Bok Review Bingo

I hardly think there is anything that drives a stake into the heart of a book review faster and with more determined force than a cliché. Book reviews that use clichés mean nothing, say nothing, and tell the reader nothing. They're like eating a cream puff when what you really want is prime rib -- they're unsatisfying and, ultimately, useless. ... And, at a time when book reviewers are busy whining about how nobody cares about books and nobody reads reviews and everyone is just a dope, you'd think the FIRST thing to go would be the meaningless clichés. But they're still there, draining the meaning out of anything the writer might have to say. Making what they write a bunch of useless exercises in syllabic combinations.

Michelle Kerns at The Examiner [via] has decided to launch a one-woman war against cliched book reviews and has invented a fun game complete with Bingo cards ready to print out! Reading the reviews in the major newspapers on Sundays has never seemed so much fun.  :  

Must say though, it's going to be harder than  ever to write reviews without recourse to these rather convenient terms ...

More on cliches in reviews here.

Unjustified Enthusiasm

What makes this bellyaching (about bad reviews) so unseemly is that the vast majority of book reviews are favorable, even though the vast majority of books deserve little praise. Authors know that even if one reviewer hates a book, the next 10 will roll over like pooches and insist it’s not only incandescent but luminous, too. Reviewers tend to err on the side of caution, fearing reprisals down the road. Also, because they generally receive but a pittance for their efforts, they tend to view these assignments as a chore and write reviews that read like term papers or reworded press releases churned out by auxiliary sales reps. This is particularly true in the mystery genre, where the last negative review was written in 1943.

Joe Queenan warns about the dangers of over-praising authors in the New York Times.

Some Guidelines for Book Reviewing on Blogs

Lisa Warren at the Huffington Post (and thanks Yusof Martin for the link) asks, in the face of US newspapers downsizing their literary review sections, whether reviews on blogs can ever adequately fill the gap.

She reckons that reviews on blogs:

... particularly those of the Blogspot variety -- tend to be self-indulgent

and offers these guidelines for those who would try to make their blogged book reviews much more useful :

Book reviewing bloggers need to move away from opinion in favor of judgment. How does the book compare to -- and fit in with -- the author's previous work? What's the book's place in the genre? The canon? Does the writer succeed in doing what he or she set out to do -- meaning, is it the book they meant it to be? Whether it's the book the blogger wanted it to be is of much less importance to me, frankly.

I'd also advise that book reviewing bloggers jettison the use of personal pronouns (yes, I've used a slew of them here; you can nail me in the comments). And for goodness sake, I wish they'd stop telling me what their father and their girlfriend -- or their father's girlfriend -- thought of the book. Also, I don't need to know how they came to possess the book -- how they borrowed it from the library, or bought it at B&N, or snagged a galley at The Strand, or got the publisher to send them a copy even though they average four hits a day. The banal back-story is of little interest.

The book, however, is. And, for that reason, a little plot summary to help me navigate, and a brief introduction to the book's main characters can go a very long way. It's book reviewing 101--not rocket science, I'll grant you--but it's important not to let the informality of the venue serve as an excuse for forgetting the basics.

I posted my thoughts on the issue here, and am unapologetic that most of my reviews here are very personal reactions to books and include a fair bit of banal back-story.

I find it takes a lot of time and effort (many hours, many drafts) to write a review that really does justice to a book, and I generally save that energy for the "dead-tree" publications I write for. (Posting those more polished reviews here in turn.)

But there is a lot in what Warren says and I am sure the little worm of guilt will be gnawing at me when I put up posts in future!

Postscript :

Within minutes of this post being up(!) Satima Flavell of speculative fiction site The Spectusphere dropped by to post a link to guidelines she had written for potential reviewers for the site. Useful advice for reviewing newbies, and a very nice site for those interested in the genre.

Postscript 2

Among those who have responded to Warren's piece is Edmund Champion who sees the shift to blog reviewing in a much more positive light. But things would be better still if litbloggers could be assured an income stream from advertisers! (This is my lament too.)

There's also a sensible riposte from at The Literary Saloon :

Of course, there are a lot of very amateurish review-blogs and sites -- but there are also a lot that are very good. In certain areas Internet coverage has long superseded newspaper coverage: review-coverage of genre books (mystery, science fiction, romance) is far superior in range and, for the most part, quality than what can be found in newspapers. And, sadly, we don't think we're tooting our own horn too loudly when we claim that, as far as coverage of fiction in translation goes, you're better served by us -- little more than a two-bit, one-man operation -- than if you rely on The New York Times Book Review (even with the daily book section tossed in for good measure).

(Pic stolen from The Bookseller)

Confessions of a Book Reviewer

In a cold but stuffy bed-sitting room littered with cigarette ends and half-empty cups of tea, a man in a moth-eaten dressing-grown sits at a rickety table, trying to find room for his typewriter among the piles of dusty papers that surround it. He cannot throw the papers away because the wastepaper basket is already overflowing, and besides, somewhere among the unanswered letters and unpaid bills it is possible that there is a cheque for two guineas which he is nearly certain he forgot to pay into the bank. There are also letters with addresses which ought to be entered in his address book. He has lost this address book, and the thought of looking for it, or indeed of looking for anything, afflicts him with acute suicidal impulses.

I came across a reference to this piece by George Orwell in a comment left on the Guardian blog the other day, and it tickled me, as a sometime book-reviewer. (No lah, thankfully don't see much of myself in it - apart from the bit about the lost cheques!) And although it was written in 1946 there is still more than a grain of truth in it, especially :

The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews — 1,000 words is a bare minimum — to the few that seem to matter. Short notes of a line or two on forthcoming books can be useful, but the usual middle-length review of about 600 words is bound to be worthless even if the reviewer genuinely wants to write it.

Sadly 600 words is the limit we are all to often told to write to in the local press, and it is very difficult as Orwell says, to do a decent job in that few words.

Crap Crit?

John Sutherland on the Guardian blog suggests some reasons why literary criticism is in such a state of decline. (He even goes so far as to call what's left of the savaged Los Angeles Times literary supplement, "crap-crit"!).

The first reason is that, apparently, lit-crit is inherently unsexy :

You can sex up every other section of the paper, but seldom, if ever, the literary pages. And sexy is the flavour of our times.

Secondly, because lit-crit has been ruined by the academics. While they come :

... dirt-cheap. ... They can be dull. Really dull. Increasingly the Great British Public doesn't want a bloody academic review. Sad, but again the spirit of the age.

And thirdly, a lot of reviewing has shifted to the internet and to blogs. Not necessarily a bad thing, but :

One's only reservation is that, writing against the clock, bloggers often write hastily and thoughtlessly. The blogosphere, under pressure, is doing for literary style - the elegance, for example, of a John Carey or an AS Byatt - what texting has done for punctuation.

Now then, I'm not sure why good book-reviews might be considered "un-sexy". But then I'm probably turned on by all the wrong things! The fact is that I really enjoy a well-written review though I tend to seek them out only after I've read the book in question.

No-one wants dull. But academics necessarily don't have to be! A good writer will always remember the audience they are writing for, and if it's a newspaper column for the general public, the piece needs to be entertaining as well as informative, accessible but not dumbed-down. I have really enjoyed some of the pieces written by Prof. Lim Chee Seng in Starmag, for example. Ultimately though it is the editor who is the gatekeeper and must make sure that a dull reviewer doesn't find space on the page.

As for litbloggers not giving the time and attention to a review that would go into a printed piece, I can only talk about this from my own perspective. I'm not at all defensive here, and it's true that sometimes I don't have much time to blog, but want to record something about a book I've read, so I am loath to even call such posts reviews when they are really just a reader's response.

But some of the pieces I post here are also published in newspapers and magazines, and they of course get more time and attention. (Someone is paying for them!) I've also tried to spend more time writing about local books I feel deserve the space, especially if there isn't much chance of them getting a newspaper review. (Having said that, I know I am woefully behind and am very sorry!)

Reviewing properly actually takes time (to read and more often than not reread the book) and a lot of cranking up the old brain. That amount of brain-power exerted in other parts of my life earns me pretty decent money!

But by and large, reviewers here are generally paid very badly (and the payment from one national newspaper has actually gone down by 25% in the time I've been writing for them!). Most folks who write them do it simply for the love of it. They have to.

Talking of reviews though, Amir Muhammad is writing some of the most engaging reviews of locally published books that I have read, in the Malay Mail (the reinvention of the once sleazy tabloid is now complete!) and yesterday he reviewed Sufian Abas' Kasut Biru Rubina very nicely indeed, noting that the collection of stories :

... juxtaposes, with studious glee, the pop-inflected banality of contemporary life with inspired surrealism. Some of the stories are melancholy but most are either macabre or misanthropic; the best combine all three.

You can enjoy all Amir's Pulp Friction columns from past issues here and read more of his literary relates musings here.

Intriguing, Compelling, Poignant and Lyrical : There's No Eschewing the Craft, She Mused

Like all professions book reviewing has a lingo. Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound “literary,” reviewers use some words with startling predictability.

On Paper Cuts, the New York Times book blog Bob Harris lists seven words which crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity . Readers add plenty more (and maybe you also have some?)... and leave me wondering what's actually left.

Anyway, I also slink away, (somewhat, anyway) guilty as charged and promise to do better next time.

Good Things on Other Blogs

The latest literary gossip from local bloggers:

Is Kafka Austrian or Czech? Raman recounts a diplomatic tug of war and writes about Milan Kundera's new book The Curtain (which I was tempted to buy when I slipped into Silverfish yesterday ... such is the power of blog reviews.)

MPH Bookstores blog Redwhitespot has sadly gone under just as it was beginning to get interesting with some of May Lee's posts. I think the name had bad feng-shui and wanted to warn them, as it always made me think of a pimple. (So sorry!) May Lee and Rodney and the rest - if you feel the need for a space to blog, feel free to tumpang a space here.

Talking of MPH though, super-editor Eric Forbes has a nice post which talks about how book reviewers are developing in Malaysia - and I have to agree with him and he ties this to reviews of James Wood's essays which now I have to buy. (Expensive business, reading other book blogs.)

Eli James of Novelr wrestles valiantly with the question of purple prose.

I've not been very good at turning up for events organised by other people, much to my shame. I sincerely apologise to the folks who would like to have seen me there. I'm grateful to those who give me a vicarious glimpse of what went on, including Ted (left) who posted pictures of last months Katasuara at Raja Ahmad's gallery. Jordan Macvay (spelt right!) writes about being part of Bernice's Ceritaku storytelling event.

I've always has a great phobia of dentists, and when I can avoid 'em I do. Deepika had a very special "dentist" take a look at her teeth during a panel discussion which she was moderating at the Galle Literary festival in Sri Lanka: it was none other that Vikram Seth! (See photo right.) In his round up of festival events, Nury Vittachi tells the story :

At one point, he (Vikram) told an entertaining story about a relative who was a one-armed dentist. To illustrate the challenges involved, he put his arm around the head of moderator Deepika Shetty and duly inspected her back molars. ... What the author didn’t know – but many of the rest of us did – was that Singapore journalist Ms Shetty has just completed a lengthy dental treatment which involved carrying around a quarter of a ton of metal in her mouth for more than a year. Thus his good reports about her dentition carried great weight.

Postscript :

Oops. How did I forget to say welcome to the new Kakiseni blog?

A Post on Kindness and Criticism Written in Horribly Clashing Metaphors

I love having my friend Guat Chuah Eng back and now in the literary conversation in our Malaysian blogosphere, and now she's turning over the stones and debating whether there is a future for Malaysian literature in English.

While the larger question might now seem passe (and surely can only be answered with a *yawn* of course lah!? seeing as how a number of Malaysian authors are producing work of quality both locally and on the world stage) some of the other questions she is asking are very pertinent.

And I've nothing better to do at the moment (no need to cook dinner tonight) so I'm up for a good argue.

In her latest post she writes:

I found particularly depressing the comments on our aspiring writers' poor command of the English language and their lack of writing skills. Depressing, not because it is untrue or because it is all too true, but because--dear oh dear--haven't we been through all this before?

Where, I ask myself, would Amos Tutuola's classic, The Palmwine Drinkard, be today if the editor who received his manuscript had returned it to him for corrections? Where, indeed, would e. e. cummings be if his editor had told him he shouldn't write until he had learned how to punctuate? Wasn't it in 1963, if not earlier, that Raja Rao said, "We cannot write like the English. We should not." (Should there be a question mark here? And where should it be placed? Damned if I know--or care!) And right here in Malaysia, as long ago as 1976, novelist Lloyd Fernando, then Head of the English Department, University of Malaya, reminded us that for local literature to develop, "for some time at least, it would be more profitable for critics and scholars to confine themselves to the less spectacular role of recorders concerned to nurture, rather than critics giving evidence of their perception and integrity."

Are Malaysian writers in English so thin on the ground? Or is the ground in fact thick with writers dead and dying under the weight of hopes dashed and dreams shattered by their critics?

The balance between encouragement and criticism is crucial in a writing community as I've argued before. (My famous fishtank metaphor!) And I've been concerned with the question of when and how to criticise emergent writers since I started the blog and I'm only too aware (as someone who's been a beginning fiction writer, and as a writing teacher) that they need a safety zone and that confidence can be destroyed with harsh criticism too early on.

The dilemma is that (to use a botanical metaphor) with too much early criticism, the tender little plant will wilt and possibly die. But at the same time, without the right kind of criticism at the right point, the plant will grow straggly and no-one will want to look at it.

Where exactly does that right point for criticism come? The best first criticism is from a writing teacher and fellow writers. Possibly from friends you can trust. It should be kind and supportive and stress the positives and help you see the direction you might move your work in. It shouldn't jump up and down on your work wearing jackboots and waving it's own aren't-I-clever flag. (World War II metaphor.)

But I would say that it comes when your work is put between the covers of a book and start to charge the public for it, you have to be ready for critical open season. If you aren't, sit on your manuscript, hide it in a drawer, keep it in a file on the computer that only you know the password for. Being published is the point of no turning back.

This post I wrote on "the gentle cycle" (washing metaphor) says it all I think, and I hope that if you write, you will take a moment to go back to it.

I haven't commented on this blog about the stories in some collections by local writers I've read, and one reason is that I feel that new writers need space to try things out and yes, make their mistakes.

(As a little aside. The Silverfish collection I edited got reviewed very fairly, I thought, in the NST. Just one of the contributors got totally slammed in the piece. She happened to be the youngest writer and one I thought was promising ... but not yet arrived. I never told her about the review and I don't think she saw it. I just didn't want her to be discouraged. Now, years on, I can laugh about it with her because she is proving to be a very successful and in demand writer. Would she have given up if she'd seen the review? Or was she made of far tougher stuff from the beginning?)

I did review the Silverfish collection News From Home the other day (and honestly with trepidation) largely because it was interesting to see how Mr. Raman's new venture was working. Raman (who asked if I would review the book on my blog) felt the comments were fair, but I hope that I haven't stepped too hard on the toes of the writers in question who all have promise ... but like all writers are on a journey.

A good editor will not put out work that is rough around the edges, and will gatekeep so that the writers who are published are ready for public scrutiny and are in that sense protected. And the editor as I've said before has a responsibility not to put crap work before a public paying good cash for their copy. (Remember - a locally produced book generally costs only a bit less than an imported mass market paperback of a top international author which the reader could be enjoying instead!)

Now as a book-buyer, I don't want to see books with a multitude of typos and tense mistakes. It isn't necessary. And this is how painful the reader finds it.

Now about the two authors, Guat mentions:

E.E Cummings' lack of capitalisation (in his poetry though, not his own name) was a deliberate stylistic choice, much like Cormac McCarthy's annoying trickiness with apostrophes.

I love Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard which is written in West African pidgin English as I have loved other books, comics and poems written in that dialect. A good editor will see immediately whether it does or does not work.

So encouragment and criticism - where should one end, the other begin?

I think you do everything possible to encourage the writer, but only publish, in the end, the very best.

Over to you, Guat.

Postscript:

I've put together an index of all my posts about building a writing community in Malaysia, which you can find here.

Incest and the Reviewer

Chairman of the Booker Prize committee, Howard Davies stirred up a hornet's nest at the award ceremony but using it as a platform for some harsh words about how books are reviewed in the British press. According to The Bookseller, Davies said he found reviewers guilty of adopting a reverential tone to novels which the committee felt did not come off at all, simply because they were written by established names.

(This was the year that many of the usual suspects for the prize, authors lit-buffs would have identified as dead certs, fell at the first post.)

Davies also mentioned that book by less established and new writers often failed to get noticed in the press, leading to some very good stuff being lost. His recommendations?:

I think a little more distance, and critical scepticism, is required by our reviewers, together with greater readiness to notice new names.

I personally reckon there's much in what the man says.

Times Literary Editor Erica Wagner, responds:

It is very difficult, I have found over the years, to offer any coherent defense of how and why novels are reviewed. What a strange business! Novels, I believe, exist to move the reader, to change the way a reader looks at the world; the trouble is, and ever was, that every reader (and so, every reviewer and literary editor) is different.

In the Independent David Lister describes the incestuous world of book reviewing in the UK and comes up with some guidelines for ensuring greater impartiality ... among them one that would be all but impossible to implement here in Malaysia, given our tiny pool of reviewers!:

... no book should be reviewed by a known colleague and friend of the book's author.

Maybe the most fun debate happening locally is in the comments to one of Eric's posts where Janet Tay gets quite heated about Davies' summary judgments on some of the books.

The Art of the Non-Review

Raman once again shares his thoughts on the state of local reviews and criticises local reviewers for cut and paste reviews (though with no specific examples to support his statements, unfortunately!).

I do agree with him about reviewers who regurgitate the story and offer no opinions. (One author recently told me that he was most upset that a local journalist had even posted spoilers in a review! That is a total no-no.) I also agree that local books should take priority.

The lack of reviews is not lack of other reviews to plagiarise (the cheek of it!), but as I've said before, the lack of space, advertising on book pages to pay for them, and a chronic lack of reviewers.

(The New Straits Times has no reviews at all. Rehman Rashid mentioned this last week at the MPH Hi-Tea for Authors, saying that they lost all their good people who could write about literature in a major shake-out some years ago, and since now they don't have writers of the right calibre anymore, it's better not to venture into reviewing at all. Frankly I think that's a cop-out. Newspapers have a social responsibility, reviewing books is part of that responsibility. Especially when they turn round and weep crocodile tears about how few Malaysians read.)

Raman also lays this interesting charge at the feet of reviewers - the fear of what will happen if they dare to be critical:

We are so afraid of hurting feelings that we have developed non-reviewing into an art form.

Perhaps it's also fear that the person who gets a bad review turning round and demanding an explanation from the newspaper. This happened to a friend of mine who dared to be critical in a recent theatre review. Why should reviewers ever be forced into the position of having to defend themselves? This is an unhealthy practice and editors need to nip it in the bud.

I would like to see more critical reviews, but are local authors ready to know what we think of their books?? I must confess I have a whole stack of books I haven't reviewed because if I were honest I'd be very critical, and might lose some friends.

Discreet silence might be better. But in the long run, surely it doesn't help.

By the way, I very much enjoyed this review today by Rabiatu Abubakar.

Daphne's Rap on the Knuckles

Daphne Lee writes in Starmag about last weekend's Hi-Tea for Authors, and points out:

One huge stumbling block Malaysian writers face, in my opinion, is the inability to take criticism. I believe that it’s impossible to improve if you refuse to consider your weak points. I do think it’s important to believe in what you do, and in your style, your own voice and your stories, but it’s imperative to listen to others’ opinion of your work and take into consideration their point of view.

I know local writers who feel that a bad book review shows lack of support, but I feel that all writers can learn from an honest review, good or bad, but especially one that clearly points out why the reviewer is less than thrilled with the book. After all, there is always room for improvement and if one receives nothing but praise, how can one know which areas need work?

I agree. She adds the following horror story:

A self-published writer recently e-mailed the manuscript of her second novel to me, implying that it was ready for print. I found countless mistakes but when I asked her if she was going to get it edited or at least proofread, she replied, “I am satisfied with everything. From the characters to the setting to the words used ... right down to the punctuation marks.”

The book has been published, complete with all the mistakes that I spotted in the manuscripts. It’s been suggested that the writer doesn’t realise the mistakes are actually mistakes.

What is really worrying, though, is that someone said to me that the mistakes might not matter since the book would probably be read by teenagers.

(I wonder if this was the same book that so horrified my friend!)

Daphne picks up a quote from me about demanding your money back from the bookshop if you find more than five mistakes! I was sort of joking, but I wonder what would happen if everyone did that??

A couple of other interesting posts on the MPH event: Antares reflects on Datuk Ng's book guild proposal, and my favourite squid, BP, enjoys the chicken mayo sandwiches.

Skulduggery Central

The hackers post spoilers ... that's bad enough ... but a New York Times review by Michiko Kakutani review of Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows ahead of time?

Lindesay Irvine invites readers to have their say on the Guardian blog.

Rowling is staggered.

I'd call it downright kiasu.

Postscript:

Also horribly kiasu in my opinion, is Tesco which, though it doesn't normally sell books in Malaysia, is undercutting all the bookshops by selling the book at just RM69.90. Will the store make any profit at all? Tesco stores in the UK are apparently making just a few pence a copy and presumably the idea is to tempt you to do the rest of your shopping there at the same time.

Discounted Reads!

Elsewhere in this Sunday's Starmag's Readsmonthly supplement, the "Celebrity Guest Reviewer"(!) is Gift of Rain author Tan Twan Eng who looks at another historical novel. He doesn't much enjoy Anchee Min's The Last Empress. "Rushed and disjointed", "oversimplified" and "weak and diluted" are some of the adjectives he slings in its direction.

Twan, who is now back in South Africa, also goes along to the Cape Town Book Fair, now in its second year. The event is a collaboration between Germany's Frankfurt Book Fair and the Publisher's Association of South Africa. It sounds an enormous affair with a deliciously varied range of events.

The cover story is an interview by Hah Foong Lian with a Malaysian author who has slipped beneath this blogger's literary radar ... yes, I know that Khoo Kang-Hor was nominated for the IMPAC by the National Library staff (who always choose to support a local writer rather than vote for the international novel they consider best overall) but apart from that I don't remember Khoo's first novel Taikor (which means "big brother") really being promoted at the time. I heard about it by word of mouth from friends and saw it only in the ghettoised shelves of books by local writers in the bookshops.

Maybe I should have picked it up. Maybe now I will. Hizamnuddin Awang reviews the book and judges it:

...one of the very rare, well-written works of fiction by a local author.

(Though this sweeping generalisation begs the question, how rare actually is "very rare"??)

But Khoo's latest novel sounds more interesting. Writes Hah:

Mamasan is set in 1970s and 1980s Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, in the colourful world of cabarets and nightclubs. Khoo created a host of vividly drawn characters, such as dance hostesses, mamasans (madams), bouncers and the customers who patronise these nightclubs. He steers adroitly clear of stereotyping and addresses hypocrisy and how an external veneer and charm can hide flaws.

Nightwing reviews the book favourably on the next page.

Khoo Keng-Hor lives in Cameron Highlands was a journalist before joining the corporate world and has produced 26 non-fiction books based on Sun Tzu's The Art of War. He is currently working on another historical novel. (The author's website is here.)

Bridget Rozario writes about Malaysian-born Russell Daniel Ng who's written and illustrated his first book. (Keep going, kid!)

And then there are appetite whetting reviews of books I want to read including William Boyd's Restless, Emma Darwin's The Mathematics of Love and John Updike's Terrorist. And there are lots of discount coupons from various bookshops for the books featured in the supplement.

All good stuff.

Sinker Stinkers

Writers are you up for this? Yang May Ooi wrote with a fun idea:

All the furore about Hal's book started me thinking - why don't you get as many writers as you can to donate one bad review of their book? To start you off, here is one review of my first novel The Flame Tree that has nothing good to say AT ALL. The reviewer misses the point, though, that the book is not a whodunnit but that's just me being picky...

"The opening lines reads straight out of a sex thriller by Jackie Collins. Its a put- off. Extolling the virtues of the rapid development in Malaysia and a devoted paragraph to Malaysia's first car the Proton Saga, reads like an article straight from the Far Eastern Economic Review and a government propaganda piece. The plot-line gets completely lost and the build-up to the murder and corruption that the author is trying desperately to lead the reader to the end, does not capture the reader's imagination or interest.The murder takes place at page 219, but the whodunit is no where in sight and the plot gets completely lost in the heat and jungle. The author's attempts to introduce Malaysia to the rest of the world, with excerpts on its history, a former British colony etc - reads like a Lonely Planet Guide. We don't need such trite information. The Flame Tree is nothing more than a cheap soap opera and it fails badly. For her first novel written in 18 months, she needs to go back to the drawing board."

The reviewer is of course anonymous and something tells me he/ she is a Malaysian.... I wonder what gives that away?

You can see it for yourself on Amazon.co.uk - where, luckily, there are also other reviews that are more favourable (which saved me from slitting my wrists right there and then...).

Enjoy!

Yang-May

I'd say that no matter who you are and how good your work, if you're talking about reviews on Amazon, someone is bound to rubbish your work (if you are lucky enough to get reviews in the first place!). Sift through the reviews of any Booker prize winner and you'll see what I mean.

And to be honest I've expressed my own frustrations about certain books on Amazon in less than kindly terms, though never anonymously (and it is not possible to do so anymore).

Anyway, if do you have a review that's a stinker, do post it here.

Bashing the Reviewer

I'm probably opening up a bag of worms with this post but still ...

The most interesting thing in the Sunday papers is the letter from Tunku Halim in the Star because I think it throws up interesting questions about how local books are reviewed and what we expect from reviewers, and I hope I'm not sticking my neck out by bringing the topic up. (Both author and reviewer are my friends, and I hope they both still are after this!)

Michael Cheang's review of Tunku Halim's latest book 44, Cemetery Road appeared last Sunday. It is a compilation of previous stories from his previous collections with three new ones. I haven't read the book yet (drowning in books I have to read for review) although hope to do so soon, so this personal jury is out, for now, on the merits and demerits of the book. My argument then is a general one.

The review was largely a very positive one, but a couple of the criticisms were leveled by Cheang against the writing. He also had issues with the writing style in one story:

... words leaped out at me like a vengeful spirit. Elaborate descriptions, overdone superlatives and textbook-style plotting abound ...

But it was the charge that he had used “very similar plot devices” (similar to each other presumably) and some of his earlier stories were “predictable” that got up the author's nose.

This is a serious allegation indeed against any writer and I wish to state my case. Here it is and right to the point: the stories are NOT predictable, nor are they similar in terms of plotting.

If Cheang thinks otherwise, he should have elaborated, pointing out the offending stories and also to explain why. Such a flippant comment can easily be thrown in, particularly by a reviewer who readily admits from the start that he regards horror stories as often “cheesy”. Yet what he claims is “predictable” is extremely difficult to justify unless we do a test. After reading say 25% of the story, Cheang should then tell us what exactly is going to happen. I doubt he can. This also leads me to the question of predictability or, its opposite, the unexpected ending. It is the journey rather than the destination that matters. If you watch any Hollywood movie you more or less know the good guys are going to win. Yes, predictable. But how? The journey that gets them there is what counts. That’s what you enjoy. It’s the detail of the story, the suspense, the action, even if you know the outcome, is what makes for good entertainment. So predictability should not be an issue. Having said that, my stories are not predictable.

As a reviewer myself, I have to say that the author is not the one to make a judgment about whether his work is predictable or not (no matter how concerned he was about avoiding predictability when he was writing it). It is a judgment entirely for the reader. And in this case for the reviewer. Now a review is a personal opinion. Reviewers differ greatly on how they perceive a book. One loves it. One shreds it. But none of them has the final word.

Just look at how different the reviews of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (I take this example since I've just finished reading it) are in the New York Times "a small sullen, unsatisfying book" and in The Washington Post where Jonathan Yardly enthuses that it "reaffirms (his) conviction that no one now writing in English surpasses or even matches McEwan's accomplishment".

Who is right? Both.

And neither.

These are personal reactions to the novella, and the fact that readers can react so differently to a text is large part of our engagement with literature.

Cheang should have elaborated? Could he have included more specific examples? Perhaps so. But actually he was already 167 words over the limit (according to recent guidelines for Star reviews in which the word limit was cut from 800 words to just 500).

It's unfortunate in a sense that Cheang and Halim opened up such a bag of worms because no local publication gives space for the in-depth discussion of literature that it deserves. There is no forum for in-depth discussion or analysis of texts outside academia. And writers do need to know what they are getting right and what they aren't so that they can move forward.

It's good that an effort is being made in the Star to review local books, and I hope to see other titles on the book pages.

The reviewer doesn't like the genre? That there are so few competent people willing to review books is undoubtedly part of the issue here. Besides, does not liking a genre actually diminish the value of the review?

But the reviews cannot, and should not, always be positive ones. They should be fair and authors should understand this.

Tunku Halim to his credit says that he does, and writes some further thoughts about the review on his blog. He adds that he feels:

... that local reviewers have a pre-conceived idea of local writers which is “it’s local, so it can’t be much good”. The reviewer looks through blinkers, searching for negatives, not the positives. This means the local author necessarily has an uphill battle from the start. He or she has to convince the reviewer that despite being local the work is great. But take heart, this attitude will change with time.

This is certainly something we should examine our reviewerly consciences for.

Throwing the Book Reviewer Out with the Bathwater

Mokoto Rich highlights a very worrying trend in the US when he asks Are Book Reviewers Out of Print? Major newspapers across the country, among them the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have been dropping their book review sections. The National Book Critics Circle has initiated a campaign to protest the cutbacks.

Economics plays a part- readers are increasingly accessing newspapers online and advertising revenues are falling. But as author Richard Ford asks in the article, shouldn't a review section be considered a public service?

Rich says that many writers, publishers and critics worry that the spread of literary blogs will be seen as compensation for more traditional coverage.

...an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books.

There are some excellent literary blogs which offer reviews, articles and commentary (and the article singles out Bookslut, The Elegant Variation, Beatrice.com, the Syntax of Things and curledup.com).

But can litblogs, no matter how good take the place of more traditional review sections?

The article quotes a leading litblogger blogger Maud Newton as saying that she would never consider what she does a replacement for more traditional book reviews.

I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger... But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things.

(British critic John Sutherland and novelist Susan Hill you may remember also had very strong views on the subject.)

Another point that emerges from the article is that even the most popular litbloggers are simply not mass media enough to act as any kind of replacement for a newspaper review section - they simply don't get anywhere near as many readers as a newspapers (though those readers who do turn up tend to be more interested in buying books).

What's the situation like elsewhere?

John Freeman on the Guardian blog reports that the recent London Book Fair:
... hosted a panel to discuss the Spanish literary supplement. The tone of the panel was fretful, but it was hard to figure out why. The Spaniards can enjoy over 25 such supplements, we learned, with more on the way. Panellist Rupert Shortt of the Times Literary Supplement blushed for England by comparison.
More about this can be read on Critical Mass.

Zafar Anjum in Singapore also blogs about the issue and is optimistic about the situation in India. (Though tellingly Singapore itself doesn't get a mention!)

In Malaysia we have the Star to thank for an expansion of book pages and the local bookshops for supporting the initiative. We still need more literary writing here, both in terms of quantity and quality, but how far that can happen I don't know. Meanwhile local bloggers play an extremely important role in creating the conversation about books.

I can't end this post without yet another mention of the Guardian which produces a terrific amount excellent literary content enhanced by a blog, podcasts and other technological marvels, and then archives everything (even reviews from years back) so we can keep going back to it. And all of it for free! (Am afraid to ask, how on earth do the economics of this work? The print newspaper doesn't have a vast circulation - less than half of that of our Star actually!)

Postscript

John Freeman asks on the Critical Mass blog how important are reviews in helping you decide whether to read a book at all?

Kongrats Kaykay!

Was so happy to spot Kaykay's first ever published book review in StarMag today, giving his take on John Connolly's Lost Things. I poked, prodded and provoked him into sending in a review because he writes so well and I love to hear what he says about books in our Book Club meetings ... particularly when he doesn't like 'em. You really should hear him on Kiran Desai!

You want to write reviews too? Just get to it! The more of you the better.

Related Posts:

Reviewing the Reviewers (19/12/06)

Reviewing the Reviewers

Raman writes about book reviewing and links to a very interesting article on DailyIndia.com.

Now, I'm not sure whether he was just summarising the Indian article or talking about the Malaysian situation or both together when he writes:

Everyone is a critic. There is no formal training school for writing literary reviews. No formal standards. But we know all about that. We can clearly see from some of the reviews in our newspapers, that often the writer has not even read the book, or else what goes for a review is merely a synopsis of the story. The prerequisite of reading a book before doing a review is also probably one reason for the lack of local book reviews in our local papers, it being easier to source a review of a foreign book using Google.

A bigger question has to be ... where are the reviews in the first place? Of the daily English newspapers only the Star seem to have reviews at all. There's an overview of a whole miscellany of books on Fridays and then a page or two of reviews in Starmag on a Sunday. (Fei wrote to tell me that there is quite a lot more in the Chinese language dailies, which is interesting!)

One of the biggest problems is that there simply aren't enough reviewers. I'm drowing in a kind of guilt here - I need to get some reviews finished and sent out and I'm being much too slow about it (though one of my reviews appears this Sunday, so that's something at least). The first challenge is to increase the size of the reviewing pool. (Not so long ago Starmag put out a plea for reviewers, but i don't think they got an enormous response.)

The lack of space for reviews, the lack of reviewers, means that most books the public would be interested in reading about, just don't get publicised. Not good when we are trying to create a reading public, hey?

The greatest casualties though, are of course local writers. How often does a book by a local writer get properly and critically reviewed? How can a writing community grow where there isn't proper feedback on a writer's work? (Again I feel guilty here ... must make more of an effort! But should that effort be mine alone?)

Can anyone be a critic? Do reviewers need specific training? As Raman says, there is no formal training for reviewing. Not even for those whose reviews appear in the New York Times or The Guardian. Reviewers tend have come in as journalists from other sections of the newspaper. The best reviewers, though, tend to be other writers.

Whatever the reviewers' backgrounds, they need to know what they are talking about, which means that they do need to be enthiastic readers and have sufficient understanding of what the writer is trying to do, as well as be able to place the book in its wider context.

Reviewing, of course, has to be something of a labour of love. I poke my bookloving friends to have a go and they always reply "No time, lah." It takes far longer to write a good review than an article of equivalent length, because real thought has to be poured into it. (And of course, the book has to be read first! It's a busman's holiday if you love the book, but a total drag if you don't!)

Raman does local reviewers a disservice by hiding behind vague generalities when he takes a pot-shot at all of them without pointing to specific pages and specific reviews. I enjoy the fiction reviews in Starmag (when they appear!) and find them well-written ... And in honesty I try to do the best job that I can when I write a review, even if I feel I fall way short of the standard set by the best book pages overseas.

What I'm trying to say in this post is that reviewing is important, particularly of local books, and that perhaps we have a collective responsibility towards making sure books are reviewed.

Raman puts up short reviews on his website, but I wonder if he would ever consider putting his words out for a much larger audience by writing for the papers? His reviews would be ones I'd like to read! ("No time," he'll say. And it's true that one person shouldn't be expected to wear too many hats. All the same ... )

Meanwhile, on the subject of reviewing, New York Times book review editor Sam Tanenhaus answers readers questions about his work.

His mission statement?:

... to publish lively, informed, provocative criticism on the widest-possible range of books and also to provide a kind of snapshot of the literary culture as it exists in our particular moment through profiles, essays and reported articles. There are many, many books published each year - hundreds stream into my office in the course of a week. Our job is to tell you which ones we think matter most, and why, and to direct your attention to authors and critics who have interesting things to say, particularly if they have original ways of saying them. At a time when the printed word is being stampeded by the rush of competing "media," we're here to remind you that books matter too - that reading, as John Updike's invented novelist Henry Bech says, can be the best part of a person's life. There's no plaque on the wall. But there is a framed photo of Kurt Cobain.

Update:

Really enjoyed Alex Tang's post about reviewing ... which incorporates a review about a reviewer!

Also worth a read is this horror story on the Guardian blog about a reviewer who reviewed a non-existent book!

Star Turn

Starmag is looking for book reviewers - and that could mean you!:

Do you have a brilliant read that you want others to try? Write a review of not more than 500 words and send it to starmag@thestar.com.my. Published reviews will be paid.

There is for sure a shortage of good reviewers in Malaysia, and those of you who drop by the blog are pretty passionate about books, so why not give this a go?

My personal tips:

• Aiyoh - don't just regurgitate the plot! If we're interested, we'll read it anyway. If not, you're wasting your breath.
• Don't read other reviews of the book until you have your own opinion firmly formed. What matters is what you think of the book, even if other reviewers have a very different opinion.
• Of course, be prepared to support your opinion with examples from the book.
• Be fair!
  
• Important this - Don't gobbledegook over the heads of readers, no matter how brilliant you are.
• Stick to the word limit, or you'll get cruelly chopped.
  

And if you want to know what good reviews look like, read the book pages of the newspapers listed in the sidebar of this blog.

Today's copy carries a review of The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru. Kee Thuan Chye liked it less well than I did, but it's a nicely written piece.

What tickled me was that the book is referred to (under the heading) as "an obscure gem"!

Elsewhere in Starmag is the news that travel writer/ novelist Paul Theroux (left) was in town, travelling the route he took 33 years ago (when writing The Great Railway Bazaar?) Y.S. Lim interviews him, but the questions, for this fan of his books, are just too vague and general, and elicit uncharacteristically polite and diplomatic responses! (C'mon, Theroux, grouch a bit and let us know it's really you!)

There's a nice piece on Pramoedya by Anu Nathan who points out, quite rightly, that while this great writer was not well known in Malaysia and Indonesia, she was amazed to meet German and Dutch backpackers in Indonesia:

... who not only knew who Pramoedya was but were also toting around well-thumbed copies of Child of all Nations.

It's an interesting irony. And a deeply shaming one.

This Sunday morning, nursing my first cup of tea, am aware at how big a hole in my life the absence of the Malay Mail has created. (Sad life, hey!) I miss all the murders and the scandals and the gossip gleaned from Britain's Daily Mail. It will be back on the newstands soon, spruced up, reformulated and designed to appeal to a younger set. I hope it will still be the only afternoon newspaper in the world you get to read over breakfast!

The Role of the Reviewer

I don't think that a writing community can really grow strong without the feedback reviews provide, and I feel that too few books get reviewed here in Malaysia where the newspapers give very little space to them. Books by local writers continually slip through the net, and the public don't even get to hear about most of the titles from overseas that they might be interested in. (The bookshops fight their own corners, but still ...)

Local fantasy writer and environmentalist Glenda Larke (whom I wrote about some time back) talks about the role of the reviewer, and her own feelings about being reviewed:

... a good review should do one major thing: it should give a reader who hasn’t read the work an idea whether he would like it or not (or alternatively give a reader who has read it something more to think about).

It is not enough to retell the story, obviously. And it is certainly not enough to criticise the work – favourably or otherwise – without saying, coherently, why. There are three kinds of reviews which particularly bug me: the one that is dismissive from the start, e.g. the snide reviewer given a science fiction book to review by a newspaper editor when he loathes the genre, and who then has fun ridiculing it for being science fiction; secondly, the reviewer who attacks the author rather than the work, e.g. on his or her politics; and thirdly the reviewer who slams (or praises) a work but never gives a thoughtful reason.

As an author, I look upon all reviews as a chance for me to learn. What worked, at least as far as this particular reviewer is concerned? What didn’t? And why? If the reviewer can tell me any of that, I am pathetically grateful.

I'm usually on the other side of the equation, reviewing writers. Just hope I get it right.