National Day Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrity Literatis!

Andrew Leci is interviewed by Anu Nathan in Starmag's ReadsMonthly supplement about his first novel Once Removed.

Now Andrew is a bloke I feel I know very well, even if I have never met him, because he's a sports anchor for ESPN and in our house, there's nowhere to run from the rugby matches on TV! (Let me tell you that I can hold my own in any conversation about the sport, but I actually only watch it for all the wrong reasons ... which I'm sure you can guess!)

Once Removed though, is far removed from the sports pitch and is the story of a British expat at large in Kuala Lumpur of the 1970's.

I am not going to be winning any Booker Prize for this one. I wanted to write something that would maybe provoke thought about the way we see expats and the way expats see us ...

And as Anu points out he seems:

... blithely oblivious to the fact that, in many eyes, he’s an expat himself ...

But actually, I must interject, this is what does happens to us long-term mat-sallehs!

I didn’t want it to be an expat book but it sort of turned out that way. Yes, it does reinforce a stereotype. But I think the whole point is that you have to question those stereotypes.... That’s what makes it interesting.

(Rehman Rashid's reviews the book today in the NST.)

I must say that I find it a little strange that Marshall Cavendish (after having tumbled to the fact that coverage on local blogs were the main factor behind the initial boom in sales of Kam Raslan's book Confessions of an Old Boy) haven't made a conscious effort to harness blog-power when promoting other books!

Send out at least a press-kit at least (and a copy of the book would be nice!). Make sure that you have a website set up to promote the book! (Raman of Silverfish and Philip Tatham of Monsoon Books are a lot more clued up!!)

Anyway, elsewhere in ReadsMonthly there is some other much good stuff. Award-winning filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad writes about a favourite book: Rumi's Bridge to the Soul. This I think is beautifully said and delightfully disingenious:

This year, 2007, marks Rumi’s 800th birthday. The motley entourage that gathered on the day of his funeral indicates the sort of pluralism that is now frowned upon by certain quarters. Me, I’m too ignorant to take sides here. There are mighty arguments for and against pluralism, no doubt, and the proponents of each will present a seemingly airtight case. And yet, all it takes is one tiny pin prick, does it not, for us to be able to breathe again?

(I'm amazed and delighted to see that Yasmin has 5,000 books at home!)

Ted reviews of Clive Barker's Mister B. Gone, and Martin Spice is kinder to John Berendt's City of Falling Angels (now in paperback) than I felt like being.

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.

Malaysia's Top Ten

The people have spoken! These are Malaysia's Top Ten Books according to a survey carried out by ReadsMonthly in Starmag:

1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

6. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

7. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

9. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

9. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

218 readers contributed lists, most of them, not surprisingly from the Klang valley, although there also appear to be enthusiastic readers in Kuching, Sarawak.

As Daphne Lee says in her article, fantasy is clearly a favourite genre. What also strikes me is that so many of the books are the kinds of classics typically read by young readers, four of them are children's books (Harry Potter, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, The Chronicles of Narnia). (I use the term children's books advisedly, before legions of Potter fans accost me, because I know that older readers enjoy them too!)

The Catcher in the Rye and The Lord of the Rings trilogy typically find their most enthusiastic readership among teenagers, while To Kill a Mockingbird is a typical college choice. (I've taught it to matric students.)

Now this could represent the demographic of the survey (most readers were under 35, but I wonder how many were under 20?) ... or it could represent the fact that older readers hold on to their childhood friends ... for comfort or nostalgia or simply because a busy life has meant that they haven't had time to read since. Or, more worryingly, (and here my neck is stuck right out!) it could mean that a Malaysian readership is not really maturing? Mind you, there are some interesting similarities with the list produced by British readers, where To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books also hold sway.

Of course, plenty of other books were nominated - most receiving just a single vote.

My own list of favourites looks a bit stuffy and dead-white-male-ish though:

1. Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. A Hero of our Time – Lermentov
3. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
4. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
5. The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
6. 1984 - George Orwell
7. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
8. The Malayan Trilogy – Anthony Burgess
9. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
10. True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey

My criteria? These are books that constantly live in my head, and I keep needing to reread, whole and in part. (I'm not a reader who rereads very much, so these books have to be special.)

Only one woman on it (and a woman who writes like a man, at that!). But I got conniptions of the heart yesterday when I realised that I hadn't included Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which I've read three times.

And should I have had An Equal Music instead of A Suitable Boy? I truly love both.

And shouldn't Atwood have been there?

Dilemmas!

Besides the result of this survey, ReadsMonthly has some very good reviews, including a couple by guest reviewers. Lim Chee Seng reviews Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong (and there's a 25% off voucher from Kinokuniya) and Gerry Liston (Acting British Council Regional Director) writes about The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace. There are also another couple of reviews I plan to link to later ...

Twan's Debut!

The Gift of Rain is in every sense a “big” book, not only substantial in size, but also in theme, and in the amount of incident that is crammed into it. It’s hard to know just how to pigeonhole this book. Literary fiction? Thriller? Historical novel? Big screen kung-fu movie with Hollywood glitz and glamour translated to the page? The novel combines elements of all of these, yet succeeds very much on its own terms ...

My interview with Tan Twan Eng gets a whole page in the first of StarMag's brand new Readsmonthly supplements. In it he talks about how his debut novel was conceived, written and researched, why he unashamedly embraces the exotic ... and a sneak preview of what he's working on next. And you can read my review of The Gift of Rain here.

So much had to be squashed into such a teensy word limit alas: I had a whole lot more I wanted to say about the book, and fascinating chunks of interview I had to cut out. (All to be used elsewhere and elsetime, have patience!)

Also in the supplement is a very interesting piece by filmmaker Ho Yuhang on the dark world of Japanese crime novelist Natsuo Kirino - I'm tempted to take advantage of the 25% off discount voucher ...

It's good to see the bookshops on board, supporting this supplement ... and all I ask for is MORE PLEASE. Not a monthly, but a weekly. Not four pages, but a whole thick pullout. But then I'm just greedy!