National Day Books

Malaysia is enjoying a long weekend for the 51st National Day, so Sunday's newspapers are, predictably, full of talk of nation building. It was a lovely surprise to see my friend and erstwhile writing group buddy Soo Choon on the pages of the Star, talking about her cross-cultural marriage.

In a very packed-with-good-stuff ReadsMonthly section the Starmag team journalists compile a list of their 51 best reads esp for Merdeka.

Daphne Lee interviews Bernice Chauly about her work (You can find the full interview on Daphne's blog.) :

Chauly’s poems are deeply personal. They may or may not be autobiographical in detail, but the stories they tell feel like they were shaped by real emotions and memories.

They are Chauly’s emotions, memories and stories, but they also speak to and for women the world over. They are familiar tales, but filtered through the voice of an individual, they defy the cliches of everyday experience and become significant, compelling and unique.

and Ahnaf reviews her collection of poetry The Book of Sins.

There's a write up by Rouwen Lin about the Read While Waiting flashmob event of last weekend.

Janet Tay review Nam Le's collection of short fiction The Boat (and there's a 25% off token!), and KayKay enjoys David Sedaris' When You Are englulfed by Flames.

Vernon Adrian Emaung crossed the causeway for Kee Thuan Chye's The Swordfish, Then the Concubine, which sounds as if it was beautifully staged :

Set in minimalist staging that featured a serambi or open platform for village gatherings, 15 Singaporean actors tackled a story that called for a cast of thousands across two generations – you couldn’t get more epic than that, right? Especially so when you have a gamelan orchestra providing for the peaks and troughs of human drama, the deafening clamour of war, and the crescendo of divine retribution. Music composer Joyce Teo and the Gamelan Asmarada group delivered proficiently on that aspect. The underlying political commentary linked current issues to these ancient myths quite commendably in the writing. Similarly, it was truly fascinating to watch the production draw stylistically from bangsawan (Malay opera), dikir barat, and silat to facilitate and vibrantly colour the storytelling.

It was quite an honour to have a Malaysian play kick off a Singaporean Theatre Festival. How sad I am I missed it. But I do hope it is staged here soon.

We Read While Waiting

Yes, went along to the Read While Waiting gather on Saturday at KL Sentral. I decided to take position by the Komuter Terminal and was reassured when I saw other subversives turning up with books. At 3pm sharp, we struck poses and began to read like living statues except for turning pages. My immediately neighbours were Marina Mahathir and Noraini Othman (below), so I was in good company. (Isn't that, ahem, a banned book in Marina's hand?)

I'm not sure if around us anyone noticed what we were doing since passers-by were probably more preoccupied with getting to their destinations. I got bumped by suitcases once or twice, but the worst thing that happened was when someone eating greasy french fries stood right next to me, chomping away.

Never mind, though, I managed to get totally transported by The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, especially as it looked as if Oscar might finally lose his virginity. (Fat chance!)

Another "neighbour", Wan Yian, was also totally engrossed in her book.

The much bigger crowd turned out to be upstairs outside KFC, and I think they made much more of a point.

Here's three more book lovers with their choices.

And a photo call with some of the readers after the event.

I had tea with organiser Zain afterwards while he was being interviewed by the press. The guy has so much enthusiasm that if you attached him by wires to the national grid, he could probably power a city the size of Ipoh.

Zain's photos are on Facebook.

Zain Promotes RWP

Zain's semi-flashmob thingy for the Read While You Wait Project is happening this Saturday, 23rd, not only in KL but also in Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth & Eindhoven.

The exact location in KL will be revealed this Wednesday. (There's a group for the project on Facebook).

To promote the event Zain has put together three promotional videos which features brief snippets of folks you know and love - including me! Here's the first :



The other versions are here and here and you can hear an interview with Zain in the latest episode of The Fairly Current Show.