Malaysians ... Still Ain't Reading

Utusan Malaysia this week laments the lack of a Malaysian reading culture. Hardly anyone's reading on the LRT (above) despite the launch of the Baca@LRT campaign on Facebook :

or in other public spots sampled.

And it seems that the branch libraries are not really attracting users either.

Information Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim has decided that the answer to the problem is to set up another study to find out about Malaysians' reading habits.

Readers of this blog may remember me getting very cross about the last time a large scale survey was carried out by the National Library because the results were never properly made public and questions about how the data was gathered were never revealed. It would have been useful for academics, teacher-trainers, teachers,  bookshop buyers, and other stakeholders to have had access to that data. (Some of those in the book retail industry anyway disputed the figures that did get quoted.)

One thing that does give me hope is that when you go along to a cheap book sale or to a book fair in the Klang Valley, the venue is invariably packed out. (I'm sure those of you who went to the BookXcess sale today would bear me out.) I think that a lot of people are keen to own books rather than borrow them. 

I suspect that a lot of people don't read in public because it is considered a slightly odd thing to do:  it hasn't become a part of the culture.  I'd go crazy if I were without a book for any length of time, but unless you have a pretty hungry reading habit, you are not going to think like that.

The Read While Waiting Project was a nice idea, but doesn't seem to have come to anything either despite the hype that surrounded it. Pity!

Book Corners for Bus Stations

Some good news from The Star this morning :

The National Library of Malaysia is planning to expand its 1Malaysia Reading Campaign by soon setting up reading corners at selected bus stations.

Its director-general, Datuk Raslin Abu Bakar, said they were in the midst of discussing the idea with the management of the selected bus stations in the Klang Valley and identifying suitable locations for the reading corners.

"The idea to set up reading corners at bus stations came up after our reading corner in Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) Intercity trains, launched on Dec 7, received overwhelming response from passengers."

Storyteller on a Train

While I'm always moaning about reading campaigns in Malaysia never really taking off in any way that neither I nor the readers of this blog can see, I really applaud the National Library for its latest initiative.

The Star today reports that 90 children were taken on a four-hour train ride filled with story-telling, reading and singing of folk songs aboard KTM’s Sinaran Pagi as a prelude to the 1Malaysia Reading Campaign. During the journey from KL to Gemas in Negri Sembilan, the kids were entertained by singer Nurul Huda Abdul Wahab and Japanese children’s story-teller Saki Sasamori who has been resident in Malaysia for the past 15 years.

I hope this isn't a one off experiment ... it would be so nice to have to have something like this this continue.

Newspaper Miscellany

A hodge-podge of loosely connected things linked only by their appearance in Malaysian newspapers ...

Malaysian P.M. Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi launches a fantasy novel written by 13 year old Adam Umemoto who happens to be his nephew.

Of course the occasion was used to get in a political soundbite ... Resolve the Language Issue Before it Gets Out of Hand. (We learn nothing here about the young author or his book which is a pity.)

Out of hand the language issue has already got, methinks, and I agree with the Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein* : why bring up the issue 6 years after the policy was formulated? - after teachers have been trained and are working hard to make it a success, after textbooks have been written, and after the kids have proved they are coping with it?

I've seen this effort at the ground level (in teacher-training, in schools across the country) and it makes me very sad indeed that there are those intent on pulling it apart again.

National Laureate A. Samad Said was among those handing over a memorandum to the palace. (You can also watch a video at ChannelNews Asia - and there is some very good comment at Another Brick in the Wall.)

Enough.

Let me move on to things much happier.

It's International Women's Day today and in Starmag Amy de Kanter offers an eclectic list of women writers who :

write about loving, laughing and living large ...

A bilingual book of Malaysian/German fairytales, is to be launched at the KL International bookfair in August, tentatively titled Kisah Dongeng dan Cerita Rakyat Malaysia dan German. It will be the fourth collaboration between the National Translation Institute (ITNMB) and Goethe-Institut Malaysia.

Also, the National Library currently has an exhibition promoting the literary works of Finland, which features the book covers of Finnish literary works that have been translated. The photo (right) shows deputy head of mission of the Finnish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Henna Knuuttila, handing a copy of Kalevala, a national epic which has been translated into 60 languages to National Library director-general Raslin Abu Bakar at the launch.

Featured are literary works which feature current issues and daily life, there are children’s books, poems and fantasy stories. The literary works depict contemporary culture and recent times including the works of author Sofi Oksanen, who wrote about Estonia after World War II.

Said Knuuttila :

Finnish works have been translated to languages like French, German, Russian, Chinese and English. With this exhibition, people will get an idea of the works, get interested and look for more information. Finnish is not widely spoken so the translations are very important for us.

The exhibition will be held until March 31 at the library. Shall we organise a Bibliobibuli field-trip?

(* Oh goodness, what's happening to me? I am agreeing with government policy. Checks forehead for signs of fever.)

Postscript :

Have been caught up reading other views on the subject - Rocky links some very good posts. I also like what Ungku Aziz has to say about bilingual education.

Happy World Book Day!

Happy World Book Day!

This is actually British World Book day, not the UNESCO World Book Day. (Explanation of why we have two versions of the same day to celebrate in Malaysia here.) All over the UK special events are planned ...

I found myself turning up to the NTV7 studios at an ungodly hour to chat about reading and encouraging writing in Malaysia on The Breakfast Show. Fortunately, I was a bit more relaxed than the first time I was on TV (when I'm told I didn't once look at the camera!).

On with me in a first segment was a lady (Pn Norliza?) from the National Library who told us about some of the schemes the library is involved with - especially increasing the number of rural libraries and putting on events for kids. There is still no plan for an effective nationwide reading campaign - involving everyone, and not only the library members - which is really want this country needs, but it's good to hear that library membership is up. (Across the country there are 6.4 million library members which I reckon is pretty good.)

In the second segment I was with poet/creative writing teacher Alina Rastam which was just great because we share a lot of enthusiasms and hopes. We talked about ways of encouraging writing.

I felt ... yes frustrated. There is so much that needs to be said, and which I think viewers would be interested to hear ... but how much can you get across in just a few minutes? But I did manage to slip in something about We Need A Writer's Centre.

Cheapie Sale

MPH is having a cheapie sale at the National Library. Click the banner up to size and read the details.

Reading Clubs?

The National Library has started a National Reading Club, launched July 1st, to help inculcate the reading habit among Malaysians, A. Kathirasen in the New Straits Times reports. The National Library has something to celebrate, it's membership has been rising steadily :

In 1990, it had 128,045 members, rising to 460,000 in 2001. The latest figure (as at July 5) puts it at 788,541.

And the Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal apparently said at the event that he would propose to the government that civil servants be given a book allowance, and he wants the private sector to do likewise.

Throughout the article it's rubbed in once again that Malaysians are failing miserably at becoming readers :

According to the national book policy target, germinated in 1984, the nation should have achieved reading society status in 2000. We are eight years overdue; and, it seems, nowhere near the target. ... The findings of a National Library survey, Shafie said, showed that only 13 per cent of 27 million Malaysians read books. ... Surely it is an indictment of our collective apathy and the failure of the hundreds of reading campaigns and book exhibitions.

But as we've said before many times on this blog - What (hundreds of) reading campaigns? (As Kathirasen very tactfully puts it, there :

... has been an inability to sustain the momentum of campaigns.)

None of my blog readers seem to know anything about them. The only thing I've personally seen to indicate a campaign going on is a single poster in the library of a single sekolah rendah. Surely the evidence of a reading campaign should be everywhere? This is pretty serious when you realise that a lot of taxpayers money is being spent. (We are probably more aware of the efforts of our southern neighbours than we are of our own. And look how much fun they make reading!)

Kathirasen goes on :

The government even declared 1988 The Year of the Reader. The campaign saw a flurry of activity, including the establishment of reading committees everywhere. What became of them?

Who knew anything about these "reading committees"? What were they supposed to achieve? What is a reading committee anyway?

Ministers and directors-general ordered their underlings to set up reading corners in all federal, state and district government offices. There were calls to set up reading corners aboard trains and xpress buses, and in estates, factories and homes. What became of them?

The people who are putting books into the hands of the public successfully are individuals who see it as a personal mission - people like Amir Muhammad with his great book giveaway at KLAB, the Malaysian Book Crossers who make reading free by "releasing books into the wild", Daphne Lee with her children's Reading Room in Section 17, our friend at Departure Lounge who has turned his cafe into a travel library, the teachers who have worked to make a difference in their own schools. We need more literary activists of this kind, small terrorist cells of book-lovers, making reading accessible, cheap and sexy.

Kathirasen gives some good suggestions for improving readership, but I do find it sad and depressing that hand-wringing articles like this appear in the newspapers at regular intervals. A lot of lip-service is paid, very little done that is effective.

I wish the National Library all the best with their National Reading Club, about which I cannot find any information on the internet beyond the fact of its launch. If there's anyone reading this who can enlighten us, please do get in touch and tell us about it.

What Counts as Reading?

Matthew Kirschenbaum in the Australian (in a piece which originally appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education) argues that with the coming of new technology (particularly developments with Google and Amazon's Kindle), our reading habits just cannot be judged according to old criteria.

He sets out, he says, not to debunk the US National Endowment for the Arts report To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence released last month (very scary reading indeed), which:

... synthesises a number of studies to conclude that Americans, especially younger ones, are reading less, that they are reading less well and that these trends have disturbing implications for culture, civics and the national economy

Rather, he sets out to explore the fact that:

... reading and conversations about reading are in a state of flux.

He makes the point that we tend to value reading in depth rather more than the equally valid reading laterally (i.e. across a much larger number of sources, comparing and cross-checking).

He points out the the NEA report is very much concerned with the reading of novels and other literary works. Yet, he says, in historical terms this is a relatively recent phenomena:

Until well into the 19th century, novel reading was regarded in Europe as a pastime fit mostly for women and the indolent, and a potentially dangerous one, as women in particular could not be trusted to distinguish fiction from reality.

He also asks:

...what it means to read and what it means to have read something. When can we claim a book has been read? What is the dividing line between reading and skimming? Must we consume a book in its entirety - start to finish, cover to cover - to say we have read it?

The question is one I ponder constantly. I seem to be increasingly dipping into books, and I speed read most non-fiction. But I do slow right down to enjoy fiction when its well-written, even reading the same passage several times over.

We need to teach out kids in schools how to become flexible readers, able to enjoy the full richness of fiction, but equally at home carrying out tasks like consulting a variety of reference sources online, and reading for gist.

Book literacy as well as screen literacy. Both.

And organisations like the National Library which commission reading studies need to encourage researchers to take this variety into account as well, instead of measuring reading solely by the vague criteria of numbers of books read. (How do they measure anything? The last survey as far as I know is still a state secret when it should be available for the scrutiny of all interested parties!)

Is reading on screen any less valid that reading on paper? Kirschenbaum doesn't think so:

... anecdotally my instinct is that computer users are capable of projecting the same aura of deep concentration as the stereotypical bookworm.

Particularly when their first reaction to an online text is to talk back to it!

Now where did the whole bloody morning go?

(Kirschenbaum's blog, incidentally, is here.)

Postscript:

A very interesting response to Kirshenbaum's piece on the If:Book blog with a whole lot of good discussion in the comments.

(Painting by La tartine gourmand)

Libraries Not a Major Turn On

A piece in the Malay Mail on Monday reports that:

The numbers prove that the National Library is not a hot spot with city folk.Only 491,497 people visited the place last year. A quick calculation: divide the total by 365 days and the library gets only 1,347 visitors a day. ... In 2005, the number of visitors recorded painted a sadder picture at 285,688 people but the National Library had a valid reason as some sections were closed due to an overhaul of its roofing system which extended into the early months of 2006.

One of the problems mentioned in the article is accessibility - many people who would like to use the facilities just don't have the means of transport to get there.

National Library director Siti Zakiah Aman outlines plans to bring more visitors to the library including educational interactive programmes with exhibitions, games and performances by a children ’s theatre group. Outreach reading programmes will also be organised.

A related article looks at the low visitor numbers of the Raja Tun Uda Library in Shah Alam, Selangor, while another polls fifty members of the public and asks them when was the last time they used a public library. For most it was when they were still at school or studying. One of the respondents points out that the dress-code enforced in libraries (no shorts, revealing t-shirts or slippers*) is a sticking-point. Many readers prefer to buy books or find the information they read on-line.

But Deputy PM Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak seems to me a bit merajuk**when he says that there is no point in building more libraries or providing more tax relief for books if most Malaysians do not care to read.

Maybe Klang's new 13m E-library (left with Klang Municipal Council (MPK) president Abdul Bakir Zin pictured in front of it) will be more successful?

(Translations for those from elsewhere: * Local word for flip-flops/thongs; **Untranslatable Malay word, the closest meaning in English being "to sulk".)

IMPAC at Length

The longlist for the IMPAC Dublin Prize (the world's most financially rewarding literary prize) has just been announced, and this year 138 novels nominated by 169 libraries from 129 cities in 49 countries. The Guardian reports that:

... on a list dominated by literary big-hitters, including Salman Rushdie, JM Coetzee, André Brink, Margaret Atwood and Nadine Gordimer, two acclaimed novels stand out for the sheer number of nominations they have received. Kazuo Ishiguro's take on the cloning debate, Never Let Me Go, which was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker prize, is the librarians' favourite with 18 nominations. Ian McEwan's Saturday, a tale of one extraordinary day in the life of a London brainsurgeon, garners 12 nominations, from Moscow to Tallahassee. John Banville's stylised Booker-winner, The Sea, is also a popular choice, while Zadie Smith's Orange-winner, On Beauty, which is partly set in Massachussets, receives support from Boston. ... Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is in the running with 12 nominations and support that extends from Brazil to Belfast.

You might remember the controversy last year about some libraries nominating their compatriots rather than voting for the best fiction worldwide, which is surely in the spirit of the thing. The Guardian doesn't see it that way:

...this is part of Impac's charm. Where else would you come across a first novel from a Kathmandu author, Echoes of Pain by Ravi Thapaliya, (nominated by the national library of Nepal)?

You can read the longlist in its entirety and browse information on the nominees here.

Now then, what novel do you think our very patriotic National Library here nominated? Were you right? Were they right?

A Nation That Reads ...

Last November it was announced that the government was about to launch a huge campaign to encourage reading among the young. In today's Starmag Daphne Lee reveals that it was flagged off last week. (Did anyone hear about it?)

Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim (left), in partnership with the Education Ministry and the National Library, has decided that this year’s reading campaign will last five years instead of the usual one month:

The campaign’s theme is Bangsa Membaca, Bangsa Berjaya (a nation that reads is a nation that succeeds).

“A month is hardly enough time for a reading campaign to get started. It’s too short a time to see any progress and there is also no time for the public to participate in activities,” says Dr Rais.

He adds that the campaign will last throughout the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010) and that RM40mil to RM50mil has been allocated for the entire campaign, which works out to RM10mil a year.

“We will target everyone regardless of age and make the campaign a platform for public participation. Reading of all kinds of material will be encouraged – novels, non-fiction works, magazines, newspapers – in any language. It is all equally beneficial.”

So how do you get people to read more? Dr. Rais admits that books have to be made more affordable and promises to investigate duty issues and ways of reducing local printing costs.

He also acknowledges too the role that must be played by public libraries but laments that many are not well stocked (though I am pretty sure this is an area the government will be targetting). But there are some problems you can't throw money at: librarians need to play an active role in encouraging communities to read, but Rais suspects (most probably quite rightly) that they themselves do not read and therefore are not equipped to do a good job.

(Daphne's chat with National Library’s Director-General, Dr Haji Wan Ali Wan Mamat is ... erm ... revealing.)

Daphne highlights some very effective reading campaigns for children in other parts of the world from which we can surely draw important lessons and interviews Margaret Hamilton director of the Children's Book Council of Australia about the excellent work carried out by the organisation.

..it takes much more than book fairs, theme songs and bright ideas to get children reading

says Daphne. Now if she were spearheading this campaign ...

Saturday in Photos

Saturday was every bit as hectic as I knew it would be.

First, there was MPH Writers' Circle where Puan Hafizah of The National Library (pictured above with her colleague Pn. Zalina) told us all about how ISBN numbers work and why we need them for our books and how to get them. She also introduced us to the 13 digit EAN numbering system which will be introduced next year. There was an interesting discussion afterwards about the work of the National Library and its role in promoting local writers and developing libraries in the rural areas.

Local writer Lynette Kwan (right) had some great news to share. After taking part in the first Writers' Circle meeting last year, she was so enthused that she went home and wrote a collection of short stories, found an agent in Singapore (apparently the one and only) and soon had four publishers competing for the right to put her work into print. Dark City, her book of tales with Dahlesque twists in the end is called , is written under her pen name Xeus, and some of the stories are being filmed for Singaporean television. Lynette is a doctor by day and fits writing into a very busy schedule.




I had a quick nosey around the new 1 Utama branch of Pay Less (sorry MPH!) and bought a couple more volumes of Best American Short Stories. Had lunch and a long chat about writing with a friend from the Writer's Circle, Chris, and then drove to Bangsar for the readings at Sek Sen's place.

Bernice (left) kicked the event off with a touching tribute to Pramoedya.






Kam Raslan's (right) first novel is being published soon by Marshall Cavendish in Singapore ... and you may not have realised it, but you've probably being reading it already if you read Off the Edge each month. Yes, that's right, you thought it was just a column written by an codger reminiscing about the good old days days ... Am so happy for him!








Zedeck read too (left) ....
















... so did Bernice's CENFAD student Farid Ramlee who can draw on a family history populated by British, Chinese and Malay forebears for his fiction. (Lainie was supposed to read but was sick, so Soefira Jaafar read her piece). ...









... The lovely Ruhayat X read a deliciously humourous piece which had everyone laughing ...

... Dina Zaman read pieces from her I Am Muslim column. I took a beautiful picture of her (which doesn't make her look like a chipmonk!) but we both agreed that I shouldn't post it up because of the moronic sicko who took the photo of her from my blog to post online advertisements which has her being bombarded with lewd SMSes (she showed me) and emails. What exactly is it about her that provokes this gonk?

The third and final port of call was Silverfish and I got there with Saras and Diana just as the event ended. Apparently Raman decided against a conventional reading and Robert Raymer was talking about how the stories in his collection came to be written ...

Rounded off the day with a nice cold beer with Saras, overjoyed because my long-term writing buddy has a story in the next Silverfish collection!!!

It was a really good day with so many reasons to be hopeful for local writing.

Making an IMPAC

Haven't mentioned the IMPAC Dublin Award nominees at all yet, so here they are.

As you can see, it's an extremely long longlist (132 books!!), and many of the titles were nominated for, or have won other awards already. The books are nominated by librarians throughout the world, so there's a pleasing international flavour to the list, and 31 of the books are works in translation.

The Literary Saloon imples that many librarians seem not to be familiar with anything other than their local literature and notes that some libraries are clearly basing their choices on patriotic fervour rather than on literary merit. It suggests an amendment to the rules so that countries are not allowed to nominate their own authors.

Our own Rani Manicka is on the longlist for Touching Earth. Let's see if you can guess which library nominated it. Check your answer here.