Changes, Coffee, and Cataracts

Been a long while. Perhaps there isn't much in my life since my last post that merits writing about or I may have outgrown the need to write like I used to. Or do I just don't have the energy any more? Maybe, it's all of the above?

Regardless, I feel like I'm doing myself an injustice if I don't put things down because a fair bit has happened between then and now.


New office, new environment
Early this year I've been moved to another office though my duties and office hours haven't changed. Location, The Exchange TRX. I once dreamed of working at a bookstore and that dream has been realised. I'm not directly involved in bookselling but if there's an opportunity to pitch something, I'm good.

The new posting has me commuting to work via LRT and MRT and the adjustment was a bit difficult for the first week. Sharing space with crowds is draining, and though we're not yet over COVID, another contagion has recently reared its ugly head. Helps that I've continued to mask in public spaces, except when eating or drinking, but I despair at the number who have yet to take the latest potential outbreak seriously.

However, I do miss having certain banking and postal services within reach. And I miss being a regular at a handful of restaurants and drink trucks in the area. The kopi-C at the new place doesn't kick the same. Visitors, under any circumstance avoid whatever passes for kopi-C at the food court. I'm sure the staff are nice hard-working people but the coffee is awful, even if it kicks... albeit in a different way.

Nevertheless, I save enough from not having to drive and park – go, My50 RapidPass! – but all that typically goes to food – still a huge weakness. I typically take my meals at the food court and a favourite destination is the nasi padang kiosk which gives discretionary discounts according to portion size, though not always. The chilli-fried potato wedges with spicy gravy, magnificent. After-lunch dessert is often kuih at any of the kopitiam-style establishments around the area plus iced kopi. Slightly cheaper eats can be had outside the mall but I'm comfortable where I am now.

Any savings have also been offset by too-frequent book-buying. I've been taking advantage of staff discounts (can I mention this?) to pick up any remotely interesting titles, even if I don't plan on reading them immediately. Shortly after my new posting, I had nearly settled my home loan and the exhilaration from that freedom plus the mental shift from lockdown mode drove me book-mad. I've been making up for lost time for about two years but the past few months have been serious. And there may be another factor…


Man at fifty goes for cataract surgery
Towards the end of last year my vision began to blur subtly. Closing one eye after another revealed that one eye had clouded over. But it was several weeks later when I went to my regular ophthalmologist that confirmed that eye had developed cataracts. The guy was startled. Cataracts, at my age? Too soon! While there was no rush, I felt something had to be done.

How's it like to have cataracts? When it's in one eye, the other does the heavy lifting though vision isn't sharp, and I'm nearsighted by default. I could still see but when I announced my intent to drive home for Chinese New Year, I got an earful. My parents and several relatives have been treated for cataracts and they were free with advice on what to do and avoid. Still, I was apprehensive about the surgery and any complications. I eventually went under the knife on a Friday.

Credit goes to the surgeon who's also my ophthalmologist and the anaesthetist though the latter complicated matters a little by insisting that I obtain a letter from an upper respiratory specialist due to my asthma and my request to be put under. While the examination was hitch-free and the letter dispatched, the anaesthetist decided to opt for sedation instead – less trouble and fewer side effects – and it turned out to be a better decision.

The drugs pumped into me may be one reason I can't remember what happened during surgery, which went smoothly – yay for retrograde amnesia. I was sent home with some eye drops, a list of things to note post-surgery, and an appointment to see the ophthalmologist the next day. From that examination, my binocular vision was now 20/20 though not what I would call sharp. Stairs would be a problem and I don't feel I could go back behind the wheel.

The eye, now fitted with a new lens, was no longer clouded. Am I allowed to also thank my company's insurance provider and the eye centre for arranging things behind the scenes and alleviating my anxiety? It helps a ton, considering the state of healthcare in the country.

A bonus from having to get my airway examined was a recommendation to use a sinus rinse, which has done wonders for my nose once I got over the fear of introducing bacteria into my brain through my nostrils. The effects last for days; slightly less after some time in public. Water does get stuck in my screwed-up sinuses for a bit but the pros win out. I won't be doing any rinsing until I get the okay from the ophthalmologist who I'll be seeing again this coming Saturday.

I'm also at risk of developing glaucoma but that's for another day – the ophthalmologist is supposed to be a glaucoma specialist as well, so I should be covered. Maybe this is another reason I've been buying more books than I should, to distract from my ageing and burgeoning eye problems. Maybe that growing stack assures me that I'll have something to go back to after surgery, that things will return to normal.

But you know, I doubt they will.


The fear of going blind crops up now and then since I learnt of my susceptibility to glaucoma, prompting me to wonder if I didn't put enough effort to see all the world has to offer, if I hadn't made the most of my time with sight by gorging on every vista, portrait, every line of prose. However, I'm old enough to recognise that this is not a personal failing as long as you believe you've seen and done enough thus far. Some sights you have the (mis)fortune to see, others are perhaps better left unseen.

For now, I'll strive to make the most of what little time I have left with sight. That to-be-read pile won't read itself. So many new books to explore, so much talent waiting in the wings, so much history yet to unfold. Who could close their eyes on all that?

A Heady Broth

This family tale is a gold-star recipe


Wherever they go, at some point Malaysians tend to reminisce of home: the culture, the camaraderie, and the food. The farther the distance and the longer the absence, the more rose-tinted those memories become.

That food has become our refuge from the harshness of life is perhaps no exaggeration. There's a certain romance in our enjoyment and recollections of it: from our daily meals, childhood favourites, or that one unforgettable taste of a hawker-stall wonder that, with time, becomes as venerated as the Holy Grail.


Go here for the whole review.

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Early Mornings at the Laksa Café

Janet Tay
Vintage UK
352 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 9781787305304

The Power Of Second Chances

Restore your faith in community with this tale of a neighbourhood convenience store


Anyone who's in a reading slump should try at least one of the growing collection of healing titles out there. Pithy, packed with feel-good vibes, and small enough to be finished in one sitting, these novels - most of which are translated works from Korean or Japanese - can eb helpful in easing one back into regular reading. With few clues as to a slowdown in new releases, at least for now, one is also not starved for choice.

Some may decry how formulaic such books are, but one thing about that is how reliable they are, like a much0-needed pick-me-up from a convenience store. Which is why Kim Ho-yeon's The Second Chance Convenience Store may push you back to your cobwebbed TBR pile - and perhaps more.


The rest of the review can be found here.

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The Second Chance Convenience Store

Kim Ho-yeon (translated by Janet Hong)
Pan Macmillan
208 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 9781035032891

Book Marks: Writing Local, No More AP Book Reviews

If a story is good, does it matter where it's set? Italian author Vincenzo Latronico ponders developments in the local literature of other countries and begs the question - to me, at least: does local lit in non-anglophone countries need to be filtered through an anglo lens to make it relatable to a wider audience?

English translations have made many non-anglo works accessible, but the aim is to carry over the original authors' vision and message, baggage and all, to the reading public. Latronico seems to suggest that reworking local works through an anglo press strips them of everything that makes them "local", and I tend to agree. Such decisions are determined by saleability and if it doesn't jive with the majority being sold to, "it won't sell".

Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, co-founder and publishing director of Cassava Republic Press in Nigeria, appears to be musing over what's "local" in this piece on how African publishing could reclaim that word. I also like this point, which echoes a little of what Latronico was saying: "For African publishers, 'connecting local writers to global audiences' shouldn't mean reinforcing a one-way flow of value, where legitimacy is bestowed elsewhere. That is not equity, but soft coloniality. Amplifying voices across geographies must preserve context, nuance, and political complexity. We are all rooted in a place before our ideas travel. The global is not neutral; it is the accumulation of many locals."

More works are coming out by authors beyond the anglosphere and kudos to translators who are bringing them to us while maintaining the original nuances and contexts. Readers are those who should make an effort to understand what they're reading – if there's no engagement with works, can it be called reading? Can we be called readers if all we do is suck content through our eyeballs into our brains without processing it?

Insisting on "local" content that has been retooled for easier consumption is like going to a foreign country and insisting on all the comforts from home. There's none of the discomfort, trepidation and girding of the loins when confronted with the new. Nor is there any of the wonder and jubilation of discovery. Many bookworms are armchair adventurers and would prefer to have the thrill of finding and figuring out stuff every time they turn the pages.

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The Associated Press announced that it's stopping its weekly book reviews. "This was a difficult decision but one made after a thorough review of AP’s story offerings and what is being most read on our website and mobile apps as well as what customers are using," the statement reads. "Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews." AP will still be covering books but the reporting will be handled by its staffers.

This decision will not be good for small newspapers because "historically, AP arts coverage has been particularly important because smaller and local papers tend to syndicate AP reviews, which are written for a wide, non-partisan audience. Absent their standard blurbs, smaller outlets that can't afford to staff a books section may be forced to stop circulating literary news full stop."


Sobering. All right then...

• Back when it first launched, crowdfunded publisher Unbound was a novel idea that started off quite well. So it was a shock to learn that it was going to fold and owed authors money. How did things go wrong?
• Some might be ready to move on from Dr Seuss as a cultural ambassador for children's literature, others might hesitate. New generations will grow up with less and less exposure to the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat, and Seuss — and also Dahl — isn't the only iconic children's author out there. And do we need one anyway, when it might make kids reluctant to read beyond the well-known and much-talked-about marquee names?
• Books about Kashmir have been banned in India and Kashmiri bookshops have been raided for "secessionist" material. Not a new development, but it appears to be part of a wider trend of growing suppression of free speech and criticism worldwide.
• "Boasting 125,000 followers on Instagram, Revolving Books has established itself as a trusted curator of both fiction and non-fiction for readers across the U.S. It capitalized on a growing community of online readers, and slid neatly into an underfilled niche — making high-quality, hard-to-find secondhand books available to the masses for a reasonable price." Don't you wish your hobby would blow up like Austen Baack's has?
• The longlisting of controversial author John Boyne's novella, Earth, for an award for LGBTQ+ literature, compelled ten authors to withdraw from the awards. "Two judges have also withdrawn from the prize process, and more than 800 writers and publishing industry workers have signed a statement calling on Polari to formally remove Boyne from the longlist," The Guardian reports. This was how many learnt that Boyne declared himself a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) – as if more reasons to think twice about reading him are needed.
• "There is clearly a thriving market for this particular blend of nature writing, personal memoir and a specific form of self-help in which the embattled individual – or in the case of The Salt Path, a couple – finds solace, sustenance and even redemption by withdrawing from everyday society and launching themselves into the great outdoors," writes Alex Clark in The Guardian. But what damage, if any, has The Salt Path done to the nature memoir?

Wrapping things up are, first, the release of Kenangan Luka, the Malay translation of Sybil Kathigasu's memoir, No Dram of Mercy. Translated by Fahmi Mustaffa, the memoir "was published with the support of the Perak Heritage Society, a local NGO advocating for the preservation of historical sites in Perak, including the former premises of Sybil Kathigasu's residence in Papan," Free Malaysia Today reported.

Second, is the longlisting of Tash Aw's The South for the 2025 Booker Prize. Previously longlisted were The Harmony Silk Factory in 2005 and Five Star Billionaire in 2013, back when it was called the Man Booker Prize. However, Malaysians may not get to read The South. Someone raised a stink over a scene in the book and I heard that Kinokuniya KLCC was visited by the authorities. The novel, as far as I know, is no longer on sale in Malaysian bookstores. Nevertheless, we wish Aw and his novel the best – third time's the charm, aye?

Book Marks: A Million Pinches of Salt, Self-Writing Satire

Since its publication and release of its film adaptation, Raynor Winn's memoir The Salt Path, which I previusly mentioned here, gained a fair bit of attention. The story of a middle-aged couple made homeless and embarking on a walking journey in the countryside after one of them contracted a terminal disease can be compelling. But a report from The Observer has unearthed disturbing details about the couple's history, throwing into doubt the veracity of what's in the book.

The author disputes the report and defends what she wrote, but it's unclear whether she'll be taking legal action. The publisher, Penguin, meanwhile has stated that it "undertook all the necessary pre-publication due diligence, including a contract with an author warranty about factual accuracy, and a legal read, as is standard with most works of non-fiction," the BBC reported. Nevertheless, Penguin has delayed the release of Winn's next book. Maybe they can take a closer look at it while they wait for the scandal to blow over.

Once again, are publishers obligated to determine whether a memoir is for real? Lucy Knight explores the scandal in the Guardian and while publishers can fact-check or investigate, publishing involves a degree of trust, and as not every publisher can maintain a fact-checking department or hire third-party fact-checkers, that duty often falls to the editor, whose plate might be full already.

Will publishers be more sensitive towards stories that sound too good to be true? For a while, at least, until the next one comes along because, as Knight writes, "The fact that there is money to be made – with very few legal repercussions – by telling the most marketable version of a story, rather than the true one, makes it difficult to believe that this controversy will be the last of its kind." Two other takes on the issue seem to concur.


Elsewhere:

• While some "true stories" sound too good to be true, there are incidents or events that we hope are fake. Another tRump admin, for one. But alas... At a protest against the infamous "Alligator Alcatraz", a sign caught Florida author Carl Hiaasen's attention. America right now is arguably beyond parody and as someone who's known for writing political satire, Hiaasen has his work cut out for him. "After all, even the most brilliant novelist would be challenged to imagine storylines more preposterous than those generated by President Donald Trump in his second administration," writes Stephanie Mencimer in Mother Jones. Well, when satire writes or even outdoes itself...
• "...I reckon we're at the precipice of a major reshuffling, where younger authors are set to replace the ageing ones as the primary voices of the generation. I think many younger readers are starting to identify with their ethnic lineage and traditions more than ever before, and that perhaps explains the boom in demand for local or regional literature." Female Singapore speaks with author Malcom Seah about his book, Swimming Lessons, his writing, regional literature, and his plans. Keep an eye on this young man, readers.
• Leaving books for people to find and read sounds like a thing for bookish fairy godmothers. Maybe that's why Emma Watson called her campaign "Book Fairies". Carol Koh kicked off something similar in Malaysia, and now she has set up a string of community libraries across the Klang Valley. Hopefully, Books on the Move will fare well for many years.
• Is reading books in more than one language difficult? Maybe it's not too big of a deal in Malaysia where the average bookworm may be bi- or trilingual. Malaysian writers tend to sprinkle their prose with the local vernacular, a bit like how Cormac McCarthy inserts Spanish into his work, according to Rachel Ashcroft in Literature Hub. But it doesn't seem to affect her enjoyment of McCarthy's The Crossing. "...I was happy to 'watch' Billy converse in Spanish. Which is what the question of reading books in two languages really boils down to. Are you happy to watch, or do you need to hear and understand every single word?"
• "Although few Australians are totally illiterate, a staggering 44 per cent of adults (about 7.3 million) have low literacy, where the reading standard ranges from primary school-level up to early high school, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics." The Sydney Morning Herald rings alarm bells with regard to the decline in reading in Australia, a trend that might not be confined Down Under. The piece is grim reading, albeit well researched.
• A report on novelist Barbara Kingsolver's recovery residence, established using using royalties from her Pulitzer prize-winning novel Demon Copperhead, sheds light on rural America and the struggles of Appalachians affected by poverty and the opioid crisis. She is a bit less kind towards the current US president and his so-called "hillbilly" of a vice-president.
• "...the journal—often dismissed as 'just a diary'—wasn't merely a space for confessional wallowing, but a scaffolding for becoming, a place to contain a life in progress. I didn't know that this habit I began in childhood—one that I've continued through adolescence, motherhood, grief, addiction, and recovery—was part of a lineage. To journal is to claim authority over your own interiority. It is to say: I saw and felt these things. I was here." Was journalling ever considered as frivolous? Not any more, as Elizabeth Austin writes at Electric Literature.
• Rolling Stone gives us a glimpse into the anti-woke literary scene, which seems to be coming in from the cold since tRump's re-election. "Anti-woke", to some of these people, appears to mean saying and doing whatever you want, however gross and offensive. However, the world isn't free of repercussions. Gatekeeping, for instance, is a response to certain words and deeds, especially in published material. Rolling Stone tries hard to make the people in its article human and relatable, but there are times you are reminded of who they are. Speaking of right wing...
• "After her book became a New York Times bestseller, the right-wing forces in Japan who wanted to cover up that part of history started to attack her. Their articles criticizing her kept appearing in Japanese newspapers using all kinds of methods." Not sure if I believe this report, but if the Japanese government was involved in harassing Iris Chang for The Rape of Nanking, it wouldn't be surprising. Japan's right wing is formidable and the country has never quite acknowledged its wartime atrocities.

To close off: The Malaysian Home Ministry is open to rethinking book ban laws, says PEN Malaysia (article in Malay; the English version is paywalled). I'm sceptical, but we'll wait and see.

Rich People Problems, Reprised

The copy on the back cover of a book sometimes oversells, but in the case of Kevin Kwan's Lies and Weddings, which "reveals and enthralling family saga that is as scandalous and satirical as it is full of heart", one is glad to be proven wrong.

The author who brought us Crazy Rich Asians returns with what might shape up to be a new series, with an all-new cast. British-Chinese Hunk Rufus Leung Gresham, Viscount St Ives and heir to the (probably) fictional British earldom of Greshambury, is under pressure to marry rich. Despite being aristocrats, the Greshams are broke after decades of unbridled spending.


Check out the full review of Lies and Weddings.

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Lies and Weddings

Kevin Kwan
Doubleday US
448 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 9780385546379

Book Marks: AI Marches On, Reading Habits

Last week was bad for authors as two federal judges ruled in favour of tech companies in copyright lawsuits arguing against the companies' methods in training their AI models. While Meta and Anthropic may seem to have won, the judges' decisions do not give them the leeway to do what they want with their AI systems.

In the case of Meta, the judge's ruling was because the authors made the wrong arguments. While Anthropic was found to have not violated US copyright law by using books to train its AI, it was at fault for using pirated books in building the data set. The court rulings stop short of giving tech companies free rein to feed their AI models with copyrighted material, but Aron Solomon at Literary Hub feels it might not be enough.

A group of authors has released an open letter calling on major publishers to restrict the use of AI. The document "asks them to refrain from publishing books written using AI tools built on copyrighted content without authors' consent or compensation, to refrain from replacing publishing house employees wholly or partially with AI tools, and to only hire human audiobook narrators — among other requests," NPR reports.

The letter's core argument seems to be that AI steals from human writers to "write". "These stories were stolen from us and used to train machines that, if short-sighted capitalistic greed wins, could soon be generating the books that fill our bookstores," the letter goes, before asking, "Is this the end goal—to fully remove us from the equation so that those at the very top of the capitalist structure can profit even further off our labor than they already do?"

An intern at the Detroit Free Press lays out her concerns regarding the growing use of AI in writing. "When I eventually publish a book, there is a high chance that some form of AI will steal it. This leaves me with two options: unwillingly become a part of a system that I despise, or never follow my long time-publishing dreams. Ten-year-old me would be devastated if robots got the chance to be bestsellers before she did."

The rulings may have made it more urgent to address the potential for AI to supplant humans in writing and publishing, and what would the future pool of literature look like if machine-generated output becomes the standard? And with AI being more efficient in trendspotting, marketing, targeted advertising and such – so much so that publishers and publishing platforms are employing it to that end – what guardrails need to be in place to ensure it doesn't make people redundant?


Okay, what else?

• Last week, Malaysian Home Ministry officials raided a Fixi bookstore and took copies of Jelik and Jelik:2. ABC dives deeper into the factors behind such raids and highlights the challenges of writing and publishing in this climate. Why these titles were being scrutinised isn't clear, but both seem to be psychological thrillers so maybe they're too disturbing for public consumption? Or did the officials not notice the "For Mature Readers" labels Fixi places on the covers of some of its titles? Or could it be– ooohhh.
• "Today, the nature of reading has shifted. Plenty of people still enjoy traditional books and periodicals, and there are even readers for whom the networked age has enabled a kind of hyper-literacy; for them, a smartphone is a library in their pocket. For others, however, the old-fashioned, ideal sort of reading—intense, extended, beginning-to-end encounters with carefully crafted texts—has become almost anachronistic." Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker asks, "what's happening to reading" in the age of AI.
• "In the past, in Ethiopia—as in many other countries—plays were often published in book form either before or after being staged. A quick look into the subject reveals that many such plays were indeed published." In the Ethiopia Observer, a writer laments the lost art of publishing plays.
• Would you pepper your books with marginalia? Medieval authors had no problems with that, and today, "a growing community of BookTokkers and Bookstagrammers are ... posting images of books embellished with pastel highlighting and marginal drawings of flowers and kittens, wantonly smeared with lipstick kisses, or neatly stuffed with colour-coded tabs" as a form of engagement with authors and their works. Lebih daripada menconteng buku sahaja, okay?
• "I joke that our publishing house's PR department consists of the head of Roskomnadzor, the justice minister, and the prosecutor general — they've done more to promote our books than we ever could." This quote from Georgy Urushadze, founder of publisher Freedom Letters, has a familiar tone. Freedom Letters is among a small clutch of publishers publishing Russian literature abroad, a practice called tamizdat. Authoritairan regimes doing more than publishers in promoting books is an all-too-familiar theme by now, I feel. All these works need to do is win prizes.
• Book prizes can be prestige-granting, not to mention lucrative, but as a source of income for authors, it's unreliable – and out of reach for most. However, for those who do win awards in Australia, the prize is taxable. Punters who pick winning authors – a real thing Down Under, apparently – their winnings are not taxed. With writers earning peanuts and Australia giving away "extraordinary amounts of gas and offers massive subsidies in the form of fuel tax credits", editor, publisher, researcher and teacher Alice Grundy argues that it's time for tax-free prize money for authors.
• "All across the book industry, people watched as the staff at various other media companies and magazines unionized, analogous creative industries that had similarly treated employees like they should feel lucky just to be there. Creative types were not so different from the baristas and warehouse workers in their desire to be treated fairly." Read an excerpt from Maris Kreizman's I Want to Burn This Place Down, an apt title for an anthem for wrung-out peons in publishing if I ever heard one.
• "The Book Society, hosted initially by the bestselling novelist and screenwriter Hugh Walpole, who put together the first selection committee and remained energetically involved until his death in 1941, provided something unheard of in the UK at the time: a book subscription service in partnership with publishers that any member of the public – should they be able to stump up the cost each month – could join." Did these early book influencers invent the book club?
• "The truth is that ideas come from everything you consume – culture, conversations, observations, awkward dinners, humiliating accidents, fabulous parties. It’s perhaps no surprise then that writers, who typically consume a lot of books, are inspired to write about them." E.C. Nevin talks about their book, A Novel Murder, and dives into why we read and write books about books.
• I'm not sure whether this op-ed is satire – or if it's not, where this "non-woke" writer has been to. Right-wing publishing has always been around. If avenues for right-wing authors are shrinking at the moment, could it be because few want to be on the wrong side of history? The return of the tRump administration and the resurgence of the right in the west has galvanised right-wing movements all over, and many authors of that persuasion are cashing in. Missed a boat? No worries, the next one is on the way.
• 8th Note Press, the publishing arm owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance that was founded to capitalise on the BookTok boom, is shutting down. Was this a case of a corporation failing to catch an obvious tsunami-class wave, or are there other factors?