Finding Wilderness Tips in Mont Kiara

A few days back I had lunch with David T.K. Wong and Saras at Plaza Mont Kiara, and afterward David took us to visit a second-hand bookshop, Just Haven, which I had not known about before.

The stock wasn't huge, but there were certainly some good titles on the shelves and the prices were fair (around the RM10-12 mark).  It's a very welcoming space and Leslie, who runs the place, is extremely helpful. He's also beginning to organise book-related events.

It's funny kiasu-ism kicks in when a book-lover loves books.  I'm actually culling my shelves at the moment so that I can donate books to a library Daphne Lee and I are helping to build at Learning Works where I teach my creative writing courses, but how could I resist picking up a battered copy of Margaret Atwood's Wilderness Tips, a short story collection?

I'm so glad I did too because, two stories in, I'm really enjoying it.  The first story True Trash set in a summer camp, beautifully parodies the pulp romance novel of the 1950's and does things you don't expect in a short story - including juggling a whole cast of characters.

I began reading Atwood with Robber Bride which I got for free in a branch of Waterstones. (In the late '80's they had the great idea of giving away books with a voucher from their quarterly magazine but created interest in the author's new release.)

I can be excused not having read the earlier works at that time because I'd lived in places where books were hard to come by, but I think I can't be excused for not having completely caught up with now, especially as everything the lady writes gives me such great pleasure. It's good to take this small step.

Singaporean Interlude

Back in the 80's, I used to take a bus down to Singapore so that I could get my fix of cheap second hand books at a row of tumbledown shops in Bras Basah road.

The area was redeveloped (as everywhere in Singapore tended to be) and the shops disappeared. It was only on this trip that I caught up with the booksellers again - in the (aptly named) Bras Basah Complex on Bain Street and thanks to Ellen Whyte who dragged me there during our symposium lunch-break on Thursday. The pictures are of Knowledge Book Centre on the third level of the complex - just one of several bookshops here, and well worth a visit when you are down in Lion City.

(I've lots to post about the symposium over the next week or so.)

Second-Hand

For second-hand bookshops have a special aura. It's not just the book - it's what you might find scrawled in a margin, or hidden between the pages; it's the name you can almost read on a flyleaf. It's the book still in good condition but that has clearly been well-loved, that you can imagine has already been passed from hand to hand before it reached you, that you might love too. It's not a first edition, no, but something that's been hard to find until you stopped, by chance, into this second-hand bookshop, and were suddenly glad that someone had been generous enough to send a beloved book out into the world again.

Erica Wagner on the magic of second-hand books in The Times.

Is Bargain Hunting for Books Destroying the Trade?

Lost in the hand-wringing over the state of the book industry is the fact that this is a golden age for those in love with old-fashioned printed volumes: more books are available for less effort and less money than ever before. A book search engine like ViaLibri.net can knit together 20,000 booksellers around the world offering tens of millions of nearly new, used or rare books.

But it's this very buying and selling of second hand books on the internet that is undermining the book industry writes Rodrigo Corral in the New York Times, with neighbourhood book stores the hardest hit.

*Sigh* I am an equal opportunity book buyer, and and unrepentent about buying on the internet what I can't easily or immediately buy from local bookshops (usually through Abebooks which has never let me down).

Lonesome Bookseller

How did one of the pillars of civilization come, in only 50 years, to be mostly unwanted?”

writes Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry about used-bookstores.

McMurtry is so passionate about collecting books that he decided to create "a book town" in Archer City, Texas (modeled on the Welsh village of Hay-on-Wye) and opened a used-bookstore called Booked Up which now fills nine buildings. But the business is struggling and this year almost had to close down.

As Diana Lynn Ossana notes in her New York Times piece about his latest work Books : A Memoir :

... the colorful characters and frontiers Mr. McMurtry has encountered during his four decades in the antiquarian book trade are disappearing from the American landscape just as much as the vernacular cultures that have occupied his 28 novels. ... he notes that his trade has become a fringe one that makes his neighbors uneasy. Many of the booksellers and scouts he wrangled with and admired are now dead, out of business or marginalized. Their collections now fill Booked Up. The habit they served, reading, is no longer a driving passion for many Americans.

The book though is largely about McMurtry's experiences in the business, and Ossana says is full of "fishing stories" of the rare books caught and those that got away.

I liked this :

Toward the end of the book Mr. McMurtry describes finding a rare copy of “The Whale,” as “Moby-Dick” was called in England, apparently the working copy given to a writer named Charles Reade to abridge to a more manageable length. Reade, a contemporary of Melville’s, “was not a man to be intimidated by a mere American classic.” His first stroke is through the opening line: “Call me Ishmael.”

Damn! I've just gone and Amazon 1-clicked it!

Postscript :

See also this USA Today interview with McMurtry [found via] in which he explains why he doesn't sell his own books in the store. (He sounds a bit of a grouch! Does that naturally go with the territory of being a second-hand bookstore owner I wonder?)

Booker Value

How stupid of me not to have bought and kept carefully all those Booker prize winners over the years. I can't think of many things that appreciate in value quite so quickly, can you?

Here's a list of the ten most expensive Booker books that AbeBooks has sold through its site. (Found via the Papercuts blog.)

1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie $3,000 - Signed first edition.
   
2. In A Free State by V.S. Naipaul - $2,560 - First edition, inscribed by the author
3. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - $1,800 - First Indian edition of 1997 winner
4. Life of Pi by Yann Martel - $1,200 - Signed first Canadian edition, one of only 2,500 copies, of 2002 winner
5. Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee - $1,150 - Coetzee’s two winning novels (1983 and 1999 respectively) sold together, both signed first editions.
6. The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens - $637 - First edition of 1970 winner
7. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje - $624 - Signed first U.K. edition of 1992 winner
8. Possession by A.S. Byatt - $500 - Signed first edition of 1990 winner.
9. The Gathering by Anne Enright - $500 - Signed first edition of last year’s winner
10. Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally - $500 - Signed first edition in olive clamshell box of 1982 winner

Notice well how the value shoots up when a book is signed. (If that doesn't get you to attend more author events, I wonder what will!)

I still feel really sick about my missing first edition copy of The English Patient lent to a "friend". Even though it wasn't signed it would be worth around US$300 now ... but the real value is sentimental.

Abebooks is also joining in the 40th anniversary celebrations of the prize by with a reader's poll where you can vote for your favourite Bookers.

Your Next Cheap Book Fix

Time to stock up on some cheap reads? I snapped the picture above at BookXcess a few weeks back on my first visit to the shop since it had expanded. Was pleasantly surprised, not just at the cheap prices and the wide choice of titles, but also how pleasantly 'squidgy' the bookshop is. The only reason that I'm not there all the time ... well, you guys can fill in the blanks.

And they also have a snazzy new website with lists of all the books in stock and a map to help you find them.

Pay Less are having another warehouse sale this weekend, this time at the YMCA. (Click to enlarge the map.) I might be tempted meself!

Postscript:

And here's another source of cheap books, found via good-ole Facebook!

Secondhand and nearly-new books for sale at The Dram Projects to raise funds for the MY-UK Project, a creative arts exchange between Malaysian and British kids.

The aim of this exchange is to, ultimately, enable the participants to share with their communities what they have learnt, through performances and workshops.

Saturday, March 1, 2008
Time: 9:00am - 3:00pm
Location: The Dram Projects, BG-6 Happy Mansions, Jalan 17/13, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Weird Cookbooks

This top ten list of the World's Weirdest Cookbooks on second-hand bookseller AbeBooks site made me smile!

1. Manifold Destiny: The One, The Only, Guide To Cooking On Your Car Engine by Bill Scheller & Chris Maynard
2. The Roadkill Cookbook by Buck Peterson
3. The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon
4. The Special Effects Cookbook by Michael Samonek
5. Cooking in the Nude by Stephen Cornwell & Debbra Cornwell
6. Cooking to Kill: The Poison Cook Book by Ebenezer Murgatroyd
7. Star Wars Cookbook: Wookiee Cookies and other Galactic Recipes by Robin Davis
8. Mini Ketchup Cookbook by Cameron Pearl
9. Cooking for Cats by Elisabeth Meyer
10. Strange Foods: Bush Meats, Bats and Butterflies by Jerry Hopkins

It makes perfect sense, doesn't it, to have your dinner cooking on the car engine while you travel? Bill Scheller, co-author of the winning title talks about how the book (now sadly out of print) came to be written and explains how all the recipes in Manifold Destiny are measured in miles rather than in minutes. Some of the gastronomic highlights:

Hyundai Halibut with Fennel (Distance 55-85 miles), Cruise-Control Pork Tenderloin (Distance: 250 miles), and Poached Fish Pontiac (Distance: 40 miles) ...

Peterson's Roadkill Cookbook is thankfully a rather tongue-in-cheek guide to turning the beasties you accidentally hit on the road into palatable fare. The book has a cult following and has spawned other titles, including an international version.

Sorry pet lovers but ... It reminds me of the time I was in a shared taxi in Nigeria and for no apparent reason the driver swerved dangerously across the road. Apparently he had seen a dog and fancied it for dinner, but missed it. (There was just one village in my area where dogs were eaten as a delicacy, you'll no doubt be relieved to know.)

Another time in a another shared taxi, but this time in Cameroon, my co-passengers got all excited when a large mongoose ran out in from of the car. "Beef!" they chorused, using the generic pidgin English term in that part of the world for all bush-meat.

Can't think why the compilers of the list included the cookbook for cats. What's so weird about wanting to give your darlings a gourmet dinner?

Looking for Lilian

It's quite fascinating to acquire an antiquarian tome with an inscription on the fly-leaf, so that you can imagine those long ago folks enjoying the book before you.

It's even better when you discover that the inscription was written by the author and signed for a personal friend.

It's much much better when the book in question just happens to be a first edition copy of an extremely important work by one of the C20th's greatest authors.

Can it get betterer?

Oh, yes it can. Ted Mahsun's dad found this copy of Time for a Tiger in a second-hand bookshop in Ipoh and snapped it up for just two ringgit. The inscription reads:

Lilian Sivaram

In friendship
--Anthony Burgess
(John Wilson)

Xmas 1956

I checked for a similar edition, signed by the author and found one via abebooks.com currently on sale from Jonkers Rare Books in Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, U.K.

Price? (Don't faint!) US$2695.13 (RM9,157)

Ted's copy won't be worth as much as it is missing the dust cover and has been nibbled by some naughty bookworms. But still.

But it's the inscription that intrigues. Who is/was Lilian Sivaram?

I consulted the oracle at my finger tips and turned up this reference to an article simply called Malayan Teachers Reunion by D. Maheshwari from the of the New Straits Times (City Advertiser's Happenings section), Feb 22, 2001.

I don't have access to the NST archives so if anyone reading this post does have, could you help us to find the picture referred to so we can see what the lady looks like?

If this is indeed the lady, then she was a teacher, possibly a colleague of Burgess at MCKK.

Burgess did give copies of the book to his friends. Ted's uncle, one of my favourite people in the whole wide world, says that he received several copies of the book himself, but he left them in storage and they got stolen.

Anyway, the moral of the story is 1) poke about in second-hand bookshops because you never know what treasures you may uncover 2) invest in hardback first-edition books and store them carefully, and then get them signed if you can track the author down. Because I doubt that even gold or diamonds would give you such an amazing rate of interest.

But then, would a true book-lover be able to part with a treasure like this??

Oh to be in Hay Now that Summer's Here

I am reading the Guardian's coverage of the Hay Literary Festival with a great deal of envy, not only because they have a formidable line-up of authors (including no less than four Nobel prize winners) but because ... well, if there is one spot on earth where the mystical ley lines of bibliomagic converge, it is in this tiny town on the border between England and Wales which has ... wait for it ... thirty-nine second hand bookshops! (The population is 80,000 so that makes it one bookshop for every 37 residents.)

Bookseller Richard Booth, whose empire quickly spread across all the empty shops in the town, as well as the former firestation and 17th Century Jacobean mansion, declared independence from both England and Wales in a bloodless coup on 1st April, 1977. No-one actually took him seriously, but it certainly put Hay on the map.

Our family once visited the town back in the early 1970's when were on holiday on a Herefordshire farm (yes, British people do such strange things!) and I remember spending a whole afternoon in just one section of one shop, utterly mesmerized by the choice of antiquarian books. I had glimpsed paradise, and one day, I have promised myself, I will return.

But has the festival, now in its 20th year (with150,000 ticket sales for 435 events) got too big, too impersonal and too concerned with commericialisation and celebrity glitz? Some critics think so, writes Andrew Johnson in the Guardian.

Another much smaller UK festival I read about with much envy is the Way With Words festival in Dartington, Devon.

A well-run literary festival should be something like a convivial garden fête - lots of strangers milling around in the sunshine and striking up conversations over a coffee, at the bar, waiting in the queue for the next event.

says author Penelope Lively in the Telegraph, who reckons that she's found bookish heaven in Dartington.

I know the venue well from my days living just down the road in Plymouth or visiting my friend Helen in Totnes and have happy memories of chamber concerts in this beautiful old hall, scones and clotted cream in the tea shop, and long walks in the beautiful gardens.

The trouble is perhaps that when I think of England I always see it on a perfect Summer's day and am just swallowed up by waves of nostalgia ...

*Sigh*
(Top picture from Guardian blog, bottom picture form the Telegraph)

Manuscripts Do Burn!

Now why would a bookseller burn his own books?

Thanks Patrick Lee sending me this link, which then lead me to Tom Wayne's website for his independent second-hand bookshop Prospero's Books in Kansas City. (I've actually bought from there via abebooks.com)

I lift this very apt quote from his site:

There are worse crimes than burning books, one is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodskey

Are there Bookshops in Puchong?

Can anyone answer this question for Marie?

The reason I'm writing is that I've trouble finding a used book shop in Puchong. There used to be a couple of them at IOI mall but since I came back to KL from the States they are no longer there. Do you by any chance know of one around in Puchong?

Not George

The book on the left is an absolute must-read: George W. finally coming clean and admitting the massive cock-up he made in invading Iraq.

Naw. It's a tease of course. It's one of four free e-cards of "not-books" on Abebooks website to celebrate ten years of online second-hand bookselling linking 13,500 booksellers across the globe (including, you will be overjoyed to learn, our own Payless books).

Abebooks is a dangerous place for a bookaholic. It's fun to browse and every little itch for a particular title can be satisfied, and relatively cheaply. Every book I've ordered (and that's a distressing number) has turned up quickly and has fitted exactly the description on the website. It's nice too to sometimes find a bookmark inside with a description of the bookshop it came from: I like books with histories.

I'm slowly replacing books I've lost over the years, or which I read but didn't own.