Book Marks: Frankfurt, Sensitivity, Scholastic

The Israel-Hamas war continues to affect the Frankfurt Book Fair, which has stated it stands with Israel. This, and the shelving of an award ceremony for Palestinian author Adania Shibli for her novel Minor Detail, prompted pullouts from major Arab publishing organisations, inlcuding the Arab Publishers' Association, the Emirates Publishers Association, and the Sharjah Book Authority. Local publisher Fixi also announced it was not taking part in FBF this year.

Days later, The Malaysian Education Ministry announced its withdrawal from the fair over the latter's support for Israel. Karangkraf Books Group Sdn Bhd, a major Malaysian publisher; and Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the Institute of Language and Literature, also pulled out. The Indonesian Publishers Association (IKAPI) withdrew from the fair as well.

This decision is sure to affect Malaysia's preparations for the fair. The National Book Council of Malaysia would have been networking at the fair, and presentations about "Lenggong's Paleolithic Pride", the oldest human skeleton found in Malaysia, and the Selangor International Book Fair were scheduled to take place.

Also on the timetable was a programme to introduce a new anthology titled Dragonlore, edited by Ninot Aziz and Johnny Gillett. Fifteen storytellers from 11 nations, plus two illustrators and three translators, contributed to the anthology. What's remarkable is that Dragonlore is "one of the works inscribed in Nanofiche archival storage technology for the Canadian entrepreneur and self-publishing writer Samuel Peralta's Lunar Codex program", which aims to "send three collections of cultural work to the moon on a trio of SpaceX missions."

Ninot Aziz had met the people who would work on the Italian translation of Bentala Naga in Frankfurt last year. Italian publisher LetterarieMenti released "Bentala – Regina dei Naga: Una Leggenda Makyong" ("Bentala – Queen of the Nagas: A Makyong Legend") in July. Thanks to Ninot's tireless efforts to promote works from our corner of the world, Dragonlore is expected to be published in 2024 in Turkish, Mandarin, and Filipino. What will this mean for the book?

An open letter with many signatories in support of Shibli has been released, decrying the cancellation of the award ceremony and the story behind it. "The Frankfurt Book Fair has a responsibility, as a major international book fair, to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down," it stated.

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"By trying to prevent novels from causing offence, sensitivity readers are effectively preventing novels from challenging us. They're trying to stop them from discomfiting readers, from stirring up uncomfortable feelings, from making us question ourselves. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, sensitivity readers represent the death of the novel. Once you remove any possibility of a piece of fiction being difficult or challenging in any sense, you remove its ability to change the world."

This argument against the use of sensitivity readers in Spiked sounds a bit weak because the utility is not about causing offence per se but to ensure writers do not offend other cultures and communities when writing about them or using the lexicon. "Writing what you feel" doesn't apply when you're striving for authenticity when representing Indigenous peoples or using a certain patois in fiction, for instance. The "idiocy" can be a lifesaver when people these days are ready to call out writers for their snafus in this regard.

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Children's book publisher Scholastic has sequestered certain titles into a separate catalog in response to US state laws that restrict how some topics, such as racism, gender, and sexuality, are discussed in schools. This is so the publisher can "continue offering diverse books in a hostile legislative environment that could threaten school districts, teachers or librarians."

PEN America disagrees with this move, arguing that "sequestering books on these topics risks depriving students and families of books that speak to them. It will deny the opportunity for all students to encounter diverse stories that increase empathy, understanding, and reflect the range of human experiences and identities which are essential underpinnings of a pluralistic, democratic society."

Rebecca Onion at Slate laments the flak Scholastic is getting for the siloing of these challenged books and offers a reason people are so emotional over it. "Scholastic's down-the-middle response had such a harsh reception in part because its internet audience is made up of bookish people for whom loving the Scholastic Book Fair is a marker of identity and tribe. YouTube is full of Scholastic Book Fair nostalgia videos made by happy nerds who seem to get good viewership simply by remembering how it was."

Of course, it's a bit more than that.


Also:

• Kean Wong, editor of Rebirth: Reformasi, Resistance, And Hope in New Malaysia, has been arrested and is being investigated for sedition. The book, a collection of political analyses and reports on the 2018 general election, was banned in 2020 because of complaints about the cover, which featured an artistic rendition of the national coat of arms.
• A free e-book containing stories from 12 students of the Faculty of Cinematic Arts (FCA) of Multimedia University, Cyberjaya has been released. The editor and illustrator, Megan Wonowidjoyo, told Free Malaysia Today, "The book is a great way to discover the heartbeat of the new generation. We can read what interests them, what questions they think about." Stories in the e-book came out of a two-week course author Chuah Guat Eng conducted for FCA foundation students from 2018 to 2021.
• "There have been a few standout successes for Latinx authors in the realm of speculative fiction — which includes fantasy, science fiction and dystopian stories — and many are written by women and LGBTQ+ authors," reports The 19th. "Publishers have backed a few bright stars, but that doesn't translate into broader support." Why is that?
• Vanity Fair dives into the legal fight between authors and AI as it rages on over issues of copyright and how AI models are being trained. Lawsuits will be filed and debated in court as all sides in this tussle decide where to draw lines when it comes to how much human work AI can use to learn and how many human jobs AI can take up. This will take a long while.

Book Marks: Books3, Boey, And Bornean Folk Tales

Some authors aren't happy about their books being included in the infamous data set Books3, used by Meta to train it's AI model. But several commentators and writers seem to be feeling philosophical about the whole thing.

TechDirt is telling people to learn to let go because "once you’ve released a work into the world, the original author no longer has control over how that work is used and interpreted by the world. Releasing a work into the world is an act of losing control over that work and what others can do in response to it. Or how or why others are inspired by it."

The Walrus reached out to some Canadian authors to learn what they felt, knowing that their books were included in the data set. Not all of them feel negatively about it. Canadian poet Christian Bök is "honoured" to know that his book Eunoia is in it, "now gone to Heaven and used to train the minds of our futurist machines (which, like any of our children, do not need our permission to become literate)."

On the related issue of book piracy and copyright, Literary Hub spoke with Alex Reisner, who put up an interface that searches Books3. Authors limiting what others can do with their works can be tricky, he said, because certain conditions cannot be enforced by law.

"As an author, you have a very limited ability to specify how your work can be used, for example, you could put in a copyright notice that you can’t read this book on the Sabbath," Reisner stated. "But in court, a judge is gonna say you can’t enforce that. People who buy your book can read it whenever they want. In the same way, if a judge decides that training AI on copyrighted material is fair use, they’re going to say that no author can specify that a company can’t do that."

Australian authors still consider the inclusion of books in Books3 as theft, and the Australian publishing sector is watching developments in that area, like the lawsuits brought against AI and tech firms in the US.

"The outcomes of those suits will go a long way to determining what the next steps are and, for example, what the industry and authors might be able to do here, and what actions might be appropriate for government to take," Australian Publishers Association policy and government relations manager Stuart Glover told the ABC.

If anything, the existence of Books3 and the flood of AI-generated works illustrates just how difficult it can be to prevent people from using AI and copyrighted material however they want. Enforcing limits on the use of copyrighted material is all about resources and will, which pirates seem to be more willing to commit to their ends. Time for the other side to catch up.

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Did I say that Cheeming Boey, author and illustrator of the When I Was A Kid series, wasn't contesting the ban on his third book? Looks like I spoke too soon. While he is still contrite over the feelings he unintentionally hurt, Boey defends his work, saying that "certain articles published after the protest only stopped at the [offensive] fourth panel instead of showing the entire 12."

Boey claimed that he only found out about the ban on Reddit, adding that the authorities didn't notify him about it, nor did they seek any clarification or explanation from him about the work. He added that "some bookstores have apparently taken down my entire series [in response to the ban], not just [the banned When I Was A Kid 3]", impacting his livelihood. Hence, he is challenging the ban.

This news is pretty low-key and I'm not sure how this legal challenge will proceed. The process could take years and the authorities are unlikely to budge on this. And there's no telling how the NGO that led the protest will respond.


While we wait and see what's next, let's check out other news...

• "Published by Illustrato Studio, the series is targeting junior readers aged five to 10, and it comprises five stories adapted from local tales: 'Kumang and the Ungrateful Python', 'Three Good Friends and A Hungry Dog', 'Udin and the Transformed Patin Fish, 'Modi and the Magic Stone', and 'The Widow and the Colourful Clothed Frog'." A series of junior readers' books featuring Sarawakian folk tales has been announced.
• The Student, a fortnightly independent newspaper produced by students at the University of Edinburgh and Europe's oldest student newspaper, discusses whether author anonymity is beneficial or a hindrance, citing the case of Elena Ferrante. It concludes that "an author’s identity and private life is not something that we as readers are owed. Publishing a book isn’t, or shouldn’t be, automatic consent to sacrificing privacy – people don’t read My Brilliant Friend because they are wanting a biography, they read it as a novel that they derive enjoyment from, and if there are biographical similarities to the author’s life that is incidental."
• "When Kyla Zhao was looking for agents to publish her debut novel 'The Fraud Squad,' prospective agents asked if she would be willing to change her book’s setting from Singapore to America. If she wanted her novel to be more 'marketable,' they said, she could make some of her Asian characters white too. Zhao refused and found her current agent, Alex Rice, instead." More stories of what women writers face in publishing. And what's with the setting thing? Let's have none of that in 2023 and beyond.
• Salman Rushdie is publishing a memoir about his 2022 stabbing. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, will be released on 16 April 2024. In a statement released by the publisher, Penguin Random House, Rushdie stated that "This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art."
• "Writers benefit from unbiased opinions and constructive criticism. Genuine friendships with authors who offer honest feedback, rather than just praise, are valuable and sincere relationships worth cherishing." The Kathmandu Post speaks with author and teacher Bina Theeng Tamang about books and the lack of critique in Nepali literature.
• "Books are not just victims of war, they are also protagonists and provide, through their contribution to scientific discovery, intelligence and propaganda, the munitions. They incubate the ideologies that set nations against each other; they perpetuate the stereotypes that lead to atrocities and genocide. Books are never above the fray; they reflect the human frailties and evil intent of those who go to war, even as reading provides a haven of peace in troubled times." In History Today, the rise and fall of Mein Kampf.

Speaking of books as victims of war ... a novel by Palestinian author Adania Shibli, titled "Minor Detail" in English, was supposed to be feted at the Frankfurt Book Fair "for winning the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a German literature prize awarded annually to an author from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Arab world". German literary association Litprom, which organises the prize, has announced the ceremony's cancellation, citing the current Israel-Hamas war.

Also, the Frankfurt Book Fair expressed its intent to make Jewish and Israeli voices particularly visible at the fair, adding that it "stands with Israel in full solidarity." As a result, local publisher Fixi announced that it would not be taking part in the fair this year, and urged other Malaysian agencies and publishers to reconsider their participation in the event.

What a shame.

Book Marks: Young SEA Authors, Authorship Is Tough

"Because I've always wanted to publish my own book since I was six years old, but I kept pushing it aside all these years. So in 2018, I self-published the first Diary of a Rich Kid, using my own funds, with the help of my sister who became my second pair of eyes and gave feedback on the manuscript." A brief profile of Kuching-born author Malcolm Mejin in Malay Mail Online.

Meanwhile, The Star reports that "The local picture book landscape has changed tremendously in the last decade, with illustrators and authors coming together now to produce wonderful reading materials to introduce kids to the joy of reading through depictions of their own culture."

And in Singapore, a ten-year-old and her younger sisters published a book they illustrated themselves, about a lion with no tail. A copy was gifted to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. "In the future, she hopes that her favourite local publisher, Epigram Books, will take on the book," reports Mothership. "The trio also plan to publish Chinese and bilingual versions of the book, and possibly in Braille and audiobook form as well." All the best.

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Contrasting the good news from our backyard is an author income study released by the Authors Guild suggests that "most authors have a hard time earning a living from their craft," according to Publishers Weekly. "While the combined income (book income plus other writing-related income) of full-time, established authors (those who had written a book in 2018 or before) rose 21% in 2022 (to $23,329) from 2018, the median income was still below poverty level."

Exacerbating this state of affairs is the surge of book bans happening in the US. Bans can trigger the Striesand effect, leading to a spike in attention and sales, but the long-term effects can take a much larger toll. "Kyle Lukoff, the author of 'Call Me Max' and the Newbery Honor book 'Too Bright to See,' among others, said the national publicity did little to nothing to improve sales of 'Max.' Instead, it introduced his work to people who want to remove it from bookshelves in their local schools and libraries," reports CNN.

Probably not as bad as in Cuba, where myriad problems have crippled the publishing industry. Not enough money, not enough paper, and subpar publishing houses. No thanks, perhaps, to the US embargo on the country. "For years, I have had texts, and long waits," writes Irina Pino in the Havana Times "With my first book of poetry I had to wait three years for its publication. I went once a week to the Extramuros publishing house to talk to the editor-in-chief. Even a writer friend talked to the director. They had misplaced it, and I had to take the manuscript again."

Wow. All the best, Cuba.


Elsewhere:

• Rory Cellan-Jones is upset to find a biography of him on Amazon that's apparently AI-generated. Speaking to The Guardian, Cellan-Jones added that Amazon "sent me an email saying: 'You might like this.' Their algorithm had decided this was a bloody book I would want rather than recommending my book that I've slaved long and hard over ... They're effectively allowing book spam and recommending it to the very person who is most annoyed by it." Seems Amazon's publishing limit of three books a day might not be enough to thwart AI-assisted bookspamming.
• "Mass market paperbacks were intended to be cheap, disposable alternatives to proper cloth-bound books. Indeed, paperbacks are so disposable that when bookstores return unsold paperbacks for credit, they only send the covers. The discarded, broken-spined contents are consigned to recycling. So, what’s to love in a format seemingly one step up from trash?" Over at Tor.com, James Davis Nicoll presents five enduring reasons to love the mass-market paperback.
• "These reading platforms are subverting the notion that women's spaces are frivolous—full of gossip, Chardonnay, and small talk. In book clubs, women are claiming their rightful place in literary discourse, reading books that cater to their feminine appetites, proving that their voices matter and their insights are invaluable." In 34th Street, a bit about how women-led online communities are redefining literary discussions.
• "Shortly after New English Canaan's publication, the Puritans outlawed the text in their colonies, committing what historians consider the first act of book banning in the present-day United States. ... but far from disappearing, the book has cropped up continuously over the last four centuries in other works of literature and history." Banned Books Week is here and so is this story of the first book banned in America, now considered an anti-authoritarian icon.
• "[Graham] Greene's attempts to rescue the book that he described in 1955 as 'one of the three best novels I've read this year' from censorship followed a campaign to have it banned in Britain, where it was only published four years later." Graham Greene was "ready to go to jail for Lolita"? Apparently so, according to the diary of Véra Nabokov, the author's widow, which has been published.
• "I've managed to build a nice collection of nonfiction books over the years. Some are distinguished by The New York Times and USA Today, while others are less known but still as captivating, inspiring, shocking, and unbelievable as the bestsellers. Let me introduce a few that might be new to you." Grace Ly over at The Daily Beast shares some non-fiction adventure reads, first the bestselling title followed by a less-well-known one with a similar premise.
• "This is a movement that really I think ... that's been going on since the founding of the People's Republic of China nearly 75 years ago. And even before that, going back to before the party went into power, people who have been challenging the party's monopoly on history. But it is continuing today, even in Xi Jinping's China." NPR speaks with Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ian Johnson about the handful of people chronicling China's "grassroots history" and his new book about these people and their mission.
• "I also feel ... a little bored by the idea that Meta has stolen my life. If the theft and aggregation of the works in Books3 is objectionable on moral or legal grounds, then it ought to be so irrespective of those works' absorption into one particular technology company's large language model. But that doesn't seem to be the case." Author and game designer Ian Bogost doesn't seem irate that his work was included in the infamous Books3 dataset. He explains why in The Atlantic.
• "The readers of today have collectively decided that anything published before 2020 is too racist, too anti-LGBT, too white, etc., to be worthy of any real ontological value. The politics that govern our news channels and social media feeds have invaded our bookshelves, especially our fiction, and what’s more, BookTok and the publishing industry have recognized a cash cow when they see one." Has liberalism ruined books?
• "According to a recent study, both men and women find reading to be the biggest 'green flag' behavior for prospective partners. And lately, it seems as if the boys I'm stalking on the Internet are taking this stat to heart. As I've turned 30, the evolution of my similarly aged 'single men on the Internet' has been a fascinating spectacle to behold." Seems men online are trying to look appealing by sharing what they're (allegedly) reading. I think this sort of strategy requires doing some homework.

Moviemaking Magic And Madness

Bill Johnson, director and screenwriter, makes a movie out of a memoir by Joe Shaw, a lecturer at an arts college. One thing leads to another and Shaw is invited to the set of Johnson's next film to witness the production and write a book about it: the book that will be known in this universe as The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, and instead of Shaw it is authored by Tom Hanks.

I could imagine the author, nonplussed, replying to comments about the title: "Well, what else could I have called it?"

To prevent this novel from descending into a monotonous blow-by-blow about the making of a film, Hanks introduces other stories into the mix. Among these is that of Robby Andersen, a cartoonist known for his talent since young; Robby's uncle, Bob Falls, a former US Marine who's the inspiration for a character in Robby's comic and the film; Bill's hypercompetent assistant Allicia "Al" Mac-Teer, who was plucked out of the obscurity of a customer service desk; Wren Lane and Ike Clipper, the lead actors in the film; and Ynez Gonzalez-Cruz, a ride-share driver Al roped into becoming the production house's dogsbody.

Years before, he'd suggested, rightly, that she forgo her christian name, Allicia—pronounced Al-i-SEE-a—and use the terse, masculine Al. Sight unseen, the citizenry assumed she was a man, and she soon proved herself so competent, so proactively assumptive, so badass, she forever-after-and-amen had her calls returned, pronto.

More than a story about moviemaking, this is a sprawling tale about how a movie comes about through a mix of chance and how the lives of those involved shape the product and influence the process. The characters come to life in vivid, almost cinematic vignettes of American life from around World War II to the present day, spanning a good slice of the American social fabric.

The hubbub of a movie set feels true to life. Here, one can soak in what Hanks may have experienced while on set. The atmospheric immersion is not limited to filming nor the use of words, as several short comics – in this edition, at least – give readers more to chew on: the wartime comic Robby once read, the satirical comic Robby drew about war, and the comic adaptation of Bill's finished production.

In this story about a film being made, one sees a nation in progress through the characters, up to the post-COVID era. Here, the US is the masterpiece and its denizens are the cast and crew. Calling it a love letter to America and its entertainment industry is a bit cliché, perhaps even trite, in light of the ongoing strikes by the Writers' Guild of America and Screen Actors' Guild over their future. Seeing it as anything else, however, is difficult

And it's far from monotonous. Hanks's storytelling is also playfully whimsical, the narrative format shifting from plain paragraphs to textspeak and screenplay, whatever the occasion requires. Quaint metaphors and the occasional comic-book sound effect enrich and enliven actions and thought processes. Bold and italicised text are used to good effect to emphasise and shock. Some might chafe at this because, when poorly done, it is irksome. Not here.

...his self-prescribed discipline commanded that he stay at the typewriter no ... matter ... what. Type anything. MAKING MOVIES IS MORE FUN THAN FUN. The phone book, the pledge of allegiance, Springsteen lyrics...

The Gonzalez-Cruzes' dining-table banter. Letters from and to loved ones. The text exchanges between the characters. The beginning of a movie being pounded out on Bill's typewriter (incidentally, Hanks is a screenwriter, producer and typewriter fiend). Character names in film scripts are CAPITALISED, so the same happens in the book, according to Hanks in a footnote (yes, there are footnotes, and there are FOOTNOTES); expect this when the narrative shifts to movie-script mode. And to remind us that "someone is writing this book", we get parts where several characters speak to the "author".

First-time Hanks readers will be charmed. The man can spin a yarn. The America in this novel is real enough that parodied companies and products are still recognisable. And did I mention the footnotes, which not merely add context or clarify things, but provide additional in-story information that at times teases a chuckle or two out of the unsuspecting reader?

A taste: when an extra and self-avowed Screen Actors Guild cardholder gives Al lip for lecturing him about call sheets, the related footnote tells us the name of the production he was in and advises us not to search for his face because he merely "yelled obscenities from a tree line."

Several bits I found over-the-top hysterical. One that stands out is how Bill and his inner circle pondered having to deal with a divo of an actor who broke up with his girlfriend just before shooting – is it really that mission critical? There's so much characterisation of the actor that one can't help but wonder if Hanks is drawing from memory. WHO is he talking about?

Movies last forever. So do characters in books. Blending the two in this volume may be a fool's errand, wasted effort in the mining of fool's gold. Don't hate the final product. Think of it as quite good.

All these characters, their workplaces and favourite haunts, described to a tee. The story seems to drag on at first with all that characterisation. You're not invested at first, but about halfway through, one is anticipating a reference to earlier chapters as if itching to tie two loose ends together. You're rooting for (most of) the characters. You want happy endings for them and your heart sinks when tragedy strikes.

One can glean that Hanks's sympathies lie mostly with the cast and crew. The suits and the execs? Not so much. Two of the people who comprise the beating heart of the production machine are minorities. Towards the end, one gains an appreciation of the filmmaking process and the people behind it. Filmming is WORK and films succeed because of PEOPLE. Because films ARE people.

So it's amazing how this book, this paean to America and everyone in moviemaking, comics and the entertainment industry in general, was released in the early days of the WGA strike, which has now hooked up with the SAG-AFTRA strike by actors, mainly over residuals from streaming media and the use of AI.

Almost as if to tell everyone the industry, everyone who has been suffering since COVID came a-knocking, everyone struggling to get back on their feet after the mess of the past few years, and everyone bracing for the next major shitstorm, "You are loved."


The WGA strike ended on 27 September with the guild successfully making a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) regarding a new contract. The actors' strike is still ongoing.

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The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece
Tom Hanks
Knopf
430 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1232-7

I Should Say Something

When it was first reported, the ban on When I Was A Kid 3 and the circumstances that led to it shook me a bit. What a mess.

A while back, an Indonesian NGO led a protest at the Malaysian embassy in Jakarta over a chapter in the book that was said to have denigrated an Indonesian maid. The NGO asked for a total stop to the printing and sale of the book in Malaysia, and even for the author's motives to be investigated.

The book has been out for almost a decade – why protest now? Who's backing this NGO and what is their angle? Why target the author, someone without a steady income or safety net? Is this really about justice and dignity?


Punishment, not penitence
Sadly, Malaysia has a long history of mistreating migrant workers, so the outrage is justified. But I can't help thinking the protesters may have leaned a bit too deep into "Malaysians always treat us badly" territory.

A friend wondered why the author, who's self-published, wasn't allowed to edit or remove the offending chapter. Also, why limit the ban on the sale and printing of the book to Malaysia, when the cartoon is said to be so bad it should be prohibited everywhere?

I don't think the protesters wanted to give him that choice. Gathering at the embassy was meant to put our backs to the wall. Nor do I believe that the NGO can do much about what happens to the book outside the Nusantara region.

Petitioning for the ban on the sale and printing of the book in Malaysia means cutting off his income, but when one thinks about it, isn't the NGO also profiling Malaysians in general as racist to Indonesians or abusive to Indonesian migrant workers?

The protesters may be concerned that reading the comic would lower our regard for Indonesian migrants further, but it's not like only Malaysians are capable of being racist towards Indonesians.

Based on this, one can only conclude that the aim was to punish. They probably assumed the worst of him, a Malaysian, so that they can make an example of him. Malaysians are the core audience of his works and employ a lot of Indonesian migrant labour, so by denying us this book we end up being punished too.


Barking up the wrong tree?
As if the lot of migrant workers will improve overnight once the book is banned. Abusive private employers may think twice about mistreating their migrant help when they hear about this ban, but after a while, they will forget and revert to type.

Richer employers, meanwhile, will continue to get away with mistreating migrant labourers because the system is broken – not something NGOs can fix by protesting at foreign embassies. Also gone is the chance to teach Malaysians how not to be racist – who knows what they will learn from the protesters.

Racism is impossible to justify. However, I feel that the author, as someone who has benefitted from the kindness of others, heard so many stories, and genuinely engages everyone who has supported him, would never purposely disparage another human being.

Jeopardising his income and putting him through a legal wringer for what's likely to be an editorial oversight is unnecessary. His work sometimes displays crude humour but he is no Charlie Hebdo.

Some commentators concur that the portrayal, taken without context, is racist but then go on a whatabout over why Mein Kampf is still sold in Malaysian bookstores. Trying to help, perhaps, but a comic book with one bad chapter can't be compared to a thematically racist tome bearing the words of a bigoted and genocidal dictator.

Also, Mein Kampf has been in the public domain since 2016. Even before that, anyone can download a copy online, provided their government didn't outlaw the book. Selling it for profit is unscrupulous.


Let it stop here
I'm certain the Malaysian authorities want this issue to go away as soon as possible, hence the decision to ban the book. Oddly enough, watches by Swatch were also banned using the Printing Presses and Publications Act, for the same reasons.

How lamentable has this whole thing been. Fidelity to a story is one thing, but with so many factors at play when putting it out in public these days, even the most dedicated and meticulous storytellers have to be extra mindful.

To his credit, he seems to have accepted the ban and expressed contrition over any hurt feelings. But I fear that some quarters will keep the outrage going for their own agendas. Bad news are a great vehicle for parties looking for attention – or with an axe to grind.

The offending volume has been (or is being) pulled off the shelves. The author is sorry and he's not contesting the authorities' decision. That things seem to have settled down is a relief. Don't let this drag on.

Let it stop with the ban.

Book Marks: BookTok, Booker, Copyrights, And Cosies

Are we done talking about BookTok and its influence on reading habits and publishing trends? No? Well, here's another article on how BookTok's hold on readers may be going beyond the platform. Are some bookstore displays looking more and more familiar to you? "The books most popular with BookTok – such as romance, fantasy and the hybrid genre 'romantasy' – are being picked up more and more by publishers and displayed more prominently in bookshops," goes the MiNDFOOD piece.

While this may mean more readers among the target TikTok demographic – mostly young women – and books are getting talked about, there are some drawbacks...

...there's a risk it may homogenise the industry. Literary critic Barry Pierce has said that BookTok reads "all sort of have the same cover". Meanwhile author Stephanie Danler said of her foray into BookTok: "It seemed impossible to discover different fiction. It was the same 20 books over and over."

BookTok also has a problem with diversity – in more ways than one. Its recommendations are overwhelmingly by white authors, and it is unclear what the long-term effects of this will be on both publishing and the young readers who flock to the app for recommendations. Furthermore, by catering to this huge audience of young women, publishers are forgoing books by men, especially emerging writers.

Also of concern is whether influencers on BookTok are paid to push certain titles, which has probably happened already. With BookTokers growing in clout, publishers have started banking on the popular ones by kickstarting their own publishing careers. According to The Hustle, "DK, a division of Penguin Random House, is turning influencers into authors themselves. Since 2021, DK's influencer division has published six New York Times bestselling cookbooks authored by TikTok food creators."

The effect BookTok has on reading and publishing cannot be denied and will be discussed and analysed for a while longer as it continues to shape what we read and introduce more people to books, even if they "all sort of have the same cover."

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The 2023 Booker Prize shortlist is out and The House of Doors is not in it. But none of this year's selected authors have been shortlisted before, so that's something.

The Prize's website states that "There are two debuts on the shortlist; there is one British, one Canadian, two Irish and two American authors. Although full of hope, humour and humanity, the books address many of 2023's most pressing concerns: climate change, immigration, financial hardship, the persecution of minorities, political extremism and the erosion of personal freedoms. They feature characters in search of peace and belonging or lamenting lost loves. There are books that are grounded in modern reality, that shed light on shameful episodes in history and which imagine a terrifying future."

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on 26 November.

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"On screen as well on the page, cosy crime has been a staple of our cultural consumption long before we used the term," writes David Barnett in the BBC. "Go back to the 1980s and think of Angela Lansbury's author-turned-sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the phenomenally successful Murder She Wrote; the US TV series was perhaps the epitome of cosy crime, and indeed shows that the US stole something of a march in presenting contemporary shows that deliberately harked back to the Agatha Christie mould of storytelling."

I first heard the term "cosy mystery" on Book Riot but had no idea what the genre was supposed to be until now. Barnett helpfully notes that...

...the terminology distinguishes these novels from other kinds of crime fiction, such as police procedurals or psychological thrillers, which are often dark, gritty and upsetting.

Cosy crime, on the other hand, tends not to linger on the death that is often at the centre of the story. Of course, someone is usually dispatched in violent fashion, by way of poison, stabbing, shooting or a good cudgeling from whatever is to hand.

Barnett adds that "cosies" are "more about the thrill of the investigation, generally carried out by an amateur sleuth or sleuths" and often take place is suburban or rural settings. "Police are generally baffled, suspects are bountiful, and murders are imaginative. Denouements are satisfying and leave the reader with the sense that crime does not pay and ultimately, all is well with the world."

If that's true, then the crime novels by Singaporean author Ovidia Yu fall into this category. Maybe Tarquin Hall's mysteries too? Crime novels that don't leave you with nightmares afterwards sound cosy to me.

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Is using sensitivity readers censorship? Not according to Quebec author Kevin Lambert, who wanted to avoid stereotypes and not write anything "stupid" when penning his novel, Que notre joie demeure ("May our joy remain"). Lambert's novel was nominated for the Prix Concourt this September, a major French literary award.

According to Global News, the debate over sensitivity readers was recently sparked in France when 2018 Prix Goncourt winner Nicolas Mathieu, seemingly disparaged the practice, adding that what writers write should not be policed.

The French reaction to Lambert's use of a sensitivity reader sounds like a case of "you need someone to tell you what works and what's right? What kind of writer are you?" Especially one whose novel is being nominated for a top French award.

Speaking to Global News, Toronto-based editor Ronan Sadler, who freelances as a sensitivity reader, says the role is not to police a writer's creativity. "What it actually is about is helping an author understand what they’re trying to say and help them say it better, like any editorial process."

These days, writers are getting called out more often for getting communities and cultures wrong. Sensitivity reading can be helpful in this, but what I'm against is retroactively applying it to works that have already been published. I don't think there's a point to it, especially when it involves works that were first released decades ago. Books also capture blocks of time when some attitudes that were fine then are not so now. They should stand as part of the historical record of the author's life and times.

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Seventeen authors, including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin, are suing OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, for using their intellectual property to train the large language model. "The suit was organized by the Authors Guild and also includes David Baldacci, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand among others," reports The Associated Press. It's the latest suit filed by authors against tech companies for similar types of copyright infringement.

On the same subject, Meta reportedly downloaded 183,000 books to train its AI, LLaMA, and The Atlantic has a search tool set up to see which books were included in the dataset, codenamed Books3. After Fred Kaplan at Slate used the tool and got over his indignation of having only some of his books in the training data, he spots something in the book selection criteria that troubles him. Richard Flanagan, whose award-winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North was also in the dataset, calls it "the biggest act of copyright theft in history."

In other related news, The Guardian highlighted another publisher vs digital library lawsuit: "Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Pearson Education filed the suit against Library Genesis, also known as LibGen, in Manhattan federal court, citing 'extensive violations' of copyright law." By that it means letting people download copyrighted materials for free.

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Amazon has imposed a daily three-book limit on self-published ebooks, in response to the tide of AI-generated books popping up on its platform. Yes, a "totally human amount", according to Gizmodo. But I'm not with the bearer of this news who says he's "been firmly against self-publishing authors for a long time."

I hope he was only referring to the types who'd do things like "enrol their books in Kindle Unlimited and trick users into scrolling to the end of the book to 'win a prize' or win 'free Amazon gift cards'" or push error-riddled AI books that may kill people – NOT self-published authors in general.

Why won't Amazon use AI-flagging tools for the job? Because the results are not guaranteed, probably. Or perhaps all it cares about are profits and eyeballs. Which is one reason why an author and several publishers are finding ways to avoid doing any business with the retail giant.

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"We may expect more from fiction. But celebrity novels remind us books always occupy an uneasy position as both artistic creation and commodity. This is why many of us who care about reading and writing will find we can't agree with the ghostwriting firms that insist books are 'just products'." In The Conversation, Amber Gwynne, sessional lecturer in writing at the University of Queensland, meditates on the celebrity novel, with a focus on Millie Bobby Brown's Nineteen Steps.

Ghostwritten celebrity novels are being discussed again in the wake of the release of Millie Bobby Brown's Nineteen Steps. Opinion is divided over celebs' use of ghostwriters; is it acceptable or unfair because of their clout? The Mary Sue seems to be of the latter persuasion, despite noting Brown's transparency in her use of a ghostwriter. "Some authors will work their entire lives and never get published or never make a decent wage. Yet, Brown could slap her name on a poorly ghostwritten book and become a bestselling author."

While acknowledging that Brown "didn't do anything unusual or illegal", TMS still ended their op-ed with this stinger: "...Nineteen Steps is still a big slap in the face for real authors, and a reminder that the publishing industry doesn't judge on writing talent or skill but on which face, name, and story it thinks is best suited for sales and profit."

Yowch.


Moving on...

• Love and dread at a book party? When it's for Walter Isaacson and his latest book, well, yes. "The crux of the unease: Can you trust that a mercurial multibillionaire with daddy issues, a superhero complex and unfettered power will do the right thing?" writes Roxanne Roberts at The Washington Post. "The book has already divided reviewers, who call it a brilliant and essential dive into the mind of one of the 21st century's most influential men — or an apologia for Musk's arrogance and excesses."
• Pan Macmillan imprint Bluebird has paused all future publishing of books by Russell Brand in light of the accusations of sexual assault levelled at him. "Brand's unpublished book – Recovery: The Workbook: A Practical Guide to Finding Freedom from Our Addictions – is a follow-up to the comedian's 2017 self-help book Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, which is based on the 12-step programme," The Guardian reported.
• The graphic novel by a local-born author, When I Was A Kid 3, has been banned. Malay Mail Online reports that after a protest by Indonesians at the Malaysian embassy in Jakarta over the portrayal of an Indonesian maid in the book, the Home Ministry announced the move under subsection 7(1) of the Printing Press and Publications Act 1984. The author and illustrator has since apologised, stating that he did not mean to cause offence.
• "On view from September 27 through December 30" in the ground floor gallery of the Grolier Club in New York City is an exhibition titled The Best-Read Army in the World: The Power of the Written Word in World War II. It "tells the story of how the U.S. military disseminated more than one billion books, magazines, and newspapers to 16 million American troops worldwide, partnering with the U.S. publishing industry to create pocket-sized paperback books called Armed Services Editions as well as petite issues of newspapers and popular magazines." An interesting bit of history about books in the war, so anyone in New York, check it out.
• "Though it was first published in the fall of 2021, [The Shadow Work Journal] reached hit status this year, after being listed in TikTok Shop. It has sold 290,000 copies on TikTok alone since April ... As a point of reference, Isaacson's Elon Musk sold 92,560 copies the old-fashioned way in its first week." What is this journal and why has it become the latest self-help phenomenon?
• "Fifteen years ago, in What Would Google Do?, I called for the book to be rethought and renovated, digital and connected, so that it could be updated and made searchable, conversational, collaborative, linkable, less expensive to produce, and cheaper to buy. The problem, I said, was that we so revered the book, it had become sacrosanct. 'We need to get over books,' I wrote. 'Only then can we reinvent them.' I recant." In his book, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet, Jeff Jarvis revisits his notions about the book and decides that, well, the book doesn't need reinventing.
• "The Radioactive team under Stonewitch worked with creators to make stories, while Stonewitch schmoosed with the studios. When the talks became interesting, Stonewitch would tell the creators about it. Name names. To get them excited. Jazzed. Supercharged. Until a check was late, and a creator reached out to Stonewitch. Their buddy. Their friend. All-around nice guy who would never, ever screw around with them." From PopVerse, a cautionary tale of a comics publisher gone bad.
• Variety reports that "The WGA and major studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that promises to end the 146-day strike that has taken a heavy toll across the content industry." The sigh of relief is palpable, with the writers going back to work this Wednesday.Now the attention is on whether the Screen Actors Guild can come up with a deal with the studios.
• "My office is 15 minutes away from home. It's an old Victorian house that has a coach house in the back. The [main] house is for the foundation and my office, but the coach house is for my writing. It's very lovely, all painted white stark, very simple, no clutter. I don't do any other work there. I can spend many hours there." Isabel Allende tells The Cut how she gets her writing done.
• "Archie Comics gave me my first taste of Americana. In fact, my idea of what American fast foods like hotdogs or burgers should look like came from there." A new Netflix feature kicks off look into the links between Indian youth and the Riverdale universe.