Bibliobibuli

And Now We Are Seven

2012-01-31T22:50:00.001+08:00

A common stereotype of literary gatherings is that they are pretentious affairs: elderly professors in tweed and monocles smoking pipes as they discuss old classics that no one has picked up in a hundred years. ... This, however, was not the case at the celebration of Readings’ seventh anniversary, which took place at the Seksan Gallery in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, earlier this month. There was a lot of laughter, cheer and chatter in the air as a crowd of around 40 people comprising writers and writing enthusiasts alike, all came together for an evening of cake, socialising and literature.

Terence Toh writes about the 7th birthday celebrations for Readings@Seksan. I really appreciate the coverage since we really have something good going with these events. The next is on February 25th. More news soon.

January Readings@Seksan

2012-01-08T12:54:00.002+08:00

December Readings@Seksan

2011-12-10T17:42:00.000+08:00

Date: Saturday 17^th December, 2011

Time: 3.30pm

Place: Seksan Gallery, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map www.seksan.com)

Lineup :

Mano Maniam

Commander Ian Anderson

Megat Ishak

Marc White

Jacqueline Ann Surin

Ram Anand

Admission free and everyonevery welcome. Please pass on the invitation to anyone else you think might beinterested.

(For enquiries contact Sharon017-2644956, sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

George Town Literary Festival

2011-10-20T07:40:00.000+08:00

Exciting news for book lovers in Penang - the first George Town Literary Festival, organised by Bernice Chauly, features a line-up of Farish Noor, Tan Twan Eng, Shih-Li Kow and Iskandar Al-Bakri. You can read more on the festival blog.

Paul Spencer Sochazewski Lecture Tour

2011-10-15T08:50:00.000+08:00

This might be of interest to book lovers in Penang and KL. Author Paul Spencer Sochaczewski will be doing a Malaysia lecture tour, organized by US Embassy in Malaysia.

Penang

Monday, Oct 17

10:00 –

Topic: “My Peace Corps Years in Malaysia: A Naïve Suburban Kid Takes on the Not-So-Terrifying Jungle” and “Secrets of Effective Writing”

Venue: The Lincoln Corner in the Penang State Public Library, Jalan Perpustakaan, in Seberang Jaya on the mainland

Monday, Oct 17

20.00 –

Topic: “The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen”. Readings from my new book and discussion. Moderator: Himanshu Bhatt, director, Cape Poetics

Books will be available for sale, for book info: http://www.sochaczewski.com/2010/04/02/the-sultan-and-the-mermaid-queen/

Venue: Gallery Seni Mutiara, 118 Lebuh Armenian in George Town. Host: Cape Poetics

Kuala Lumpur

Tuesday, Oct 18

14:30 –

Topic: Topic: “My Peace Corps Years in Malaysia: A Naïve Suburban Kid Takes on the Not-So-Terrifying Jungle” and “Secrets of Effective Writing”

Venue: The Lincoln Corner in the KL (City) Library, No. 1 Jalan Raja, KL. (This is not the “national” library but the city library within the Merdeka/Independence Square vicinity, adjacent the Selangor Club.)

October Readings@Seksan

2011-10-12T17:07:00.001+08:00

Date: Saturday 29 October, 2011

Time: 3.30pm

Place: Seksan Gallery, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map www.seksan.com)

Lineup :

Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad

Zan Azlee

Rumaizah Abu bakar

Adib Zaini

Julian CH Lee

And with music from Reza Salleh

Admission free and everyone verywelcome. Please pass on the invitation to anyone else you think might beinterested.

(For enquiries contact Sharon017-2644956, sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

Writing Workshop with Kee Thuan Chye

2011-10-03T13:20:00.000+08:00

Kee Thuan Chye just sent me news of a workshop he is running and I know some of you will be interested :

WRITING CREATIVELY

Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman through its Centre for Extension for Education (CEE) in Petaling Jaya will be conducting a two-day workshop called "Writing Creatively" on 9-10 November 2011. It is open to those who want to learn how to sharpen their imagination in order to write better, express themselves creatively and use the art of telling stories for work or pleasure.

This highly interactive workshop will be conducted by Kee Thuan Chye, a writer who has has worked in genres ranging from poetry to playwriting to short fiction to journalistic writing and creative nonfiction for almost 40 years.

For details, please call Ms Jennifer/Mr Sia at Tel: 03-7957 2818 / H/p: 016 223 3563, Fax: 03-79573818 or Email: cee@utar.edu.my.

Big Bad Wolf is Coming to Get You!

2011-09-27T10:22:00.000+08:00

I'm sticking up this press release from Andrew and Jackie at BookXcess. Sadly I'm not going to be around during this ginormous book sale but hope those of you who go enjoy yourselves!

BOOKXCESS GEARS UP FOR THE

BIGGEST BOOK SALES IN THEWORLD!

Kuala Lumpur,8^th September, 2011: The fourth edition of the BigBad Wolf book sale is back – and it’s touted as the world’s biggest book saleever with more than 1.5 million books sourced from various points across theworld.The event, scheduled to run from 7 – 16 October at MAEPS(Malaysia Agro Exposition Park, Serdang), isorganised by BookXcess, a one-stop remainder book retail outlet, located atAmcorp Mall in Petaling Jaya. BookXcess previously organised three highlysuccessful book sale events.

“Organising the world’s biggest book sale has alwaysbeen a personal ambition,” says Andrew Yap, CEO, BookXcess. “After almost ayear of scrupulous planning, long hours of painstaking work, and travelling tomajor global capitals to source for the best-value books, the event is areality.”

The book sale, affectionately dubbed ‘the Big Bad Wolfsale’, attracted more than 80,000 fans last year. The organisers expect toattract more than 500,000 fans this year.

All books in every category will be sold at discountsranging between 75 – 95 per cent of the usual retail price. Avid readers andcollectors will be spoilt for choice with a wide selection ranging from latest paperbacks,coffee table books, box sets, pop-up art books, and backdated importedmagazines – and something for everyone.

“We love books and it’s a passion for us,” says Yap, who runs the business together with his wifeJacqueline Ng. “Our greatest satisfaction comes from selling books at unbelievablylow prices and making them available to the widest cross-section of booklovers.”

The husband-and-wife team behind BookXcess has sparedno effort to ensure that this year’s Big Bad Wolf sale is an unqualifiedsuccess.

“Our goal is to revive the joy of reading and makebooks available to all Malaysians at bargain prices,” Yaps states.

OCBC Bank is a partner for this year’s book sale. Thebank will host a number of promotional activities in support of the Big BadWolf sale. OCBC credit cardholders will also enjoy an additional 5 per centdiscount during the sale.

For moreinformation on the venue for Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2011, log on to www.bigbadwolfbooks.com or itsFacebook page, www.facebook.com/bbwbooks

Thanks MPH

2011-09-27T00:30:00.000+08:00

I was having lunch today with David T.K. Wong when he told me that my letter to MPH had been published in Quill some weeks before. Actually I had tried to obtain the magazine from the MPH store, but the assistants said that it had gone online, and then I couldn't find the website.

Now I have, (see page 8 for a clearer version) and I consider that things have been put right.

Meanwhile, there's lots of other good stuff to read in the magazine and, if you want even more, the 105th Anniversary issue of Quill can be found here.

September Readings@Seksan

2011-09-18T08:32:00.000+08:00

Date: Saturday 24 September, 2011
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan Gallery, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar
(Map www.seksan.com)

Lineup includes :
Gina Yap
Karina Bahrin
Eileen Lian
Dayang Noor
Kira Messell
Alfian Sa'at

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)

Poster by Shahril Nizam.

Lesson for the Digital Future

2011-08-28T08:28:00.000+08:00

My review in The Star today :

Two renowned authors share insights into the future of the book.

This Is Not The End Of The Book

Authors: Jean-Claude Carrière & Umberto Eco

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 336 pages

THESE are anxious times for book lovers. New digital technologies mean that we find ourselves on the edge of a literary revolution of a magnitude that hasn’t been seen since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Industry insiders predict that the traditional, printed book will disappear completely within the next 25 years in the face of competition from e-books and the easy availability of plentiful information at the click of a mouse on the Internet.

Last year, Amazon.com, as good a barometer of changes in book-buying habits as any, announced that for the first time sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website. American bookstore chain Barnes and Noble claim that they are selling three times as many digital books as all formats of physical books combined. We are witnessing an increasing number of libraries ditching physical books in favour of digital content. There are huge shakeouts in the publishing industry, and book retailers are also under threat.

No wonder so many of us worry that the book as we know it, the artifact that we have grown up with, and which has delivered to us so much knowledge and personal pleasure, will be lost to us.

This Is Not The End Of The Book delivers some much needed hope and reassurance. Jean-Philippe de Tonnac brings together, in a series of conversations, novelist and critic Umberto Eco (best known for his novels The Name Of The Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum), and playwright and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière to debate the place of the book in the digital age. Both are bibliophiles of the most devoted kind and have a deep understanding of the history of the book.

On the question of whether or not the book will survive, Eco sets our mind at rest within the first few pages. The book, he points out, is already an entirely effective piece of technology and “like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved.”

But so far most of the innovations in storing data (including floppy discs, videotapes, and CD-ROMs) in recent decades have become obsolete incredibly quickly, with the resultant loss of important cultural heritage. Printed books have proved more durable, so that “we can still read a text printed five centuries ago”.

As well as contemplating the present and future of reading, this book takes us on a tour of the past. De Tonnac tosses into the ring the questions that spark the discussion, and what ensues is a delightfully meandering conversation, full of fascinating asides and anecdotes.

Eco and Carrière look at the way that words have been stored over time, and how ideas have been communicated down the ages. They give us insights into how the book lovers of the past got their fix; they talk about libraries, editors, Shakespeare, the holy books of Islam and Christianity; and about the books that are lost to us through accidental fire, negligence and stupidity. Indeed, one interesting question that is raised is whether the books that have survived from ancient times actually are the greatest works of their time, and what might we have actually lost along the way?

In previous centuries you didn’t need to have read a great deal to be considered well-educated: in the 18th century, for example, the upper classes would be able to carry their whole libraries with them in trunks when they travelled as just 30-40 books contained all the learning of the decent individual. Today, of course, much more is published and considered important than it is possible to read. Eco and Carrière talk about how we are deeply influenced even by the books we have not read.

No discussion of books and reading down the ages would be complete without a discussion of censorship. Book burning is seen as a symbolic act of “purification” after a culture has been “poisoned by certain books”. “You have to respect a book’s power to want to destroy it,” says Carrière – Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses being a case in point.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the conversation is the personal insights into the relationship that the two have with books. Carrière’s first contact with books was with the Bible in the church in the French village where he grew up; and also with George Sand’s Valentine, a book that his father read over and over because he was fond of it. Eco recounts how he fell in love with reading, poring over the eclectic stack of unbound volumes his book-binder grandfather left behind.

They go on to discuss their personal libraries, how they gathered the books they have, how they display them, and to whom they plan to bequeath them eventually. Eco has 50,000 books in his various homes, 1,200 of which are rare titles, among them books on “human error, bad faith and idiocy” – subjects that, he says, fascinate him. Carrière says that he owns 30,000-40,000 books, 2,000 of them ancient.

Have they read all the books in their vast libraries, though? Carrière replies that “a library is not necessarily made up of books that we’ve read, or even that we will eventually read. They should be books that we can read. Or that we may read. Even if we never do.” Eco agrees with him. “A library is an assurance of learning,” he says.

That’s a lesson one hopes will be remembered in our headlong rush towards the digital future.

Readings@Urbanscapes

2011-07-15T16:22:00.002+08:00

This time round Readings has the opportunity to be part of Urbanscapes, the Klang Valley's annual festival of arts and culture. Zulhabri who is organising the Frinjian Book Bazaar contacted me a few days ago to ask if I could get something together in time. Thanks to those writers who volunteered: we have a good lineup of both writers who are in the Readings From Readings book (because, y'know, I'm hoping to shift a few copies!), and writers who are new to us!

We follow a great bunch of performance poets from Poetry Cafe who take the stage at 5. We are up at 6-7.30 pm and our readers are :

Nora Adam
Gina Yap
Brian Gomez
Rafil Elyas
Faz Kamaruddin
Tutu Dutta Yean
Paul Callan

I'm really looking forward to it!

All the info you need is here and here.

July Readings@Seksan

2011-07-10T23:47:00.004+08:00

Beautiful poster by Shahril Nizam.

Call for Submissions : Readings From Readings 2

2011-06-30T22:05:00.001+08:00

Following the success of Readings From Readings : New Malaysian Writing our first collection of writings based on the events we organise (Readings@Seksan and CeritAku) Bernice Chauly and myself are planning a second volume to be launched mid-2012. We are looking for writing that is fresh and exciting, perhaps even a little edgy.

This time we are happy to accept submissions both from those who have read at the event in the past, and those who are prepared to read their work live at Readings@Seksan in the coming months. This is to open an avenue to fresh talent and to find new writers who may currently be below our radar.

We would want the book(s) to reflect the nature of the event so all kinds of texts including flash fiction, short stories, creative non-fiction, poetry, blog posts, and short plays are welcome. Extracts from longer works will be considered, as long as they can stand alone.

This time we have decided to extend the upward limit of prose pieces to 3,500 words.

You may submit no more than 2 pieces of prose writing (fiction or non-fiction), and/or up to 5 pieces of poetry, in either Malay or English (or a rojak of both languages).

We are happy to publish previously published work provided that 1) it has not appeared in a locally published book that was easily available here 2) you own the copyright to the piece (you may be required to submit evidence of this).

Each piece will be chosen for its merit i.e. just because you have read at an event, it does not mean that your work will automatically be included – we have to put together a commercially viable publication of the best material.

We will work with you on editing pieces where we feel some revision is necessary.

Those whose work is selected will be expected to help promote the book at events after publication including at the launch and at bookstore events around KL.

I’m sorry we can’t pay you for your efforts, beyond giving you three free copies of the book and allowing you to purchase extra copies at a generous discount. But you will continue to hold copyright of all work submitted, and if we do turn a profit, it will go towards further publications and projects.

How to submit: Send your work as a Word attachment with the words READINGS FROM READINGS SUBMISSIONS in the subject line to sharonbakar@yahoo.com Please double space your work, and use a font that is easy on the eyes (eg. Times New Roman 12 point). Your name, phone number and email address should be on the cover page.

Deadline for submission: December 31st 2011

Readings From Readings @BFM 89.9

2011-06-21T15:48:00.000+08:00

Bernice and I were interviewed for the I Love KL Show which was broadcast last Saturday 18th June. Here we are talking about the event and the book it spawned: BFM: The Business Radio Station

Readings From Readings at Borders

2011-06-21T12:33:00.001+08:00

This Saturday, 3pm, Borders at The Curve!

Alina's Poetry Workshops

2011-06-14T16:51:00.003+08:00

Received this message about Alina Rastam's poetry workshops, which some of you might be interested in. (If you are, tell Alina at binfy15 at yahoo dot com, not me, ok?) I'd love to do this but I teach meself on Sat mornings.

Hi there,

I will be running a poetry workshop at the end of the month. The details are:

Day 1: Sat 18th June 2011 2pm - 7pm*
Day 2: Sat 25th June 10am - 5pm.

Venue: 15 Persiaran Syed Putra, KL.
Fee: Rm 300

This workshop will be very 'hands on' i.e. there will be lots of activities and exercises aimed at getting people to come up with ideas that they can use for poems, and to basically get writing! Please let me know if you are interested in joining us; and please pass this on to friends who might be interested.

All the best,
Alina

*Amended times.

Readings From Readings @ Times Pavilion

2011-06-09T21:41:00.000+08:00

June Readings Postponed

2011-06-06T23:08:00.001+08:00

I'm sorry that I won't be able to organise Readings@Seksan this month - every weekend is taken up with either bookstore readings to promote the book or, as this weekend the Writers Unlimited events.

There will be readings in three bookshops for Readings from Readings. Kinokuniya on June 17th at 7.30pm; June 19th at Times Pavilion p.m.; and June 25th pm at Borders The Curve.

Next Readings@Seksan will be in July. I think 23rd would be the best date (tbc) as I think the fasting month may have started by 31st. The next one after that will of course be the other side of Hari Raya. I already have a full list of names of people who are queued up to read.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

Live Reads

2011-06-02T23:04:00.000+08:00

This article about Readings@Seksan by Soon Heng is in the current issue of Time Out Kuala Lumpur.

Readings From Readings at Kinokuniya

2011-06-01T11:56:00.000+08:00

Readings From Readings From Readings

2011-05-31T13:19:00.002+08:00

Terence Toh came along to our MPH reading from Readings From Readings at the 1 Utama branch on 15th May and wrote this really nice account of the event and the book which came out in The Selangor Times today (P23):

I enjoyed the 1 utama reading which was held right in the middle of the bookshop - unlike the earlier reading at MPH Midvalley where we were somewhat hidden in the children's section at the back of the store. I am so grateful to all friends who came along to cheer us on, and also to the writers.

We have several more bookstore readings in June. The dates keep changing, but we will be at Kinokuniya 7.30pm on 17th, at Times Pavilion on Sunday 19th, and Borders at The Curve on Saturday 25th. More details later.

It seems like a long haul to publicise a book, but exposure like this makes it all well worth it.

Writers Unlimited Tour of KL

2011-05-30T10:09:00.006+08:00

We're just a few days away from the Writer's Unlimited Tour - our mini lit-fest happening in June. Please click up to size the poster and the information about the writers taking part. Please pass on the information to your own circle, and if you would like flyers or a poster to put out, I can send you the jpg files by email: contact me at sharonbakar@yahoo.com.

Press Release

Writers Unlimited Tour KL/Makassar 2001
June 10,11 & 12th June

Writers Unlimited - the Hague Literature Network (www.winternachten.nl)

Since 1995, Writers Unlimited has focussed its attention on the maintenance and development of the network of writers from both The Netherlands and mainly non-Western countries. Writers Unlimited (formerly known as Winternachten) organises an annual international literature festival in The Hague in January. More than seventy writers, poets, thinkers and musical groups come together for a programme focussing on the presentation of literary work to the public, in addition to hosting cultural and social debate. Apart from its annual festival in The Hague, Writers Unlimited organises literary events abroad, in cooperation with local partner organisations. Once every two years, Writers Unlimited organises a literary festival in each of their partner countries. Amongst their current partner organisations are ITEF Festival in Istanbul, University of Western Cape in South Africa and the Literary Festival Foundation in Surinam. Writers Unlimited is coming to Malaysia, and ‘Readings@CeritAku’ is pleased to be its first local partner.

Readings was created by Malaysian poet/writer Bernice Chauly in January of 2005 as a platform for live literary events, which focusses on emerging and established writers. Sharon Bakar took over as organiser in 2006 for Readings at 67tempinis satu in Bangsar, and Bernice Chauly expanded the literary repertoire to create Readings@CeritAku at KL’s top jazz bar No Black Tie in 2007. Now in its seventh year, both Readings’ are the city’s longest lasting live literary events.

“I was fortunate to have been invited to tour as a writer/poet with Writers Unlimited last year to the Dutch Antilles, Suriname and South Africa and was privileged and honoured to have seen the work that Writers Unlimited does in countries outside the Netherlands. As a result of this collaboration, Writers Unlimited has decided to come to Kuala Lumpur to seek new shores and to work with Malaysian writers and thinkers”.

The theme of the festival is Writing the Truth – Fact of Fiction? We are fortunate to have four touring writers of various origins from the Netherlands, Turkey, Egypt and the US who will be performing in languages as diverse as Arabic, Dutch, Turkish and English. Our five Malaysian writers will perform in Bahasa Malaysia and English. Writers will discuss their own work as intersections of history, politics and autobiography. Is fiction ‘the lie’ that can help us get at ‘the truth’? Or do we rely on fact as truth to then fictionalise new versions of the truth?

This three-day event will incorporate readings, panel discussions and a visit to a local university. This small literary festival has the potential to invigorate and inspire many who write, think and enjoy discourse.

We hope to see you there!
Bernice Chauly
(festival director)
Bernice Chauly (festival director)

012 323 0929/mulutmata@gmail.com

Bernice Chauly is a writer, poet, photographer, filmmaker and actor who has worked extensively in the arts in KL for twenty years. She has worked on many award-winning projects and has also written, acted and directed for the stage and screen. Her photographs have also been exhibited locally and internationally. She has published two collections of poems, a collection of short stories and has performed in literary festivals all over the world. Her upcoming fictive memoir, Growing Up With Ghosts, chronicles a hundred years of her Punjabi and Chinese family diasporas and stories will be published later this year. She lives in KL with her two daughters.

The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist

2011-05-30T09:09:00.003+08:00

My review which was in the Reads Monthly section of The Sunday Star yesterday :

What actually happens when we read a literary novel? And what is in the mind of an author when he writes one? These are the central questions addressed by Orhan Pamuk in The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist. And since the Turkish writer is both an avid reader and the Nobel Prize winning author of several internationally acclaimed novels (including Snow, My Name is Red, and The White Castle), he is extremely well-qualified to do so.

The title of the book is taken from the famous essay by Friedrich Schiller On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. Pamuk’s “naïve” novelists, he says, are unaware of the techniques they are using, and they write spontaneously as if carrying out a natural act, as opposed to “sentimental” or reflective novelists “who are concerned with artificiality of the text and its failure to attain reality”. I have to say though that I did not find the distinction a particularly useful scaffold for Pamuk’s arguments, particularly as the author himself admits that all great novelists ultimately have to be a blend of both. At times, his discussion seems rather abstract and academic, perhaps not surprisingly, as these six linked essays were initially delivered in the form of lectures at Harvard University in 2009.

But it is when he writes more anecdotally and personally that he is at his best. Anyone who has fallen passionately in love with reading will recognize themselves in Pamuk’s descriptions of his younger self, encountering the great works of fiction for the first time, discovering in them important truths about life, and acquiring from them “a breathtaking sense of freedom and self-confidence”. Pamuk draws on the classics for his examples, including Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

Pamuk captures the special magic of the literary form. He describes how the words on the page become invisible as we look through them onto an entire landscape with the ability “to oscillate between the long view and fleeting moments, general thoughts and specific events, at a speed no other literary genre can offer.” We can simultaneously see, he says “the broader picture, the whole landscape, the thoughts of the individual, and the nuances of the character’s mood.”

More than once he refers to the “intense and tiring effort” required to read a literary novel, and he lists a whole lot of different things that the reader actually has to do simultaneously to connect with the text. We observe the scene and follow the narrative, and transform the words on the page into images. Our memory labours intensively to hold all the threads of the story and what we know of the characters. We appreciate the style, make judgments about the moral choices the characters make, and congratulate ourselves for being able to read “a difficult” novel.

As we read, we are constantly wondering, he says, how much of the novel tells of real experience and how much is an act of imagination, and also how much of the author’s own life is invested in the fiction. Indeed, he devotes a whole essay to the topic, but concludes, not surprisingly, that “the novel is not completely imaginary nor completely factual.”

But even as we are deriving pleasure from the surface details of the novel, we are searching at a deeper level for “motive, idea, purpose”, in fact what he calls “a secret centre”. Reading literary fiction, he says, is the act of determining the real centre of the novel, “whose source remains ambiguous but which nevertheless illuminates the whole.” It is the slow uncovering of this centre that gives the reader full satisfaction.

Popular genre fiction, he says, typically lacks this centre, and is read largely for comfort. But he does single out some genre writers (including Patricia Highsmith, John Le Carre, Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick) as authors whose work can be read at a deeper level.

Pamuk is perhaps at his most controversial when he talks about the creation of character in the novel. He suggests that over the past 150 years our curiosity about characters has taken up much more space in the novel than it has in life, and that “It has sometimes become too self-indulgent, almost vulgar”. He believes that “People do not actually have as much character as we find portrayed in novels” , and reckons that human character is not nearly as important in shaping our live as it is made out to be in the novels and literary criticism of the west. This certainly is food for serious thought.

He goes on to attack the idea of the character-driven plot, where the author seems to expect that “… the hero like a prompter on stage will whisper to the novelist the entire course of the novel.” This approach, taught extensively on creative writing courses, “merely goes to show that many novelists begin to write their novels without being sure of their story, and that is the only way they are able to write.” He says that in his own writing his protagonist’s character will be formed, as a real person’s is, by situations and events.

Much of what is written about literature in academic circles is made inaccessible to the ordinary book-lover and writer by the jargon of literary theory. This book can be enjoyed by both the enthusiastic reader and by writers, and should serve to spark deeper discussion of the craft of the novel - whether or not one chooses to agree on all points with Pamuk.

And of course, perhaps more importantly for fans of Pamuk’s work, The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist gives an intriguing insight into the preoccupations and approach to writing of one of the world’s most important authors.

May Readings@Seksan

2011-05-21T18:53:00.009+08:00

Poster by Lydia Chai!

Response to Alan Wong's Piece in Quill Magazine

2011-05-15T07:52:00.008+08:00

This is my letter to the editor in response to Alan Wong's piece in the current issue of MPH's Quill magazine. It is addressed to the editor of Quill, Vimala Seneviratne.

Dear Vimala

I am writing to express my hurt over an article in Quill magazine by Alan Wong.

It isn’t that I mind fair criticism of what I do, and I accept his review of my book in good spirit, but I feel that he has been very unfair in what he has said about the events I organise each month and about my book launch, and I am really troubled that this is the impression that is being communicated to the general public who read your magazine.

He criticizes my choices of venues. I have to point out that Seksan Gallery in Lucky Garden is easily accessible. Every month on my advertising on my blog and Facebook, I link to a map of the place. It is walking distance of Bangsar Village and Bangsar LRT station. It is a beautiful venue, filled with art, yet at the same time relaxed and informal. And thanks to the ongoing generosity of Seksan, we are able to keep the event completely free!

We chose the venue MAP@PUBLIKA for the launch as I was invited to take part in a charity event, raising funds as part of Lifest for Yayasan Orang Kurang Upaya Kelantan (YOKUK) or the Kelantan Foundation For The Disabled which I felt was a very worthy cause, and yet this fact is not mentioned in the piece. Yes, it was a little out of the way in Solaris Dutamas, (just off Jalan Duta) but the theatre was beautiful, and the music, food and readings I hope more than made up for the inconvenience. I spent a great deal of money to make a the launch a success, and once again the event was free for my audience. It is worth noting that although many people are encountering this venue for the first time, it will most probably become KL’s major arts hub.

Wong does not mention at all our other venues, No Black Tie in Jalan Mesui, or Alexis in Bangsar – easily accessible, up-market nightspots which cater to a different audience. (We also actually pay the writers who appear at No Black Tie – how many events are prepared to do that?)

Not having the courage of his own convictions, Wong hides behind an anonymous “friend” who he quotes as saying :

"Whatever they may aspire to be, the plain fact is Readings invariably attracts the same old names. It's a literati's Ivy League. How do you encourage growth and participation when newcomers feel judged not long after they step through the door? That can’t be healthy."

This is surely a contradiction to his earlier statement that over 6 years, the event has given space to more than 400 writers!

I try to give priority at Seksan's to recently published authors who have a book to promote – including those from MPH. As you will know, MPH has often responded by sending sales staff and offering a generous discount on books. Eric Forbes will tell you that a few days ago I asked him for the list of writers in the Sini Sana travel collection you are putting out, and I have written to every last one of them (mostly people I have not heard of before) to invite them to read.

I am constantly on the lookout for writers whom we may not have heard of before, and I try also to include overseas authors passing through Malaysia, because I feel that all this enriches the local writing community.

If there is an impression that there is “an ivy league” it may be because it is necessary, from time to time, to feature the best local writers who really set standards.

I wonder, in what sense do “newcomers feel judged not long after they step through the door”? We do our best to look out for and to welcome newcomers, whether they are reading their work or audience. I do apologise if anyone has gone away with the impression that there is any elitism in the event, but this is an impression that I work very hard to dispel because snobbishness is something I simply can’t abide.

To say that I don’t encourage newcomers is crazy. I teach creative writing (as you know, because when I began, MPH gave my course its first home). Some of my course participants have read at the event. Four of them are featured in my collection, Readings From Readings – the first time any of them have been published. Furthermore, I include unpublished but hardworking writers in my line-up wherever there is space. Last month three new writers got to read. This month, another two. The feedback I have had from them is that this is a positive experience that has built their confidence.

And for the record, I have a policy of not inviting a writer back to read more than once in a year. Over the six years we have been going, some writers have read three or four times over that time, which is hardly excessive.

The problem with the article is that it is undoing a great deal of the good that I am trying my best to do in building an event that will encourage new writing and showcasing our best!

And maybe this piece hurts more, because it comes from someone who has seemed over the month to be supportive of what I do at Seksan’s and I can’t help but feel personally betrayed.

I hope that you will give space to this letter in the next edition of Quill to redress the balance.

Yours sincerely,

Sharon Bakar
Bernice Chauly

Enter Your Novel for the Man Asia Literary Prize

2011-05-11T19:16:00.001+08:00

Publishers in Malaysia/Singapore and of course the rest of SE Asia are invited to send in submissions for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize.

The 2011 Prize will be awarded to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in 2011. The winning author will be awarded USD 30,000 and the translator (if any) USD 5,000. Submissions are invited through publishers based in any country.

Deadline for entries is 31 August 2011 and copies of the entered title due 1 October, 2011. The longlist will be announced in October 2011, shortlist in January 2012 and the winner at a ceremony in Hong Kong in March 2012. Previous MALP winners are Bi Feiyu for Three Sisters (2010), Su Tong for Boat to Redemption (2009), Miguel Syjuco for Ilustrado (2008), Jiang Rong for Wolf Totem (2007).

Details of eligibility and all entry rules can be found at .

Online entry is available at .

For enquiries, please contact Ms. Minna Cheung at office@manasianliteraryprize.org or Ms. Marina Ma, Prize Manager at marinama@manasinaliteraryprize.org.

Getting Creative!

2011-05-10T17:49:00.002+08:00

One of my course participants, Brigid Bose, wrote a piece for the newsletter of the Association of British Women In Malaysia about what goes on in my creative writing classes at Learning Works :

A Lovely Collection!

2011-05-09T17:58:00.001+08:00

A review of Readings From Readings by Soon Heng in this month's Time Out.

Book Event at MPH Bookstores

2011-05-09T09:41:00.001+08:00

Readings From Readings ed. Bernice Chauly & Sharon Bakar
Come and meet some of the writers and get your books signed!

Sat 14 May 3-4pm at MPH Mid Valley
Sharon Bakar
Uthaya Sankar SB
Kam Raslan
kG Krishnan
Lydia Teh

Sunday 15 May 4-5 pm at MPH 1 Utama
Sharon Bakar
Brian Gomez
Jordan MacVay
Alina Rastam
Shanthini Venugopal
Uthaya Sankar SB

Thanks very much Shahril Nizam for your lovely poster!!

April Readings@Seksan

2011-04-19T17:26:00.001+08:00

Date: Saturday 30 April, 2011
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map)

We have both established authors promoting new books, and several newcomers stepping out for the first time. The readers for this month are :

Yusuf Martin
Lee Su Kim
David T.K. Wong
Yvonne Lee
Lilian Tan
Haslina Usman
Chee Siew Hoong

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

Marshall Cavendish is offering big discounts on books sold!!

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

Readings From Readings at Alexis

2011-03-24T08:16:00.001+08:00

Readings from Readings celebrates Kuala Lumpur's longest-running live literature event. Founded in 2005 by Bernice Chauly, Readings provides a regular space in which local writers and readers can connect in an informal atmosphere. Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar select the best poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction in this first anthology which demonstrate the sheer variety and range of voices that make up new Malaysian writing.

Liyana Dizzy and Priya K are two of KL's most promising young poets, Uthaya Sankar demonstrates his skill at social satire when he writes of a cat with political ambitions, Nora Adam writes of the perils of marriage and Saras Manickam's story tells of a child's tenacity in the wake of parental absence. Come buy the book Readings from Readings at a discount and listen to these poems, stories and much more.

Books will be on sale.

Free Admission
Dress Code: No Shorts, Slippers & Singlets
Date : Tuesday, April 5th 2011
Time : 8:00pm
Venue : UPSTAIRS Alexis Telawi, 29A Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur
Tel : 03 2284 2880
Email : info@alexis.com.my

Link to the event here.

March Readings@Seksan

2011-03-20T15:33:00.001+08:00

Join us for your monthly literary fix, featuring some of the writers from the book, and some new faces!

Date: Saturday 26 March, 2011
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan Gallery, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map)

The readers for this month include :

Rafil Elyas
Leon Wing
Brian Gomez
Leong Ming Chong
Poet’s Passport

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)

Readings From Readings at No Black Tie

2011-03-02T08:46:00.001+08:00

More of the writers from our new book Readings From Readings : New Malaysian Writing are featured in a great line-up at No Black Tie Next Monday 7th March at 9pm :

Location : No Black Tie, 17 Jalan Mesui,Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Map)

Line-up includes :

Karl Hutchison
Azwan Ismail
Reza Rosli
kG Krishnan
Sharon Bakar
Jerome Kugan

with music from Peter Brown

Cover charge RM20, but enjoy a discount on copies of the book.

The Invitation

2011-02-10T19:41:00.000+08:00

This is the beautiful invitation Shahril Nizam has made for us. Please feel free to take a copy and pass it on to friends, or print it out and stick it up in your school, workplace, church, kindergarten or strip club.

Our Book Launch

2011-02-08T13:51:00.001+08:00

Words Works

Invites you to the launch of

READINGS FROM READINGS : NEW WRITING FROM MALAYSIA
Edited by Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar

The evening includes readings from the book; music from Dewangga Sakti, The Buntut Pulau Moonshiners and others; and local publishers’ book mart

Date : Friday, 25th February 2011
Place: Black Box, MAP@Publika, Level G2-01, Block A5, 1 Jalan Dutamas 1, Off Jalan Duta,Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Time: 8.30pm – 12.00 am
Dress code: Smart Casual

Part of the proceeds from book sales in aid of Yayasan Orang Kurang Upaya Kelantan.
Admission free, but donations welcome.

Contact sharonbakar@yahoo.com 017 2644956 for further information

The book launch is part of a week-long arts event called LiFest. Do check out the other events :

January Readings@Seksan

2011-01-22T11:22:00.010+08:00

January Readings

Date: Saturday 29th January, 2011
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map)

The readers for this month are:

Nizam Zakaria
Fadli-al-Akiti
Damyanti Ghosh
Patrick Teoh
Jamal Raslan Abdul Jalil

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)

December Readings@Seksan

2010-12-12T10:32:00.002+08:00

Date: Saturday 18th December, 2010
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map www.seksan.com)

The readers for this month are:

Azwan Ismail
Eeleen Lee
Maizura Abas
Jeremy Chin
kG Krishnan
Fadz

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)

Burnout?

2010-11-14T12:56:00.000+08:00

I took a sort of nap in this blog for a few weeks, as you may well have noticed. I think there is a phenomena we should perhaps call blog burn-out, when after months or years of doing a perfectly respectable job of posting up the latest news embellished with incredibly insightful personal opinions (!), I seemed to hit a wall and everything suddenly seems a lot more effortful and a lot less enjoyable. Maybe it's time to move on? I'm finding that I am enjoying Twitter, and am still posting links to articles about books and writing there, so please follow me.

I will put up notices of events (mine and others) and perhaps the odd post when I really feel like it.

The Boogeyman Cometh

2010-10-01T23:09:00.002+08:00

A reminder that readings@Seksan is tomorrow p.m..

And at night there is another exciting event featuring Australian Hip Hop artiste and poet Omar Musa* The Boogeyman! : The October Poetry Cup presented by Poetry Underground

The event also features Thato Ntshabele - August Poetry Cup winner (He's at Seksan's in the afternoon too),
the music of Farah Kamsari (seen last month at Readings@Seksan) :

And!

This Month's Slammers are :

Hazlan Zakaria - Pantun man
Qishin Tariq - Haiku man
Jamal Raslan - Smmoooth man
Catalina Rembuyan - 'we'll wait and see' man
Manisha Jagan Mongan - mmmm? man
Mooza - Wooooaaah man!
George Wielgus - No Way man...

There's still time to register if you think you got more skilzzzzz.

There will be an open mic at the start of the programme. Please register at the entrance if you wanna get up on stage.

Time: 8pm

Cover: RM10 (all monies collected are used to pay for more slams and poetry events and NOTHING else).

Venue: MapKL - Directions to venue

FB Page
Invite

* (From Wikipaedia : Omar bin Musa is a poet and rapper from Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia. He won the Australian Poetry Slam in 2008 after initially winning the Canberra Poetry Slam. He recorded his debut The Massive EP with Geoff Stanfield (Black Lab, Sun Kil Moon) in Seattle, USA. He released it in 2009. He released his debut full length album World Goes to Pieces on July 6, 2010, before supporting Gil Scott-Heron on his German tour.)

Does Size Really Matter?

2010-09-28T12:36:00.001+08:00

MPH celebrates the 10th anniversary of the opening of the first book megastore in the country - the branch in Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur, and in Starmag Rouwen Lim finds out all about it.

Says MPH's chief operating officer Donald Key :

Back in 2000, the concept of a mega bookstore was something new. We were not sure how Malaysians would take to this idea but we took a risk and went ahead with it. Right from the beginning, we had contests and events such as storytelling sessions, fashion shows, talks, craft, cooking and hair styling demonstrations. ... This lifestyle concept was an instant hit with the customers. They had not seen anything like it before in bookstores here, and it transformed the entire industry.Today, of course, we are no longer the only player in the industry. But the industry has changed for the better and we are proud to have contributed towards that.

It's interesting how quickly we have got used to the concept of the huge bookshop. I must confess that I seldom visit this branch of MPH because the size of Mega Mall (Mega Hell!) freaks me out, but much prefer the 1 Utama branch. My favourite huge bookshop, of course, is Kinokuniya, and it's high time I paid it a visit and did some serious damage to my credit card ...

But I must confess that hugeness for me isn't a selling point - my perfect bookshop would be small and intimate and squidgy and have just the books that I wanted to read. So let me ask you what you think - is bigger necessarily better?

By the way, MPH are celebrating with some tasty offers.

Are you a Mrs Koh?

2010-09-26T14:27:00.001+08:00

We all know what Lolita or a Shylock or a Scrooge is. Each of these character names has become a by-word for certain kind of individual. But what about a Mrs Koh? Worse still, might you yourself be a Mrs Koh?

Robert Raymer tells me that he was pleasantly surprised to find an article by educator Denis Harry in The New Straits Times telling readers why they should be wary of the Mrs Koh type :

... who is lurking somewhere waiting to pounce on her next promising victim

The character is from Robert's short story Neighbours. (You can download the PDF here.) Writes Harry :

Neighbours, a fine work by Robert Raymer in Lovers and Strangers Revisited, highlights Mrs Koh as the central character. She fabricates stories to create rifts between neighbours. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Maybe this is because there are many Mrs Kohs in this world, people who really are venomous, vicious and potentially damaging, ready to trample on whoever stands in their way.

Raymer is spot on in creating Mrs Koh's character as she is portrayed as someone we both love and loath at the same time. When you hear her loud voice mentioning someone's name in high decibel, you know she wants your attention and she knows she gets yours.

On the other hand, deep inside your heart you keep praying that she does not talk about you. Whether you want to admit it or not, we all have a certain degree of nosiness. Sensational stories surely catch our alert-as-a-rabbit's ears. Unfortunately, they come with a hefty price tag.

Mrs Koh is someone we would call a nosy parker. ... In real life, you can never argue with whatever a Mrs Koh says; she is always right.

In addition to that, she knows everything and wants you to be aware of that too. Here is the sad irony: someone like Mrs Koh may appear warm, friendly and welcoming to those on first encounter with her. Her ability to crack jokes and make fun of other people's flaws and sufferings make her a "people magnet", drawing in audience the moment you anticipate she is going to say her first word.

Your Story - On Receipt

2010-09-26T12:50:00.001+08:00

Here's a wonderfully quirky way of getting writers in print - stories on a book store till receipt!

BookXcess is inviting 100-word entries for its "receipt stories" - check out the website Jackie Ng and Andrew Yap (left) have set up to read some examples and submit your own.

The discount bookstore is going from strength to strength - last year alone they sold 200,000 books - so there's whole lot of reading going on in this city!

Cartoonist Zunar Charged with Sedition

2010-09-26T11:19:00.003+08:00

The police raided the office of political cartoonist Zunar (left) in Brickfields on Friday and seized 66 copies of his collection (very aptly titled given the high-level of governmental paranoia towards his work!) Cartoon-o-phobia. They also apparently took away a caricature of Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor.

The story? :

Zunar’s book is considered detrimental to public order and can influence the public to revolt against government policies.

Zunar was charged with sedition and detained but has since been released on bail.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein is reported as saying that Zunar's arrest was made after his book of cartoons that touched on the country's legal system and religion, including the "Allah" issue (still unresolved!) was found to be detrimental to public order.

Malaysiakini chief editor and Zunar's publisher Steven Gan called it :

... an attack on freedom of expression

Aliran says :

If expressing views that are critical of the government and its policies are deemed to be an offence, then this unfortunately may be construed as a warning to not only other cartoonists but also critical political commentators, analysts and oppositionists. ... If a free and responsible press is the cornerstone of a democracy, then the political and legal constraints that have been placed against journalists and cartoonists, among others, must be removed to promote democracy, the free flow of information and honest journalism. In the case of Malaysia, the Sedition Act and the Printing Presses and Publications Act must be repealed.

Zunar, meanwhile, vows to continue to draw and also plans to sue the police.

This blogger cheers him on.

Postscript :

Some of the cartoons that got Zunar locked up.

Postscript 2 :

NGO's come out in support of Zunar :

Readings@Seksan October

2010-09-24T22:41:00.002+08:00

We have an international line-up for Readings@Seksan with writers and poets from Malaysia, India, Australia and Botswana!

Date: Saturday 2nd October, 2010
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Seksan's, 67, Jalan Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar

(Map www.seksan.com)

The readers for this month include:

Shivani Siva
Amir Muhammad
Hishammudin Rais
Jacqueline Ann Surin
Omar Musa
Thato Ntshabele

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)

New Courses at Learning Works

2010-09-23T18:13:00.000+08:00

There are new courses starting up at Learning Works in Bandar Utama in October :

My Creative Writing Course for beginners Getting Started – Finding the Flow is running again in three different time-slots to suit different needs. The 2-hour once a week 10 week course starts on 5th, 7th and 16th October 2010. Suitable for adults.
So You Want To Write a Children's Book, will help aspiring writers of children’s books get started in their chosen field. Meant for adults, the new once a week week course will start on 2nd and 4th October 2010.
Make A Zine Holiday Workshop is a fun and exciting workshop which brings the world of zines to young children. Kids are encouraged to express themselves in stories, poems, essays and pictures, and compile these into a zine. Learn the nuts and bolts of putting together a "magazine". This is a 5 day two-hourly workshop. Dates: 22nd - 26th Nov 2010 and 29th Nov - 3rd Dec 2010. From 10.30am to 12.30pm
Write Like A Journalist - Think and write like a journalist. Arm yourself with a journalist's toolbox — learn how and where to get information and how to use this information to produce an accurate and compelling piece of writing. This course consists of ten 2-hour sessions, over 10 weeks. Starts in January 2011. Suitable for teens and young adults.

Find more information go to the Learning Works website, email mylearningworks@gmail.com or call KH 012 267 8298 begin_of_the_skype_highligh 012 267 8298 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Inside a Writer's Head

2010-09-22T13:19:00.003+08:00

This message was posted by one of the participants on the Yahoo Group I run for my creative writing courses and it made me smile so much I thought I would pass it on :

Am reading a collection of short stories by Sheila O'Flanagan, and the first story starts like this:

Jennifer Jones sat at the table on her balcony.

No, thought Corinne, that's too boring. It doesn't say anything, doesn't let people know where she is. Or what sort of person she is. Or what might be about to happen to her.

Jennifer Jones watched the crystal-clear water from the chair on her balcony.

But what's she doing sitting down? Corinne asked herself. Why is she sitting around like a lame-ass when she's somewhere gorgeous and exotic? And when she's supposed to be gorgeous and exotic too? And especially when she's supposed to be a sassy action heroine? She shouldn't be sitting anywhere just looking at the sea like a feeble pensioner. (Though pensioners don't have to be feeble. Note to self: how about a pensioner heroine for a future novel? Mightn't that be interesting? Or is that too Agatha Christie? Miss Bloody Marple, of course. Nobody can do a pensioner like Miss Bloody Marple, can they?) Corinne frowned as she looked at her revised opening sentence again. I haven't even said that it's the sea she's looking at, have I? Crystal-clear water could be a lake. I'm still not giving any information about what's going to happen to her at all.

Jennifer Jones... Jennifer Jones... Corinne stared at the open laptop in front of her. Oh bloody hell, she thought. What the hell is going to happen to her? I've no damn idea. She pushed the laptop away from her in disgust and stared out over the blue and white wooden rails of the balcony of Room 404. She sighed deeply. Bloody Jennifer Jones. She loathed the woman. Detested her. Hated her. Abhorred her. Corinne pulled the laptop towards her again and clicked on the thesaurus. Abhor. Abominate. Deplore. Detest. Dislike. Execrate. She frowned. Was execrate a verb? She wasn't sure. She'd never heard of it before. But it would do. If it meant what it was supposed to mean, then she absolutely totally and utterly execrated Jennifer Bloody Jones.

Thought some of the writers here might be able to identify with this! *grin*

AS Byatt and John Carey win James Tait

2010-08-23T10:29:00.000+08:00

AS Byatt has won this year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Children's Book. Manager and judge of the fiction prize Professor Colin Nicholson said of it :

The literary qualities and sheer entertainment value of the work we have been sifting are convincing evidence that fiction and biography of the highest standards are thriving in an evidently buoyant sector of our culture.

The other four novels competing for the fiction prize were:

Strangers by Anita Brookner
Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen.

The prize for the best biography went to John Carey for William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord Of The Flies.

Body2Body Snatchers

2010-08-20T21:22:00.009+08:00

The Home Ministry has apparently seized* three copies of the Body 2 Body: A Malaysian Queer Anthology published last year, from KL book store, Kinokuniya, Patrick Lee reports.

Publisher Amir Muhammad commented :

They just walk into a shop and take the copies ... They don't want to go through the whole legal process (of banning the book). ... It's kind of ironic, (as) a month ago I decided not to reprint the book.

The book has sold more than 2,900 copies to date, so talk about making a gesture to shut the stable door after the horse has ... not just bolted, but disappeared over the horizon.

Lee points out that :

Amir is no stranger to the government's book-grabbing tendencies. ... In February this year, nine copies of his political satire title, “Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things (Vol 2)” were seized by police officers from MPH Mahkota Parade in Malacca.

I must say that one doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry when this kind of thing happens. One way or another, we all get to read the books we want to read, and Malaysian voices will out. But the fact that any book gets seized reminds us that Big Brother State is always there to attempt to trample those voices.

Anyway, Amir has some other good things going on to take his mind off all this. The first edition of his new book 120 Malay Movies is all but sold out (Amir, please save me a copy!!). He has two more books on the best-seller list. And now he's steaming ahead with a book on his take of the Malay classic Sejarah Melayu. (Chapter One is here.)

Postscript :

Back to splitting semantic hairs. Christine Chan writes in Malaysiakini :

The Home Ministry's Publications Control and Quranic Text secretary Zaitun Ab Samad said that the books entitled Body 2 Body, published by Amir Muhammad, have not been seized, rather only taken to undergo scrutiny.

"Taken" or "seized"?

The first word is too innocuous (the stores have no choice but to let the books go so there is an element of compulsion which "take" - sorry Pn Zaiton - does not cover). "Seized" may yes, be too strong, a bit dramatic, but "confiscated", which is probably better, makes us think of school. The books (we know from past form) will not be paid for, not returned after they have been "examined". If the books were only for study then why on earth would three copies need to be taken??

Postscript to Postscript :

Hazlan Zakaria gets round it nicely by using the word "appropriated"!

A Book on a Poster

2010-08-18T11:51:00.000+08:00

Here's a neat idea - a poster of which features the entire text of a favourite book, arranged to form a picture which depicts a memorable scene. Can you guess which novels are depicted below? [via The Millions]

Summer Shorts

2010-08-15T14:44:00.000+08:00

The Guardian features five short stories from established authors : Hilary Mantel, Barabara Trepido, Roddy Doyle, David Mitchell and Téa Obreht, as well as one from the winner from their short story competition and five runners up in their Summer Fiction Special.

Ban Books - Boost Sales!

2010-08-15T13:46:00.000+08:00

Bizarrely, (withholding the books) probably meant we sold more books. We wouldn’t have done this well otherwise ...

Palgrave Macmillan executive director for East Asia, Steve Maginn, talks to Starmag's Elizabeth Tai about the seizure of Barry Wain's Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, and the way it (ironically) boosted sales when the book was finally released.

Elsewhere, Tunku Halim reviews the book ... and suggests we should look past the lost RM50bil. Myself, I don't feel that allegation can or should be swept under the carpet.

Better Book Titles

2010-08-13T11:33:00.003+08:00

What a great idea - a website :

... for people who have trouble slogging through the information on book jackets or feel intimidated by the title and cover itself.

Dan Wilbur retitles famous novels to give you the lowdown on them. Above are are a couple of my favourites. (Of course you spotted that they were of A Clockwork Orange and Ulysses, respectively.)

(Found via a tweet from ubudwritersfest.)

Wena at Bedtime

2010-08-12T07:42:00.003+08:00

Singaporean author Wena Poon's first novel Alex y Robert is published on 24th August in the UK. The Salt Publishing blog captures the behind the scenes excitement.

And this is especially great - the BBC is featuring it as a Book at Bedtime.:

The book has been abridged and turned into a 5-part script and auditions are underway to find a reader (the programme’s Producer, Jeremy Osborne from Sweet Productions, says that this process isn’t the easiest from a technical point of view. Read the book and you’ll find out why!). The recording studio is booked for the week of the 16th August (Wena and I are hoping to pop along to see how it all works) and — diaries out now, please, pens poised — broadcast dates are set for the 6th – 17th September, Mondays – Fridays on BBC Radio 4.
It will also be available online on the BBC iPlayer, so wherever you are in the world, you’ll be able to tune in and be guaranteed sweet dreams.

All this activity is so exciting; as Wena says: ‘Imagine actors auditioning, producers producing, casting directors casting!’ Add to that, millions of people lying in bed listening and readers reading. Wonderful!
Share and Enjoy:

The premise of the book sounds very interesting :

In 1959, two famous Spanish matadors, who were best friends, died. Alex y Robert is the witty, modern fable of their grandchildren: Alejandra, a young American woman determined to become a matador, and Roberto, a reluctant star Spanish bullfighter whom she recruits to help her. Part travel adventure, part cultural critique, the novel portrays man’s complex relationship with animals and a new generation’s surprising take on an ancient and controversial spectacle.

I'm sure we all wish Wena - and Salt - good luck with the book.

Ishiguro's Story for London Film Fest

2010-08-10T23:51:00.001+08:00

One of the films I'm looking forward to is the screen version of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel about the implications of human cloning - Never Let Me Go. The screen version stars Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield and is apparently set to open this year's London Film Festival.

David Gritten in The Telegraph writes :

I make this confident prediction because I’ve already seen the film selected to open the LFF. Never Let Me Go is a perfect example of British film at its very best; it’s a sombre piece of work, yet its sheer quality will lift the gloomiest of spirits.

I so loved the book, and this trailer has really whetted my appetite for the movie version :

If The Secret Worked - Why a Sequel?

2010-08-10T00:03:00.001+08:00

One of the sad parts of that [people taking it seriously] is then they blame themselves when they fail to achieve all the money, the perfect relationships, the perfect health that was promised, because if they don't achieve it they are not trying hard enough, they are not focusing their thoughts well enough ... In this way of thinking, there is no such thing as economic conditions that are condemning many people to hard lives; there is no such thing as diseases that strike people independently of how nice their thoughts are; there is no room for earthquakes, tsunamis, oil spills, any kind of disaster, because anything that happens we really have brought on ourselves.

You will instantly recognise that the book that Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World is talking about : Rhoda Byrnes pernicious little book The Secret.

Kate Youde in The Independent quotes Ehrenreich (whose book, I must say, sounds like one I want to read!) talks about how Byrne's latest book, The Power, is predicted to be even more successful (if by "success" your are referring to numbers of copies and amount of money made), than The Secret :

... facts

19 million number of books sold worldwide

2 million copies of the DVD sold around the globe

32 number of languages the DVD is available in, including Turkish, Bulgarian and Icelandic

286,0000 number of fans on Facebook

1 where the book came on The New York Times bestseller list in March 2007. The film was also number one on Amazon.com's DVD chart in 2007

We talked about this book some time back and readers of this blog couldn't come up with a single instance of Byrnes' hokum actually working, but there's little doubt that gullible readers in Malaysia will snap this up.

Not Quite So Blonde

2010-08-08T20:59:00.000+08:00

Wasn't Marilyn Monroe the prototype blonde bimbo? Well actually, no.

Susie Mesure writes in The Independent that a collection of Munroe's writings entitled Fragments :

.. reveals her passion for James Joyce, Walt Whitman and Samuel Beckett ... She had a vast library, which included works by George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, D H Lawrence, F Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck, as well as Joyce, which she took with her whenever she moved house, something she did many times over her short lifetime. Her copy of Ulysses fetched $9,200 (£5,800) at an auction of her possessions by Christie's in 1999. While in Hollywood, she briefly took evening courses in art appreciation and literature at UCLA before withdrawing after her presence proved too distracting for the other students.

And she also had, apparently :

... a flair for writing words as well as speaking them.

This is a book I'm waiting for!
(* to be published this Autumn by Editions du Seuil in France and U.S. publishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Sellerating Away!

2010-08-07T00:17:00.005+08:00

I was very happy to receive my copy of Clutch, Brake, Sellarator - the compilation of the winning entries for last year's MPH Short Story Competition, for which I was one of the judges. Encountering the stories again reminded me of the morning all those months ago the six of us battled it out over the 20 stories that had been shortlisted for us. And I have to point out that anything I say in this post reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the judging panel as a whole.

There were, you will remember, two grand prize winners.

Tan Twan Eng's Some Things Will Remain set the bar for the competition very high indeed (as you would expect from a Booker-longlisted author) I loved the control of the piece - not a word is wasted and the story builds and builds to its heart-stopping climax while the peace and beauty of the setting, a lotus-covered lake, contrasts so starkly with the ugliness of the crime. I appreciated too how much is left unsaid, for the reader to bring their own interpretation of events to the story.

The title story by Ivan Yeo was enjoyed by all the judges for its humour, carefully observed characters (we particularly loved the "not girlfriend"), and strong Malaysian voice. However, I must confess that I found it a little over-written in places and I personally had a problem with the sudden change of mood at the end which seemed out of keeping with the rest. But it is a very strong debut piece and I do hope that Ivan keeps writing : control and craft can be learned, but the strong storyteller is there already.

Of the runners-up, the story I thought strongest was Lee Eeleen's The Englishman at Table 19. It is simultaneously a coming-of-age tale, a ghost story, and a comedy exploring the family holiday from hell: it works very well on all these levels.

Pilling Time is a surreal short story by Shih Li Kow which the judges enjoyed very much. It was very nicely written (and would we expect any less from Shih-Li?) but I have to say that I preferred her more "rooted-in-the real-world" pieces in Ripples.

The Hunter and the Tigress by Zed Adam Idris is a dark and magical story which captures the smell and feel of the Malaysian rainforest. It's disturbing (I found particularly chilling the scene where the tiger design on the plate begins to move and bites the hand of the man trying to steal it) and it doesn’t give easy answers. I was interested to see in the notes in the front of the book that this piece had grown from a short short story - because I've told Zed that it feels as if it needs to grow larger still and perhaps become a novella.

Vincent Foo's The Cobra's Mate is set in Sarawak. I liked that there was plenty of action and that the writer manages to maintain tension. I was fascinated by the insights into the dayak culture of the time.

The competition has, I think, been very important in opening up another avenue for local writers, and in encouraging short story writing, and this collection is well worth a read. I'm looking forward to next year so I can send in an entry myself!

A Quick Freshen-Up

2010-08-05T16:10:00.000+08:00

Apologies for leaving you high and dry for the last few days. I've been busy, distracted, entertaining relatives, getting on with some other writing, plain lazy ... yes, all of the above.

I also realised that my blog was becoming very difficult to navigate as it was and looked cluttered. Somehow I'd lost my archives, my tags were underutilised by visitors(though all point to good past stuff), and some of my links were dead.

So I am trying a new, less-cluttered layout and hope that it is easier on the eye and more navigable.

Have a poke around and let me know what you think. Normal service, as they say, will be resumed as soon as possible.

Booker Longlist Announced

2010-07-27T23:45:00.005+08:00

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)

2010-07-25T13:46:00.004+08:00

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

2010-07-22T23:13:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-22T16:31:00.000+08:00

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

2010-07-22T12:55:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-20T17:41:00.003+08:00

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

2010-07-19T10:58:00.002+08:00

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

2010-07-18T14:13:00.006+08:00

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

2010-07-18T14:01:00.002+08:00

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

2010-07-14T23:27:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-13T13:57:00.002+08:00

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

2010-07-12T07:19:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-11T18:41:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-11T18:11:00.000+08:00

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

2010-07-11T13:34:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-10T19:56:00.004+08:00

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

2010-07-10T12:36:00.004+08:00

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

2010-07-07T22:18:00.004+08:00

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!

2010-07-05T20:47:00.002+08:00

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

2010-07-05T19:07:00.001+08:00

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

2010-07-03T22:54:00.000+08:00

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

2010-07-03T09:11:00.002+08:00

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.

Editing in Style

2010-06-30T22:07:00.005+08:00

I had decided to attend the Advanced Copy-Editing and Effective Project Management workshop, organized by the National Book Development Council in Singapore at the National Library. I wanted to fill any gaps in my knowledge that might exist because, although I'm well-qualified to comment on whether text works or not, I've never had any formal editorial training of any kind and I feel that lack.

Susan Keogh, who came all the way from Melbourne to give the workshop, is a very experienced editor and wrote the Lonely Planet in-house style manual. She not only knew her stuff really well, she was a very engaging speaker.

She stressed from the outset the necessity of good, clear writing - even in academic and technical texts. We looked at extracts from widely different kinds of writing including : a piece from a Mills&Boon romance, a fictionalised biography of an Australian soldier, and scientific papers, and considered how they might be improved.

Adverbs and adjectives were too often the enemy :

... the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words

as Strunk and White have it, especially :

Rather, very, little, pretty ...

We chopped out repetitions, got rid of irrelevancies, and learned the all important art of showing not telling. We weeded out cliches and tired language, learned that detail should emerge from the narrative rather than being added to it, and needs to advance it. And we visited that stylistic bugbear and unintended source of hilarity : dangling modifiers. This analysis and reshaping of texts was by far the most useful part of the workshop for me. (And it confirmed my hunches - I know what I'm doing.)

On the Monday afternoon though we changed tack and looked at how to write effective blurbs and publicity material, by using such devices as extended metaphors, compiling a cheat-sheet of useful words and by using literary and grammatical effects. We took apart blurbs and wrote our own for an imaginary guide book for Singapore. And I now feel confident to tackle writing a decent one of my own ... which is just as well.

I was looking forward to the part about managing publishing projects, but it seemed to be aimed at organisations where there were multiple projects to oversee, rather than the freelance editor with just one. But I really enjoyed Susan's disaster stories including her account of what happened when Lonely Planet published a travel guide with Westen Europe on the spine. (They didn't recall and pulp, they inserted a humourous bookmark instead!).

I was the only attendee from this side of the causeway, and the rest, bar one or two freelancers, worked for Singaporean publications. It was sad not to see anyone from book publishing there as they would have found this useful (and there is a great need for such training to raise professional standards).

Abandoned City ... and City

2010-06-27T21:30:00.005+08:00

What are you guys reading? Any good?

It's been a while since I asked the question.

I'm feeling a bit sad that the new novel by China Mieville The City and The City - did not at all agree with me and has given me literary indigestion. It was so hyped, has won sci-fi awards and is expected to win more, and I wasin the mood for fiction that breaks the mold. So I thought I was onto a sure thing. (Perhaps I would like other novels by this same author?).

I'm not giving anything more away about the plot than that it's a detective novels played out in parallel dimensions. I must confess to struggling to a third of the way through before I realised that I just wasn't enjoying it and decided to ditch it ... though I did a naughty and skipped to the end to see what happened in the end.

I did feel the central premise of the novel (the two cities idea) was fascinating, and I felt the rather atmosphere was well created (in some ways the novel reminds me of Orhan Pamuk's Snow) but I'm not big on allegorical fables a la Borges and Kafka. You tend to get the idea quickly enough but have just too many pages of tedium to troll through. And oh man, this book is bloody boring and over 300 pages!

Then there's a Dan Brown level of character development which leaves you just not caring about whether the murder gets solved or about what happens to dear Inspector Borlu. This is something so basic - fiction doesn't work if we don't care for the characters!

But worst of all is the appauling editing ... or rather lack thereof. One commentator on Amazon suggested that perhaps the wrong copy of the manuscript got sent to the publishers and I can well believe it. There are sentences that make no sense whatsoever! Other parts are so clunky that I did wonder if Mieville intended the language to imitate a foreign speaker who can't handle English too well. I sat on the plane down to Singapore today and marked 'em with a green pen. (Maybe I'm getting in the mood for my advanced Copy Editing Workshop tomorrow?)

Spot what's wrong here, for e.g. :

Corwi drove - she made no effort to disguise her uniform, despite that we had an unmarked car -

Arrrrgh!

Anyway, had the book been better I would have been happily still engrossed in it, instead of talking to you. So maybe a little boredom occasionally is good for one?

And now over to you.

Next Courses

2010-06-26T12:08:00.000+08:00

I am starting my creative writing course for beginners Getting Started - Finding the Flow again soon at Learning Works in Bandar Utama. Two time slots are available for this 10-session course:

Tues 10.30 a.m.-12.30 p.m. (start 6 July)
Sat 10.30 a.m.-12.30 p.m. (start 31 July)

I am nearing the end of the first run through of a new second-level course called Who Are you? Somebody! which focuses on writing from personal experience, and above all on writing honestly. It's been a demanding journey and I'm really happy with the work produced by the group so far, and feel we've come a long way.

More courses and workshops are planned (including ones of writing craft) and I am so happy that Eileen and Dennis have given me a base to work from so that I can develop what I am doing.

We (and here I also include library saint Daphne Lee!) have now put small library in place so that we can encourage our writers to also be readers.

Learning Works have much more going on, and there are some exciting developments in the pipe-line.

When Literature Turns to Crime

2010-06-26T00:28:00.002+08:00

The feeling is there is a very clear line of demarcation between the two things. With crime, romance, science fiction, we are considered to be writers within a formulaic genre, whereas literary writers are considered to be 'moving freely', as it were. ... There has always been a feeling that literary fiction is improving, that you come away from reading it and you're a better person for it. No one ever said that about reading a crime novel – although maybe you come away feeling happier.

Australia's top literary award, the Miles Franklin award has this year gone to crime writer, Peter Temple whose novel Truth is :

... a story about murder, deceit, police corruption and politics set amid the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria.

Could Britain's top literary prize, the Man Booker prize ever go to a crime novel? asks Alison Flood in The Guardian. She talks, among others to critic John Sutherland (who feels it is unlikely) and crime novelist Ian Rankin (who feels that attitudes to crime fiction are changing.)

Temple says in the article that writing crime was just :

... an excuse to write. ... It gives a sense of urgency, of narrative drive. My characters have a reason to get up in the morning. Ian McEwan, who I think is wonderful, his characters do not really have an urgent reason to get up in the morning ...

And he feels that:

There is only one judgment for the value of a book, and that is what sort of emotional response it elicits in the reader. That's down to the quality of the writing.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens when Temple's novel is submitted for the Booker this year!

Free Market Necessarily Good for Books?

2010-06-24T19:26:00.000+08:00

Since the NBA disappeared, 500 independent bookshops have closed. Borders has swooped on to our high streets – and then ceased trading. Dillons is a distant (bad) memory. The market has narrowed. The shelf life of most novels is far shorter, as are the careers of most writers. Statistics tell us that more books are published – but most of those are self-published or sold by tiny firms with next to no marketing push. The real story of the industry is the slashing of lists, mergers, collapses, buy-outs, sackings and losses on a scale never before witnessed.

Now, instead of a cartel, we have a virtual monopoly. An agreement that enabled dozens of publishers to set prices for thousands of booksellers has been replaced by a system that allows two or three big organisations to dictate all. Waterstone's book buyers, rather than the book-buying public, decide whether a book succeeds. Supermarkets tell publishers what price to sell at, how many copies to print, what to put on the cover, what to call books and even what to put inside them.

The Net Book Agreement, put into place in 1899 in the UK allowed publishers to set the retail price of books, but in the 1990's the agreement was torn up to allow free market forces to take over. But Sam Jordison in The Guardian asks whether this was a good thing for the book industry in the long term.

For the Worship of Books

2010-06-20T20:55:00.001+08:00

GeneGirl, this blog's correspondent based in Germany, makes another bookish pilgrimage - this time to one of the world's most famous bookshops.

I love lists. I have a list of things to achieve before my next birthday (time is running out), list of books to read, and a recent list of things that scare me that I have to try out (people who know me, know I am freaky that way).

When I read a list of the best bookshops around and saw that the best bookshop was just a hop away, I hopped away from Cologne to Maastricht.

Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands and now hosts a bookshop with apparently the largest English books in the country. More importantly, the host is a 800-year old church. Now people can pay homage to books in this old Dominican church, which interestingly enough until Christmas of 2007 was a bicycle store!

Dutch architects Merkx and Girod took on the task of refurbishing the church and bringing in bookshelves and a quaint little café (below) at the end of the church. Now, the Boekhandel Selxyz Dominicanen will remain amongst the favorite places to escape to.

The English section carries a diverse range of authors, from classics to chicklit, from crime fiction to non fiction. I sat for ages amongst the books, feeling like I was with friends and looking up at the frescoes, one could easily believe it is a divine experience. Every visit since I first stepped into the church of books has brought me profound joy, contemplation and a renewed energy to read MORE!

If you are reading this blog from overseas or are travelling and would like to let us know about a great bookshop or place with a bookish connection, I'd love to give you the space for a guest post. Just contact me at sharonbakar at yahoo dot com.

Joining the KLAB

2010-06-20T12:50:00.001+08:00

It looks like the indie publishing scene is really growing in Malaysia. We also have more independent writers in Bahasa Malaysia, like Fdaus Ahmad, participating this year, unlike previous years, which saw mainly local English-language writers selling their works. This shows that it is the shared spirit of independent writing that counts and not the language one is writing in.

Zulhabri Supian, one of the KL Alternative bookfair's initiators, is one of the people Hari Azizan talks to about the bookfest in Starmag : it's a very good piece which gives an excellent overview of the event.

Local Books Good Enough to Eat

2010-06-19T15:49:00.002+08:00

Haven't written yet about the KL Alternative Bookfair. Went along last Saturday afternoon and it was a very enjoyable occasion, meeting all my book-loving friends, including some I hadn't actually met in three-dimensions before.

I'm not too comfortable in crowds (agoraphobic!) and the confined space was heaving especially as next door was the Arts for Grabs event. I did a stint on Daphne's second-hand stall, twisting a few arms to get copies sold.

It was also great to collect some very nice local books, for which I must say thanks. I think the titles speak volumes about how food obsessed Malaysians are, and how proud of their cuisine.

The first course was Rojak, Amir Muhammad's collection of short shorts, written for the City of Shared Stories Kuala Lumpur project, and published by ZI Publications.

For the uninitiated (my overseas readers who need a glossary) Rojak is actually a salad served with a sweet sauce with fishy undertones, and it is nicely described here. It is also used in a more metaphorical sense to describe Malaysian society with all its cultural variations, and in fact it fits this dip-into sweet-sour-crunchy collection of bite-sized stories. This book is beautifully illustrated by Chin Yew and in fact has the prettiest end-papers on any local publication I've seen.

If you want a nibble, here are links to some of his short-shorts : Correspondence, 1997: My Life as an Artis (You have to know a little Malaysian history to enjoy this one!), The Sex thing With the Tempoyak*.

(*Another food note : tempoyak is fermented durian used in sambals and sauces. it's not stinky like the fresh fruit, but has a tongue-teasing sourness ... which I love.).

Way back, I tried to nudge the enigmatic Amir into writing some fiction, and I am so glad that the British Council's project gave him the push he needed. (C'mon Amir, you are the person I most want to read a novel from!)

You can read Bissme's interview with Amir about the book in The Sun, and The New Straits Times review is up on Amir's blog.

Next in our ~~food~~ literary tour is Tapai by Hishamudin Rais, also published by ZI. Tapai is a desert made either from fermented rice or tapioca. It's the ultimate boozy pudding. (Think rice pudding made with vodka!)

Tapai the book is equally delightful. I've been enjoying Isham's columns which tell of his gastronomic adventures in the most far flung parts of the country in Off The Edge for years, and I will really treasure this compilation. He's entertaining, erudite, and refreshingly irreverent and the book offers as much in way of social commentary as it does information about different cuisines. One example which made me giggle - he describes at one point a Melayu Baru wedding reception :

Cold food surrounded by plastic flowers ... it's as tedious as trying to haggle a student concession price with a prostitute in Soho.

If you really want to get to the heart of the country, this book would be a great place to start. And if you need more persuading - could you resist a chapter entitled Sex and the National Vegetables?

This is another beautifully produced book, the paper feels nice, the cover illustration (a picture of Isham made out of vegetables and spices) extremely clever, and it's lavishly illustrated with colour photos. (I hope some will be up on the ZI website in time and if they are, will link to them.)

The third book with a (tenuous!) gastronomic link is Chuah Kok Yee's collection of short stories Without Anchovies. The title refers to the ikan bilis that comes along with the hot sambal to top the steaming dish of nasi lemak (coconut rice) - which is a Malaysian breakfast staple and features in the first story.

For the moment I would like to say that I am enjoying reading this very much indeed and intend to put up something more in another post soon.

At KLAB when the books were launched we were given - nice little touch this - little plastic containers of rojak, little twists of fragrant leaves containing tapai ... but where oh where, Kok Yee, was our nasi lemak? You owe me!

By the way, did anyone work out why the doughnuts on sale at KLAB were named after Vincent Tan? This is still seriously bothering me.

Saramago Dies

2010-06-19T12:34:00.020+08:00

Nobel winning Portuguese novelist, Jose Saramago, died yesterday at his home in Lanzarote, aged 87. He had been ill for some time.

He moved to the Canary Islands in 1998 after a spat with the Portuguese government concerning his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, which many considered offensive to Catholics in its depicting a a flawed and very human Jesus. He also courted controversy as an unflinching supporter of communism.

Born into poverty in 1922 in a small village outside Lisbon, Saramago was largely self-educated. He never finished university but continued to study part time, supporting himself as a metal-worker. He's described by Helder Macedo, emeritus professor of Portuguese literature at Kings College London as :

... an avid reader (and) a voracious intellectual ... acquiring information as much as he could.

He wrote his first novel when he was in his 20s, but left off writing fiction for many years because he said he had nothing to say and turned to journalism instead.

When his membership of the communist party cost him his job as a newspaper editor in 1974, he returned to writing fiction, now well into his 50's. He called himself :

... a belated writer.

He wrote novels which tackled big themes and blended fact with fantasy and folklore. In Blindness, for example, he wrote about the whole population of a city losing its sight.

His 1982 novel, Baltasar and Blimunda, was the first to be widely translated,and to attract international attention. He won the Nobel in 1998.

Jose Socrates, Portuguese Prime Minister, has called Saramago one of Portugal's great cultural figures and said that his death had left the culture poorer.

NPR has an excellent piece on the author (which you can listen to as well). Carl Franzen on politicsdaily.com reveals five fascinating facts about his life. He is profiled too in The Globe and Mail.

Doubtless there will be any other tributes flooding in, and I will post links to them later below.

Dutch Gardener Wins IMPAC

2010-06-19T11:41:00.001+08:00

The IMPAC Dublin Prize, the world's richest literary award, has been won by Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker with his debut novel The Twin.

The synopsis of the novel reads :

When Helmer’s twin brother dies in a car accident, he is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother’s role and spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow’.

After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.

The panel of judges, which this year included Anne Fine, commented :

Though rich in detail, it’s a sparely written story, with the narrator’s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style. ... The book convinces from first page to last. With quiet mastery the story draws in the reader. The writing is wonderful: restrained and clear, and studded with detail of farm rhythms in the cold, damp Dutch countryside. The author excels at dialogue, and Helmer’s inner story-telling voice also comes over perfectly as he begins to change everything around him. There are intriguing ambiguities, but no false notes. Nothing and no one is predictable, and yet we believe in them all: the regular tanker driver, the next door neighbour with her two bouncing children, and Jaap, the old farm labourer from the twins’ childhood who comes back to the farm in time for the last great upheaval, as Helmer finally takes charge of what is left of his own life.

According to Alison Flood in The Guardian, Bakkar got the idea for the book while he was hiking in the mountains of Corsica in 2002. He said he had the idea of a son :

who was going to do something terrible to his father. ... It stayed in my mind for months and I got so frustrated – nothing was happening with the idea. Then I just sat down and got writing. I didn't know where I was going, I just started – for me that's a good way to write.

Bakkar is a gardener by trade and says that writing and gardening :

... work well together. In the autumn when I rake the dead leaves I can do it for hours – once I even disturbed a pile I'd made so I could go on raking. The sound is so wonderful: it lets you think in a subconscious way, in the back of your mind.

Bakker also works as a skating instructor in the winter.

Best of British?

2010-06-19T00:33:00.000+08:00

After the New Yorker's list of twenty American fiction writers under the age of 40 to watch out for last week, Lorna Bradbury in The Telegraph sets herself the challenge of identifying the British equivalents, based on merit and potential :

The List

1 Chris Cleave (b 1973) His first novel, Incendiary, was about a terrorist attack on London and was published on July 7, 2005. The Other Hand (2008), a cross-national thriller set in England and Nigeria, became a word-of-mouth hit.

2 Rana Dasgupta (b 1971) Born in Canterbury, but now lives in Delhi. His first collection of stories was set in a Tokyo airport; his first novel, Solo (2009), was about a 99-year-old Bulgarian chemist.

3 Adam Foulds (b 1974) After writing his verse novel The Broken Word about the Mau Mau rebellion, he wrote his Man Booker-shortlisted study of John Clare, The Quickening Maze (2009).

4 Sarah Hall (b 1974) The author of four novels, the first two of which were set in the early 20th century in her native Cumbria. Her most acclaimed work is The Carhullan Army (2007), about a band of women rebels surviving in a Britain hit by environmental disaster.

5 Steven Hall (b 1975) His debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts (2007) – about a man who loses his memory and tries to create a new identity for himself – unusually lived up to his publisher’s hype.

6 Mohsin Hamid (b 1971) The Reluctant Fundamentalist – a literary thriller about a Pakistani man who may, or may not, be a terrorist – came within a whisker of winning the Man Booker in 2007.

7 Anjali Joseph (b 1978) Her debut novel, Saraswati Park, is published next month. Sharp yet lyrical, the novel, which is set in Bombay, shows the influence of Amit Chaudhuri.

8 Joanna Kavenna (b 1974) Wrote seven unpublished novels before her eighth, Inglorious, was published by Faber and won the Orange new writers prize. Described as “Dostoevsky meets Bridget Jones”.

9 Benjamin Markovits (b 1973) Part way through a trilogy of novels about Byron and his circle, this assured writer has also just published an autobiographical novel, Playing Days, about a professional basketball player in Germany.

10 China Miéville (b 1972) Inspired by horror writers such as HP Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock, his science fiction and fantasy books – including Un Lun Dun for young adults – have legions of fans.

11 Paul Murray (b 1975) His second book, Skippy Dies, a comic novel set in a private boys school in Ireland, was recently described in the Telegraph as “gigantic, marvellous, witty…heartbreaking”.

12 Patrick Neate (b 1970) Won the Whitbread (now Costa) novel prize in 2001 for Twelve Bar Blues, a picaresque novel about New Orleans jazz artists. His most recent work, Jerusalem, deals, like his first novel, Musungu Jim, with European encounters with Africa.

13 Ross Raisin (b 1979) This Yorkshire-born novelist’s first book, God’s Own Country (2008), followed the dark story of a teenage farmer’s son living on the Moors.

14 Dan Rhodes (b 1972) After his second book, Rhodes declared he wanted to give up writing. Luckily for us he carried on with Gold (2007), about a Welsh-Japanese woman living in a coastal cottage, and his most recent book, Little Hands Clapping.

15 Kamila Shamsie (b1973) The author of five novels, mainly set in the Pakistan of her birth. Her most successful work is her latest: Burnt Shadows (1999) follows two families from the Second World War in Japan to the aftermath of 9/11.

16 Zadie Smith (b 1975) Wrote the wildly successful White Teeth while still at Cambridge. Her writing has matured since then, most notably in On Beauty (2005).

17 David Szalay (b1974) Winner of a Betty Trask Prize, Szalay’s The Innocent is told from the perspective of a KGB agent in late Forties Russia.

18 Adam Thirlwell (b 1978) Clever All Souls fellow who published Politics at the age of 25 and since then the Milan Kundera-inspired The Escape (2009).

19 Scarlett Thomas (b1972) The End of Mr Y (2007) was a surprise bestseller about a student who discovers a long-lost Victorian novel.

20 Evie Wyld (1980) After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (2009) was a haunting first novel set on the Australian East coat.

And of course, lively discussion is invited and anticipated.

Books on a Bike

2010-06-16T18:53:00.001+08:00

Is there no end to biblioinventiveness? I've featured some unusual bookshelves on this blog - but how about one on ... a bicycle?

The amazing Book Bike is the brainchild of Gabriel Levinson [via], former reviews editor for Make: A Chicago Literary Magazine.

Gabriel apparently pedals this bookshelf on three wheels around the parks of Chicago during spring and summer months:

... bringing bookish delight to all of those who may be seeking it.

I guess this puts a new spin (haha!) on the concept of the mobile library!

Books From Yonks Ago

2010-06-16T00:45:00.000+08:00

In this age of Amazon recommendations and Kindle downloads, I still rely on the old-fashioned services of a book buyer. My personal book buyer has an uncanny ability to anticipate my tastes. He has introduced me to out-of-print novelists, obscure playwrights and classic philosophy tracts. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of his choices, though quite a few remain stacked in my bookshelf, still unread.

In a delightful essay called My Backlogged Pages in The New York Times, John Feffer writes about his personal bookbuyer - a teenager in fact, who turns out to be .... . Well, read it yourself!

Clatter Clatter

2010-06-15T11:04:00.000+08:00

Those who miss the feel of the good old fashioned typewriter, yet love the convenience of a computer can now have the best of both worlds with a USB Typewriter.

I kid you not.

Writing with Alfian

2010-06-14T10:13:00.003+08:00

Award-winning Singaporean poet and playwright, Alfian Saat, will be in residence at CHAI (Instant Cafe House of Arts Ideas) 12-25 July.

Here's his schedule :

* INTRODUCTION TO PLAYWRITING (FOR BEGINNERS) – 13 July **
* PLAYWRITING WORKSHOP (FOR EXPERIENCED WRITERS) – 17 and 24 July**
* POETRY WORKSHOP – 20 July
* DRAMATISED READINGS – 24 July

**To register for this workshop please email firstworks@instantcafetheatre.com tell us about yourself and state why you would like to join the workshop. Successful applicants will be notified by email.**

WORKSHOPS

Introduction to Playwriting

13 July | 7pm -10pm

No. of participants: 15 max

Fee: RM 45

This workshop is aimed at those who have never written a play. Participants will be introduced to the basics of playwriting, such as the structure of a play (exposition, conflict, climax, resolution), as well as how to write believable and engaging characters.

The focus of this workshop will be on recognizing the elements that make up a play, and selectively using these to create drama. Particular attention will be made on the differences between the play and other literary forms (such as poetry and prose), with the intention of sensitizing writers to how the body, space and time interact within a performance setting.

Playwriting Workshop: At Home in the World

17&24 July | 2pm-5pm

No. of participants: 15 max

Fee: RM 80

This workshop is aimed at those writers who have already penned plays, and is pitched at an intermediate level. In this workshop, participants will be led through a series of writing explorations, where they will investigate certain questions related to the craft. What kinds of audiences are we writing for? Is there a conflict between local concerns and universal relevance? Are there compromises to be made between authenticity (topical references, particular speech patterns) and intelligibility?

This workshop will examine how we can use the available materials around us—life stories, interviews, news reports, archival documents—as raw material for a play. The focus will be on writing characters and situations that are embedded within specific social, political and cultural contexts.

Poetry Workshop

20 July | 830pm-1030pm

No. of participants: 15 max

Fee: RM30

This workshop is aimed at those who would like to explore the different approaches to writing poetry. Unlike other poetry workshops, this workshop will concentrate not on beginning a poem, but on crafting one. Hence an emphasis will be placed on the process of revising and editing, paying close attention to how the selection of words and the structuring of lines affect the production of meaning.

The poet will provide samples from his own poems to demonstrate how choices are made which determine the final shape of a poem. The attempt is to demystify poetry-writing, which is above all a continuous process of meticulous redrafting, rather than the transcription of a single burst of inspiration.

DRAMATISED READINGS
sex.violence.blood.gore by Alfian Sa’at

A Special Multilingual Edition @ CHAI featuring Malaysian Actors

24 July | 830pm

Entrance by minimum donation RM20

The End of Charing Cross?

2010-06-13T17:12:00.002+08:00

You could take the Charing Cross Road once from Centre Point and walk south and stop for tea at the coffee shop in the National Portrait Gallery with the satisfaction that you had had the good fortune to be able to examine a facsimile edition of Tomé Pires's Summa Oriental, feasted on a second hand copy of the Haji's Book of Nursery Rhymes along the way, and you'd have probably met many remarkable men and Gurdjieff, too, and waded through murders most foul in the book-shelves of Murder Inc and probably managed to persuade a doubting bibliopolist that you had the means to buy a 1st edition copy of 1984 that you managed to persuade him to pull out from his locked showcase.

There were three chain bookshops in Charing Cross, but now there's only two, but the crux of the Charing Cross Road is not the big giants but the small shops, the second hand trade and antiquarian books and shops that look after the niche market ranging from esoterica to car manuals and books about maps and art, and first editions galore. It is this side of the street that is now under threat from money-grabbing landlords, and inhospitable planning policy and the Internet too and big bookshops and supermarkets who are able to buy in bulk and sell as loss leaders at three for the price of two.

Wan A. Hulaimi writes in today's New Sunday Times about the imminent demise of London's famous street of books. His early post on the street is linked here, and here's another link to a post on the same topic.

(And happy I am to hear that our Awang Goneng has a second book about Terengganu coming out later this year. Now I want the big glossy coffee table version that only exists in my dreams!)

The Ideal Writing Day

2010-06-13T13:04:00.000+08:00

Eventually, if you type anything at all, you will – of course – be asked about your typical writing day and you will have to say something, or be sneered and mocked during the kind of parties I don't attend.

What would your ideal writing day be like? There are those who would have us believe that we have to get up and write at the crack of dawn (ala Dorothea Brande) to get anything meaningful down on paper, and while this might be commendable, what's perhaps more important is that we find our individual rhythms.

I very much enjoyed reading A.L. Kennedy's account of how she would ease herself into her perfect writing day (though she admits it is far from a typical writing day).

Kingsolver in Orange

2010-06-11T23:29:00.002+08:00

This year's Orange Prize for Fiction has gone to American author Barbara Kingsolver (left) for her sixth novel, The Lacuna, which is set between the the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. It is described by Chair of Judges Daisy Godwin as :

... a book of breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy

The award ceremony invariably stirs up the debate about whether there should be a literary prize exclusively for women, and another of this year's judges, Michele Roberts in The Independent, does a valiant job of defending this space.

Postscript :

I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political ... Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life. Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people. How can that not affect you politically? ... (It is) powerful craft; there's alchemy. So we have an obligation to take it seriously – and I do. Perhaps that's why I'm marked. I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.

Kingsolver talks about her life in writing to Maya Jaggi in The Guardian.

How Harper Became a Reader

2010-06-08T08:16:00.002+08:00

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it. ... And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up–some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

Fifty years after she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee writes about how she became a reader for the Summer Reading edition of Oprah's O Magazine, and as you see above, some poignant comments about being a reader now. You can find the whole text of her letter here.

(Thanks v much Amir M for telling me about this.)