a dimension of feeling, of existence itself, has opened in you that was not there before. To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude,

Is this blurb by Nichole Krauss for novelist David Grossman's new book the most obsequious to ever grace a book cover, asks The Gawker, while The Guardian's book blog invited readers to out-praise Krauss, and the results are most amusing. (Conversational Reading was the first to highlight this case.)

Laura Miller on the Salon website tells us why blurbs really are actually crap and how the process of blurbing works :

Once a reasonably finished draft of a manuscript has been completed, the author, at his publisher's insistence, begins the grueling and humiliating process of begging blurbs from better-known writers. The aim is to score praise from established authors whose work has a similar appeal -- a wacky, gay-positive memoirist will try for Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris; a female writer of mordant short stories approaches Mary Gaitskill, and so on -- but these can be nearly impossible to obtain.

The most prominent authors are inundated with such manuscripts, far more than they can ever read, especially if they hope to get on with their real job -- which is, of course, writing their own books. Many have adopted a blanket no-blurb policy, and most of these will at least occasionally wind up departing from that policy, usually for personal reasons. They might do it for a good friend or a former student, or as a favor to their editor or agent.

So when publishing people look at the lineup of testimonials on the back of a new hardcover, they don't see hints as to what the book they're holding might be like. Instead, they see evidence of who the author knows, the influence of his or her agent, and which MFA program in creative writing he or she attended. In other words, blurbs are a product of all the stuff people claim to hate about publishing: its cliquishness and insularity.

US Authors Dominate Frank O'Connor

Well, none of our local chaps made it to the shortlist of the Frank O'Connor this year. Instead, American writers dominate the list this time round, taking five of the six slots and demonstrating the health of the form in the US despite dire prognostications. (The only non-American author is David Constantine who is British.)

Here's the list for you to check out, and there looks to be much good stuff here, so do check out the links :

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black
Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs
Wild Child by T.C. Boyle
Burning Bright by Ron Rash
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us Laura van den Berg's
The Shieling by David Constantine

A Different Leg of the Trousers of Time

Anywhere but here, anywhen but now. Which means we are after stories set on Earth, although it may be an Earth that might have been, or might yet be, one that has gone down a different leg of the famous trousers of time (see the illustration in almost every book about quantum theory).

We will be looking for books set at any time, perhaps today, perhaps in the Rome of today but in a world where 2000 years ago the crowd shouted for Jesus Christ to be spared, or where in 1962, John F Kennedy's game of chicken with the Russians went horribly wrong. It might be one day in the life of an ordinary person. It could be a love story, an old story, a war story, a story set in a world where Leonardo da Vinci turned out to be a lot better at Aeronautics. But it won't be a story about being in an alternate Earth because the people in an alternate Earth don't know that they are; after all, you don't.

But this might just be the start. The wonderful Peter Dickinson once wrote a book that could convince you that flying dragons might have existed on Earth. Perhaps in the seething mass of alternate worlds humanity didn't survive, or never evolved -- but other things did, and they would have seen the world in a different way. The possibilities are literally endless, but remember, it's all on Earth. Maybe the continents will be different and the climate unfamiliar, but the physics will be the same as ours. What goes up must come down, ants are ant-sized because if they were any bigger their legs wouldn't carry them. In short, the story must be theoretically possible on some version of the past, present or future of a planet Earth.

Are you up to the challenge?

Novelist Sir Terry Pratchett has announced a Debut English novel competition, and  Commonwealth citizens, are eligible to enter. The winning entrant will be offered an advance payment against royalties of GBP20,000 on entering into a publishing contract with the Publisher. Terms and conditions are here.

Thanks, natz, for forwarding the information.

Bernice Hosts More Stories at No Black Tie

After a long hiatus, I am pleased to present the following line-up of writers for our next CeritAku@readings at No Black Tie.

Details are on the attached poster.

We have some emerging and established voices, including poet/playwright Alfian Sa'at from Singapore, Shirley Lim, eminent Malaysian writer/poet based in UC Berkeley California and poet/politician Dr Nasir Hashim, Adun for Kota Damansara and leader of PSM (Parti Socialis Malaysia).

The evening promises to be an enlightening and inspiring one for lovers of the written and spoken word.

Please feel free to pass this on and we hope to see you there!

Thanks and regards
Bernice.

Poised on the E-Brink

Can e-readers ever replace paper books, journals, magazines and other things we love to read?

asks Abby Lu in The Star's Metro section. She interviews a few guys including my own favourite tech geek, Leon Wing, Timothy Tiah of blogland's ad agency Nuffnang (left) and Donald Kee of MPH who shows off the bookshop's e-readers.

The dingdongdingdong debate goes one with most of us not yet too sure how we'll feel about our reading delivered in this way, whether we will be full embracers or techno-luddites, or simply something sensible in-between.  If we're confused then the bookshops and publishers, take my word for it, are even more so.  We're all poised on the brink.

The Man from the Boys

All fiction is autobiographical. But you move the furniture around. So all fiction is also invented. Real life shot through with fantasy – that is what novels are.

Shahril Sewa interviews author Tony Parsons in Starmag today. 

I very much enjoyed Man and Boy when it came out and bought it as a gift for friends.  Now the third novel featuring Harry Silver, Man From the Boys, is out and I have some catching up to do.

(I love the quote above and will throw it at the folks doing my writing classes, because it's precisely what I'm trying to tell them.)

Spicy Sambal With Anchovies

I briefly mentioned Chua Kok Yee's new collection of short stories Without Anchovies the other day, and want to say more about it now. (I'm slow, I know...).

The last time I wrote about Kok Yee's writing was when News From Home was published, and I commented that he had a wonderfully quirky imagination but that his writing style needed to develop. I am frankly surprised (and very pleased) to see how far he has come in this short time. Here he writes the kind of clear, straightforward prose that allows the reader to ease right into a story, and his strong openings pull you into the story from the word go.

I'm a really jaded reader at the moment. I pick up fiction - get so far into it and toss it aside when it disappoints, but I enjoyed each and every one of these stories.  The best of them, I found fresh and surprising, and for that reason I'm not going to tell you too much about what happens in them.

The title piece Sambal without Anchovies, a well-told and moving story of family relationships, love and loss, and a family and nasi lemak business.
My favourite story of all was The Gift (which Kok Yee read at Seksan's last week) and I could have wept for the girl who scrimps and saves to buy her mother a gift ... only to have everything go most horribly wrong. Smoking Can Kill is extremely clever because here smoking does kill, but in the most bizarrely round-about way.

Kok Yee does horror very well - I loved Moving which was an unusual twist on the usual haunted house story, while An Untrue Love story has quite a conventional plot for a local horror story (remember - I grew up with New Thrill, Malaysia's trashy horror newspaper in the 1980's!) but works very well because of the unconventional voice of its narrator who fills in the gaps of what didn't happen with her alternative view of events. 

A Circus Interview was surreal and haunting, and reminded me of the stories of Etgar Keret.

I particularly enjoyed the stories where humour was blended with the horror Dead Cougar was a delight, and A Cemetery Story, a cheeky little take on the British Council's City Of Stories project, had me grinning.

Being able to create characters which are not only believable but who really intrigue us in so short a space is no mean feat. Mei who appears in both in Dinner and Cruel Mother is particularly well-realised and I'd be happy to spend more time in her company. The mother in Thieving Daughter is both demented and achingly lonely and we can't help but be fascinated by her. (It's actually quite strange that Kok Yee's female characters are often more convincing than the males!)

In some cases, I felt that while the concept of the story was simply excellent,  the execution could have been a rather better.

The outer frame of the story The Hippocratic Oath - the anesthetist in the operating theatre considering how she has the life of the patient in her hands - is very well realised with plenty of attention to detail, but the charcters in the inner story (the gangster and his wife) are comic-book stereotypes and we can't believe in them, or really feel his menace or her fear.

I wasn't terribly convinced by Embracing Your Shadow where a man is hanted by the memory of a woman he saw only once years before so that he is never able to make his marriage a success. It would actually be hard for any writer to make this seem possible, as we all know that in real life even the most physically appealing member of the opposite sex will generally cease to figure in our thoughts as soon as we move past them, and even the memories of old lovers fade in time. This woman does not seem to have much about her that distinguishes her from the mass for the reader, which makes the protagonist's obsession even harder to fathom.

There's a couple more things I'd like to pass on advice to Kok Yee (and other writers who might be reading this, of course!). Firstly beware of unnecessary POV shifts, as in Sambal Without Anchovies - there actually is no reason why the whole story couldn't have been told from a consistent viewpoint.  Secondly, there is no need to describe every character's physical appearance and clothes when we first encounter them - just select the one or two telling details that will make them stand out for us.  As readers we are perfectly capable of filling in the blanks when imagining our characters.

As for the production of the book, love the creamy paper and the cover fold-ins.  I'm not wild about the picture of the dead flowers which is greatly at odds with the title. (Mixed metaphors?) 

There are some proofreading errors in the book- many more than there should be - and predictably (because Malaysians always find these hard) the most problematic areas are: sequence of tenses (when to use past simple and when to use past prefect); and the confusion between will and would for real and unreal conditions.   But yes, I'm being picky as an ex-English teacher turned editor is, I think, allowed to be. The book needed another editing pass.

Kok Yee is a local writer very well-worth supporting and it will be really interesting to see his development. There are certainly plenty of anchovies in this spicy sambal.

The Poppies Bloom Again

The lists for this year's Popular-The Star Readers Choice Awards have been announced :

Fiction :

1. Velvet & Cinder Blocks by Ioannis Gatsiounis

2. Map Of The Invisible World by Tash Aw

3. Scary Ever After by John Ho

4. Or Rauby Kuan Guat Choo

5. Kirkby: The Life And The Loves by Dr Shaari Isa

6. Never Been Better by O Thiam Chin

7. Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint

8. Little Hut Of Leaping Fishes by Chiew-Siah Tei

9. Chinese Stories In Times Of Change by David T.K. Wong

10. Match Fixer by Neil Humphreys

Non-fiction :

1. 50 Days: Rantings by MM by Marina Mahathir

2. I, Too, Am Malay by Zaid Ibrahim

3. Taxi Tales on a Crooked Bridge by Charlene Rajendran

4. Yasmin Ahmad’s Films by Amir Muhammad

5. Malaysian Politicians Say The Darndest Things Vol.2 by Amir Muhammad

6. Tropical Affairs: Episodes From An Expat’s Life In Malaysia by Robert Raymer

7. Even Madder About Malaysians by Dean Johns

8. Do You Wear Suspenders? by Lydia Teh

9. Ceritalah 3: Malaysia, A Dream Deferred by Karim Raslan

10. Life, The Malaysian Style by Peggy Tan Pek Tao

 The award is a mighty good thing for local authors who fully deserve recognition, and introduces us to titles that we may not have heard of. (For me, that's several of the above, including John Ho's graphic novel.)

When the award was first initiated, I wasn't too sure that a book prize awarded according to public votes was the best way to decide the thing, but I do actually love the way the public are involved and the books are proudly displayed upfront in branches of Popular (because let's face it, local books have too often been the poor relations).

The voting forms are in the print copies of The Star (details here) and there are prizes to be won. Closing date is July 31st. The winners will be announced at BookFest@Malaysia 2010, which will be held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre from Sept 4-12.

Postscript :

More on each of the fiction titles here.

Short Attention Spans

The Internet worries me for other reasons. I have always been a reader, so the Internet has enhanced my reading, not lessened it. But in a country where reading habits are already so poor, I have to wonder what it is doing to the young.

In a thought-provoking piece in today's Star, Marina Mahathir expresses her concerns that the internet is creating a generation with short attention spans, and no capacity to read longer texts.

Incidentally, Marina isn't quite right when she says there's no male equivalent to chick lit.  It's often called lad-lit or a bit less politely, but slightly more poetically, as dick-lit!

Quite a Dame!

Dame Beryl Bainbridge was more than just one of Britain's most prolific post-war novelists. As well as the 17 novels she leaves behind, of which five were short-listed for the Booker, the memory of her raucous conversation and impish figure, usually clutching a glass of red wine and a cigarette, will remain with all who met her over 50 years on London's bohemian literary scene.

Born and raised in Liverpool, where she died of cancer on Friday, Bainbridge was initially an actress. She moved to London in the 1960s, which would remain her home, though both cities would feature in her work. She was never paid more than £2,000 for any book, and lived amid stuffed animals and high-Victorian paraphernalia in a house in Camden Town. Here, evidence of her helter-skelter lifestyle included a bullet hole in the ceiling, caused by her mother-in-law, who went to shoot her but missed.

Bainbridge married, divorced and had three children, and her greatest joy were her grandchildren. She expected to die at 71, as 11 relatives did. In the event she was 75.

Poet Michael Horovitch thus sums up the author's remarkable life in The Independent after she passed away in hospital after a battle with cancer last Saturday, aged 75.

Elsewhere other friends pay tribute :

I am not saying that Beryl was a liar, because I do not think she was. But she was a novelist, and the crafted versions of events always came to have more substance than mere facts ...

 writes AN Wilson  in The Observer and he tells how she was dictating the last few pages of her novel The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress :

... a fantastical version of a journey she took across America 42 years ago

even as she lay on her death bed.

Melvyn Bragg writes about the Beryl Bainbridge that he knew in The Telegraph and remarks on how :

Her private complexity alchemised into the clarity of her books.

The passing of Beryl Bainbridge on Saturday made me feel very sad : not only had I enjoyed several of her novels (Injury Time and According to Queenie were my favourites), but I feel I was very privileged to "meet" her via video link-up thanks to The British Council.

Even from this short time in her company I was drawn to her great sense of mischief (even at 71 she sparkled!) : perhaps of all the authors I've ever met, she's the one I would most have liked to spend an evening in the pub with ... though I might have suffered permanent damage from inhaling second-hand smoke!

Postscript :

I think of death a lot, indeed always have, although when young I had a belief that it was a long way off. Now, it isn’t, and I continually think of how I would prefer to pass from light to darkness. I don’t want to be run down by traffic, be shot by a madman, or suffer a sudden shock to the heart. I would like, if possible, to be so conscious of what was coming that I had time to write down a few thoughts on paper. I would remember my parents, the love I once felt for them, and for my husband who left so many years ago, and try to put into words the joy my dear children have brought me.

The Independent reprints a piece Bainbridge wrote about the art of facing death.

7 Must-Reads from Zedeck

In KLue today Zedeck Siew lists 7 must-read Malaysian books by Salleh Ben Joned, Uthaya Sankar, Dina Zaman, and more ... and he invites your views too!

July Readings@Seksan

Sorry I haven't really been too good at getting Readings off the ground for the last month or two. Partly I've been trying to avoid dates which clash with other happenings in the city (today for example was Urbanscapes), and partly because I've been busy - and let me confess, somewhat lacking in energy. My get up and go has all got up and gone.

This month promises to be a very good event. Reza, who sparkles much more than I could ever hope to, will take the mic to MC, and to read some of his work.

We have poet Cindy Childress all the way from the US of A; the lovely Uma who has promised to read us some fiction (the first time it has been unveiled in public!); Chua Kok Yee who has plenty of splendidly bizarre and spooky stores. I have also foolhardily volunteered myself (because if I am asking everyone else to have a go, I should be prepared to meself, right?).

Please do come along and support if you can.

Here's all the details :

Readings@Seksan

Date: Saturday 3rd July, 2010

Time: 3.30pm

Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map)

The readers for this month include:

Reza Rosli

Umapagan Ampikaipakan

Sharon Bakar

Cindy Childress

Chua Kok Yee

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

Poster this month by Lydia Chai

Alfian's Thoughts on Singapore

Some of the challenges that we face are universal. It is difficult to make a living and a career out of writing and publishing in Singapore. For a country of 4.5 million people, I believe that there are fewer than 10% who are active readers. From that percentage, even fewer pick up and read works written locally. Readership is a challenge. We don’t have a reading culture. If you look at the bestseller lists, they are works, in a sense, already successfully and globally marketed, like Harry Potter. A lot of self-help books reach the bestseller list. That happens to be the reading diet of the Singapore population.

Bissme S interviews award-winning playwright Alfian Sa’at in The Sun about living and writing in Singapore, and his brushes with censorship. 

This I find interesting :

I am inspired whenever I come to Kuala Lumpur. I feel there are little pocket freedoms which I do not find in Singapore. There is greater freedom of expression in Malaysia.

(Alfian is currently doing a residence at CHAI House.)

*Thanks Bissme for sending me the link.