Book Marks: Fixi Is Popular, GerakBudaya Raid, And Minor Updates

The Popular-The Star Readers' Choice Awards is back. Looks like the fiction category is dominated by Fixi. Specifically, the English-language Fixi Novo imprint.

I swear I could hear Fixi boss Amir Muhammad laughing as I read it.

However, I have a problem with this paragraph:

To vote, you can fill up voting forms, available on this page on the right, as well as at all Popular and Harris bookstores nationwide. Or you can vote online at either popular.com.my, facebook.com/popularmalaysia, bookfestmalaysia.com or facebook.com/bookfestmalaysia.

I actually looked around for "this page on the right", wondering what was going on. Guess they weren't paying attention when shifting the text online.

Another Fixi Novo book, a compilation of creepy, mind-messing short stories titled Here Be Nightmares by Julya Oui was longlisted for the Frank O' Connor International Short Story Award. Oui has come a long way since her first published compilation. Let's wish her all the best.

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The Home Ministry raided the GerakBudaya booth during the KL International Book Fair last week and seized copies of several books, including the controversial Money Logging.

The ministry has also banned four books by Faisal Tehrani, including the flagged Sebongkah Batu di Kuala Berang, which, according to that Malaysian Insider report, "were found to have contained Shia elements".


Plus:

• My job would be a lot simpler if the writers followed these rules (which I tend to break myself, unfortunately). But isn't it inconvenient, to have metaphorical rulebooks or style guides hovering over your head, especially when you're struggling to get a first draft out?
• Yesterday, 5 May, was the 151st anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Jane Cochran, otherwise known as Nellie Bly, the American journalist who pioneered a "new kind of investigative journalism" (I find the term "muckraking" derogatory). Slate ran a piece on her, which includes a link to some of her work, archived by NYU Libraries (in PDFs, and some of the files can be huge).
• RIP Joshua Ozersky, food writer and food editor for Esquire. Damn, dude was only 47.
• This review of a restaurant by Jay Rayner sparked a flurry of legal letters. Considering it's Rayner, it's probably not the first (or last) time.
• Sunili Govinnage read books by only minority authors for a year and learnt how white the reading world is.
• Somebody's Kickstarting an emoji translation project. In light of news that Malaysians are among the world's heavy emoji users and the On the Fastrack strips highlighting icon-based communication, I wonder if we will end up not being able to read or write.
• An interview with Dr. Gary Weitzman, co-author (with Aline Alexander Newman) of the National Geographic book, How to Speak Cat.

Also, I'm not blogging about the company's books anymore. The company has set up another Facebook page, which they are updating regularly; go there for updates or to comment, commend or raise hell.

And the revived MPH Writers' Circle has a Facebook Group (login required) for aspiring authors, illustrators, photographers, ghostwriters or editors.