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Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts

Monday 4 March 2024

Tempests And Tribulations

In Malaysian author Vanessa Chan's debut novel, The Storm We Made, the past catches up with Eurasian housewife Cecily Alcantara, who is lured into becoming a spy for Japan pre-World War II by Shigeru Fujiwara, a charismatic undercover Japanese military official.

In her espionage activities she finds an escape from the humdrum life of a mother and homemaker, a bigger purpose, and contact with Fujiwara, whom she grows attracted to. But when the Japanese arrive, they bring fear, deprivation and death to many. Cecily's heady dream of a better, British-free Malaya crumbles and her family and many others pay the price.


Read the full review here.

Monday 12 February 2024

A Stormy Affair

Never delve too much into a stirring fantasy-romance romp between two enigmatic characters. Because that's what I did with Thea Guanzon's novel, The Hurricane Wars, and now I know it belongs to the romantasy subgenre and could be based on Guanzon's Star Wars fan fiction that ships opposing characters Rey and Kylo Ren.

Reading parts of it again, the parallels are hard to unsee. Stormships? Star Destroyers, maybe? Lightweave and Shadowgate? The light and dark sides of the Force. The in-story Kylo has a mask too. And the female lead wields weapons made of light, like lightsabers? The beginning kicks off with a battle between an alliance and an empire in a setting reminiscent of The Empire Strikes Back. Even the title is a nod to the franchise.


The review continues here.

Monday 29 January 2024

Tales of Heartache, Hurt, and Hope

Common threads run through the stories in Saras Manickam's My Mother Pattu, a collection of short stories that doesn't look like one from the outside. In the face of adversity and its accomplices: racism, classism, cultural differences, patriarchal attitudes, suffocating traditions and others, the characters struggle to maintain their dignity, ideals, individuality, and humanity.

The window into Saras Manickam's portrait of the human condition is the first story, "Number One, Mambang Lane", in which Meena, a precocious teenage Indian girl, is exiled to her relatives' quiet homestead in the fictional small town of Mambang after committing what her Tamil household considers cardinal sins: falling in love and getting a boyfriend.

As Meena settles in, she is slowly introduced to the community. Towards the end, we do not know of her fate or when her exile will end, which is fine because the thing about stories is that they just keep going – and in directions you least expect.


Read the full review here.

Friday 26 January 2024

New Mess, New Mystery

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose picks up from her previous book, The Maid, which came out in 2022 and features the same few characters that include Molly Gray, the protagonist and a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel.

In The Maid, the death of Molly's grandmother, who was also a maid, left her to navigate the messy webs of life by herself. She found comfort and security in her tasks, but her quirks put her in the crosshairs of the police when a guest was found dead in his hotel room.

We know Molly is cleared in this second novel because several years have passed since then, she's still employed at the Regency Grand, and she's now the head maid with a trainee under her wing. She even has a boyfriend...


Continue reading here.

Tuesday 9 January 2024

Teetering On The Brink

Imagine a future where weather can be controlled, gnat-sized drones guard private property, and apps feed growing stores of data that reveal much about their users than they realise – all in the palms of several wealthy and powerful individuals obsessed with control and seeing steps ahead of other people. Meanwhile, climate change wreaks havoc here and there in the world, almost as if heralding the end times.

A scary premise and maybe a bit too close for comfort. But that's what makes Naomi Alderman's The Future a timely novel. We have climate disasters, drones, and we're already seeing how our data on web portals and social media platforms is being used. Alderman's imagined future foreshadows our own and it looks bad...


Click here to read the rest of the review.

Friday 24 November 2023

Balmy Bookshop Vibes

Rows of bookshelves stocked to the brim. The smell of books perfume the interior, with the occasional whiff of freshly brewed coffee. Gentle air conditioning, pushing away the warmth of the afternoon sun. From a corner, an almost imperceptible flap of a page being flipped. As you sit in a corner, you relax and become one with the ambience. The past, the future, and the world outside no longer exist.

Rarely does a book about a small neighbourhood bookstore evoke the sensation of being in the real thing. But from the first chapter of Hwang Bo-reum's Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, one is sucked in – and is reluctant to leave.


Read the full review here.

Friday 6 October 2023

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.



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

Monday 18 September 2023

When "Why" Is More Than A Three-Letter Word

Every now and then, one hears of a business that once boomed before stagnating and ultimately failing. If author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek, is right, they lost their reason for doing things: what he calls the "why". More than a mission statement or a raison d'ĂȘtre, the "why", from what one understands, is the core – or the marrow, if you will – of a person or organisation.

In his book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Sinek provides examples of individuals who and businesses that embarked on ambitious projects without a clear "why", plus those who did but lost it. One example that stands out in the book is Wal-mart, the American retail giant founded by Sam Walton, whose reputation declined in recent times. Sinek posits that Wal-mart's "why" – its focus on people, not profit – died with Walton and is responsible for its current state.

On the flip side, he uses examples such as Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers to lay out the reasons people were drawn to their message, to what they were selling. The Wright brothers believed in the life-changing powers of flight. Apple has been pushing its status quo - bucking "Think Different" ethos for decades. And the strength of King's belief in justice and equality struck a chord among many who shared that belief.


Continue reading here.

Monday 14 August 2023

The Best From Harvard Business Review's First Century

For about a century, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) has been a go-to for views and insights in business and management, covering a wide range of topics in leadership, strategy, marketing, finance, and more. Published by Harvard Business Publishing, a subsidiary of Harvard University based in Brighton, Massachusetts, HBR is published six times a year and saw the debut of many management concepts and business terms.

HBR was launched by Harvard Business School's second dean, Wallace Brett Donham, in 1922 as a magazine for the institution. Donham had big plans for the publication. Not merely as a school paper, HBR "is intended to be the highest type of business journal that we can make it, and for use by the student and the business man," he wrote.

Initially, HBR focused on large-scale economic factors and developments in specific industries. But after World War II, HBR started highlighting cutting-edge management techniques developed in large corporations such as General Motors. Over the next three decades, the magazine refined its focus on general management issues topics that concerned business leaders.

With such a long history and wealth of material, choosing entries for HBR at 100: The Most Influential and Innovative Articles from Harvard Business Review's First Century couldn't have been easy – where does one even begin? And even after it's out, some will doubt whether this collection represents the best and brightest from the first 100 years of this business periodical.


Read in full here.

Wednesday 5 July 2023

Surviving Workplace Jerks

Three years after the first COVID-19 lockdowns, almost every business is fully opened up and getting its workforce back into the office. Many have surely bid farewell to their sweet, sweet work-from-home days with a little sadness as they ironed their work clothes, even if WFH is still allowed in a limited capacity.

For some, however, "returning to work" may feel daunting at most if theirs is a toxic work environment. With more and more eyes opened to the benefits of a better work-life balance and other possibilities beyond the office, the urge to leave such an environment is great.

Not to say workplace toxicity in your neck of the woods is bad, but in many countries it has become a source of concern. Revelatory articles and thinkpieces about toxic work environments and the need for work-life balance have emerged in the wake of the push for "business as usual". More and more self-help books are sporting in-your-face titles, not a few with harsh language, perhaps to emphasise the urgency of doing something NOW.




One of those books is The A**hole Survival Guide by Robert I. Sutton, an organisational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University who studies leadership, innovation, organisational change, and workplace dynamics.

Sutton had written two other books. The No Asshole Rule is touted as a guide for working with and surviving all manner of assholes out to make your life at work a nightmare. The follow-up, Good Boss, Bad Boss, highlights actions by the best bosses and the mistakes of the worst to guide readers to become "the great boss most people dream of having." This book completes what could be called Sutton's a**hole triptych.

After writing The No A**hole Rule, Sutton was apparently inundated by thousands of requests for tips to survive a**holes from a range of people: from professionals, members of the clergy, students, and CEOs to "my barber Woody, and even my mother."

Rough language in a title is not for mere shock value. That so many, by his account, reached out to him in the wake of the book's release, is telling. Though one can look up reports of awful workplace hijinks, the litany of bad behaviours Sutton presents on one page is gasp-inducing.

Ear flicking.

...Smiling warmly as she whispers in his ear, "You are a loser. I am going to bring you down."

...Writes an employee up for arriving to work fifteen minutes EARLY.

...Flies into a rage over a late water delivery for the office cooler.

...Tosses a lit cigarette at him.

...Grabs her and bites her on the arm "leaving a bruise."

Makes you wonder whether some of the emails Sutton received are made up. Then again, we now know practices such as bullying, sexual harassment, and discriminatory practices against women and minorities are rife in some businesses, to the extent where it's considered part of the corporate culture internally – until the backlash that inevitably ensues after such practices are uncovered.

Sutton builds a good case for why workplace toxicity is bad, and offers some insight into why some at work are such jerks. Machiavellian maneouvres in some workplaces are perhaps inevitable when one climbs to the top, but at some point people's perceptions of what powerful people should be like are warped, and toxic behaviours are seen as hallmarks of a survivor or "player" in office politics.

He cites an article in The Atlantic that lays out why one should be a jerk at work. He then cautions against such a culture, writing that "my reading of that big pile of research indicates that pundits and professors who celebrate bullies, takers, and narcissists are exaggerating the spoils and downplaying the harm that assholes inflict upon themselves (especially in the long run)."

...treating others like dirt is contagious—so if you work with a jerk (or, worse, a bunch of them), you are likely to become one too. A 2012 study documented how such shit rolled downhill: abusive senior leaders were prone to selecting or breeding abusive team leaders, who in turn, ignited destructive conflict in their teams, which stifled team members' creativity.

After walking you through some diagnostics (how serious is your a**hole problem?) Sutton volunteers "field-tested, evidence-based, and sometimes surprising strategies for dealing with a**holes" – ways to help you avoid, outwit, disarm, and develop psychological defences against jerks who endeavour to make life hell for you at work.

When one can't evade, outmaneouvre, befriend or reform one's workplace tormentors, there's a chapter on "fighting back": confront the jerks, or find ways to expel them from the company – risky last-ditch steps when things have gone too far. Mental reframing of one's situation can also end up encouraging one's tormentors or lull one into complacency.

While Sutton draws on research, his experience, and the correspondence he receives from people about the subject, he's not touting The A**hole Survival Guide as the definitive guide on surviving toxic people. "A**hole survival remains more of a craft or skill than a science," he writes. From some of the examples he gives about confronting a**holes, readers should consider themselves cautioned.

Airport staff, for one, shouldn't retaliate against a rude client by sending his baggage to a faraway location, and one should be careful when retorting against and then slamming the door in the face of a CEO's right-hand man. With people, everything is situational, and test cases will not predict what happens in real life.

If you think of yourself as a civilized person but seem to run into assholes everywhere you go, look in the mirror—you could be staring at the culprit. Remember, treating others like dirt goads people to bully you back.

Another thing to note about Sutton's book is how US-centric the examples, test cases and research are. Self-help books from abroad, particularly the United States, don't juxtapose their theories and arguments against scenarios in other non-Anglo cultures (here's one such book, which, incidentally, was blurbed by Sutton). Talking back to your superiors is even more of a career-killer around these parts, even if one is right.

Some of Sutton's strategies, especially those on "fighting back" against one's tormentors, may not yield the desired results in environments where some toxicity in workplaces is accepted as the norm. And good luck fighting sexual harassment and gender discrimination in extremely patriarchal societies.

Nevertheless, workplace toxicity and how to deal with it is a universal problem, and this guide is anything but useless. At the very least, audiences outside the US and the white Anglosphere in general can gain some insight into how things are in Sutton's neck of the woods. And the research he quotes legit warns of the hazards of a toxic workplace culture.

...although we humans sometimes express it in strange ways, we all want a life where we encounter and are damaged by as few assholes as possible, we want the same thing for those we care about, and we don't want to behave like or be known as assholes.

He does address the possibility that the reader's environment and situation would make some of his advice ineffective or redundant: "The studies, stories, and techniques here provide fodder for crafting your custom survival strategy (after all, there are no surefire, one-size-fits-all solutions)." So it's up to the reader's to create, implement, and refine their a**hole survival plan, taking into account the limits imposed by the laws, the culture, and societal norms in where they are.

We are all responsible for taking care of ourselves, Sutton adds, but we also rely on others for physical and emotional sustenance. In the process, he appears to argue, we end up expecting too much from the other person and offence is caused. Hence, the a**hole problem.

So it falls upon us to manage those expectations while being mindful of others and, where possible, being kind while staving off attempts to fight negativity with more of the same. If everyone strives to do that, perhaps the a**hole problem will finally go away.

Until workplaces the world over wakes up to the fact that a toxic work environment does more harm than good, we'll have to do what we can.



The Asshole Survival Guide
How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt

Robert I. Sutton
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
214 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-328-69591-8

Tuesday 18 December 2018

Is The World Being Over-engineered?

Simon Winchester's concise history of precision engineering and its impact also asks some incisive questions

first published in The Star, 18 December 2018


"My father was for all his working life a precision engineer," British author and journalist Simon Winchester writes in The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World.

In his childhood, his father would show him around his workplace. He also describes his first encounter with gauge blocks: non-magnetic metal tiles "used for measuring things to the most extreme of tolerances" with ultraflat sides that would bond when placed on top of each other.




These memories were triggered by an email from one Colin Povey from Florida in the United States, who managed to persuade Winchester to write a book about the history of precision and had a personal reason for it. So now we know who, apart from the author, to thank for The Perfectionists.

Besides a brief history of precision engineering through selected milestones in the field, it also has ruminations on the nature and importance of precision and what we stand to gain and lose in the quest for more precise measurements.

The author also argues that the word "precision" is a much better word than "accuracy". "‘Accurate Laser Tattoo Removal' sounds not nearly as convincing or effective ... And it surely would be both damning and condescending to say that you tie your tie accurately—to knot it precisely is much more suggestive of Ă©lan and style."

As expected, perhaps, of someone who wrote two books about the Oxford English Dictionary (The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1998 and reissued in 2005; and The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2003).

Each chapter in The Perfectionists is a part of a timeline in the history of precision engineering, from the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism (an ancient Greek analogue computer) to advances that would usher in the digital age. Some chapters feature vignettes from the author's life and his research for the book, which suggests the project is more than just a scholarly pursuit.

Humankind has for most of its civilised existence been in the habit of measuring things. ...All life depends to some extent on measurement, and in the very earliest days of social organization a clear indication of advancement and sophistication was the degree to which systems of measurement had been established, codified, agreed to, and employed.

The narrative begins with how British inventor Joseph Wilkinson fixed problems with leaking steam in the early builds of Scotsman James Watts's steam engines. Wilkinson pioneered a method to make cannons out of solid cylinders of iron, and he applied this method to the engines.

We are also told of the lives and accomplishments of Winchester's gallery of "perfectionists", including English clockmaker John Harrison, whose marine chronometers revolutionised navigation and made long-distance sailing much safer; Swiss inventor Carl Edvard Johansson, creator of the gauge blocks that once fascinated the author; Kintaro Hattori, founder of Seiko, which released the world's first quartz watch; and Frenchman Honoré Blanc, who mooted the concept of interchangeable parts for guns. Curious how some of these early engineers cut their teeth in the firearms industry.

All in all, this book is a solid piece of literary engineering comprising intricately fitted components, tempered with academic rigour. The hefty and deeply intellectual material, however, demands the reader's full attention, which is challenged by the staid, schoolmasterly prose and verbosity.

Even the trivia and the occasional display of that trademark British wit, mostly in the footnotes, don't help much. A titbit: Apparently a genetic descendant of Sir Isaac Newton's apple tree is growing somewhere near a lab in Beijing.

Things get more interesting around the third chapter, as the author warms up even more to his subject – that is, if one hasn't quit the book by then. Which would be tragic, given how much effort went into it.

Precision is a much better word, a more apposite choice than its closest rival, accuracy. “Accurate Laser Tattoo Removal” sounds not nearly as convincing or effective ... And it surely would be both damning and condescending to say that you tie your tie accurately—to knot it precisely is much more suggestive of Ă©lan and style.

To a degree, Winchester has achieved his (or maybe Colin Povey's) aims with this book. Some questions arise: how far should the quest for precision go? Is there a breaking point? Might the frenetic pace of contemporary life, shaped in part by precision engineering, have moulded us into perfectionists as well? Is a "perfect" world a good idea?

With regards to the last, probably not.

As measurements become more precise, the margin of tolerable error shrinks, raising the risk of human involvement in engineering. According to Winchester, an error measuring 1/50th the thickness of a human hair caused the Hubble space telescope to capture fuzzy, unusable images (a NASA optical engineer found a way to repair it after a eureka moment in the shower). We also hear of aeroplane crashes caused by human error.

Perhaps that's why people don't think about precision, except when baking. Nor should the non-engineering majority be obsessed with "the need for endlessly improving exactitude".

So Winchester looks to Japan for a "third way". Among the aspects of Japanese culture he explores is wabi-sabi, which he describes as "an aesthetic sensibility wherein asymmetry and roughness and impermanence are accorded every bit as much weight as are the exact, the immaculate, and the precise". One gathers that the Japanese worldview regarding transience and imperfection asserts that everything, no matter how precise or flawless, won't stay that way forever.

Humankind would perhaps do well to learn to accept the equal significance, the equal weight, of the natural order. If not, then nature in time will overrun, and the green strands of jungle grass will eventually enfold and enwrap all the inventions that we make ... Before the imprecision of the natural world, all will falter, none shall survive—no matter how precise.

Even these "perfectionists" weren't perfect. For one, who knew that Eli Whitney of the cotton gin fame had scammed the US government by pretending he could produce muskets from interchangeable parts?

Regardless of what one takes away from this book, at least we now have a measure of how high these innovators towered, how fascinating their disciplines can be, and how epoch-making their creations were.



The Perfectionists
How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

Simon Winchester
Harper
395 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-06-265255-3

Saturday 10 November 2018

Whale Of A Scam

To say Malaysians were hyped about Billion Dollar Whale is an understatement. Thank goodness for 9 May, otherwise we'd never get our hands on books like it. But the unexpected GE14 results delayed the release.

"When we first wrote it, (former prime minister Datuk Seri) Najib Tun Razak was still in power," co-author Tom Wright told The Star, "we had to change the ending. We never thought the book would ever be released in Malaysia. We thought perhaps, we would be selling copies from Changi Airport."




Nor did the publisher expect the book to zip off the shelves. The first several weeks stocks kept running out. Lines of people stretched outside the local Kinokuniya waiting for autographs by Wright when he dropped by. A pirated digital file of the book circulated on WhatsApp was later revealed to be an earlier edition, sans the GE14 aftermath.

(Someone even reviewed the pirated e-book on Goodreads and got called out by Wright. That a stolen copy of a book about stolen billions is being read and circulated might be a reason this scam was possible.)

To be expected, I guess. A senior figure in local publishing thinks it's because Malaysians love reading about themselves, especially when written by Mat Sallehs. As is the case with this book about the 1MDB heist by Wright and co-author Bradley Hope, both journalists from the Wall Street Journal.

Instead of boring money flows or dry blow-by-blow reporting, what we have is a gripping, cinematic financial thriller that sucks you in within a few pages, regardless of where you open it - not the ending, please. That's how I ended up reading it twice, cover to cover.

The focus is more on how the plot unfolded, even as the main characters are fleshed out. The protagonist is the titular whale, Low Taek Jho, now better known as Jho Low, thanks to, among other things, reports of his wild profligate parties and a track called "Check My Steezo".

The prologue, describing Low's decadent Las Vegas birthday party in November 2012 that stunned even the now-late host of the TV series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, sets readers up for the displays of debauchery and ostentation to come.

On campus, [Low] drove around in a maroon-red SC-430 Lexus convertible, which he had leased but passed off as his own. He deliberately didn’t correct rumors that he was a “prince of Malaysia”, a claim that made the other Malaysian students laugh when they heard it.

Wright and Hope trace the rise and fall of 1MDB and its players, with Low in the centre. Just about everyone is here: his immediate family, his collaborators, and those who helped to unravel the scheme.

In the book, Low is portrayed as a bullshit artist who could sniff out rich, powerful yet gullible patrons for his schemes, dazzling them and his collaborators with his charm, other people's money and his connections with celebrities, artistes and assorted power brokers.

He started young, from online masquerades to passing off a family friend's yacht as his. Parental influence is cited as another factor; his dad Larry Low may have cultivated Jho Low's social-climbing tendencies by sending him to Harrow, and then Wharton, to cosy up with scions of the elite. One of those Wharton connections led him to the Middle East and planted the seed of what would end up being the biggest kleptocracy case in history.

I had few nits to pick with this book. It is the hot read we've been promised, and it's such a rollicking ride from start to finish you barely notice the typos, no doubt due to the rush to release it for the Malaysian and Singaporean markets. Even those well acquainted with the scandal will be whisked away, breathless as they try to keep up with the heart-thumping kin cheong pace.

No surprise many readers are outraged, disgusted and dismayed. The whale and his fellows used the global financial system and the help of greedy bank executives to put up Malaysia's natural wealth as collateral for cash that went to extravagant, eye-watering spending sprees at nighclubs, designer boutiques, jewellers, casinos, hotels, art auctions and real estate markets; producing a movie about financial fraud, believe it or not; and possible attempts to rig an election.

And we could be footing the bill for years.

...in a cascade of bad luck, taking all of ten minutes, [Jho Low] lost $2 million. The stunned entourage couldn’t compute the way he parted with money—seemingly without breaking a sweat—and some began to whisper about this guy, and how he acted like the cash wasn’t his own.

Speculation about Low's motives are rife, but I think bukan duit punya pasal je. The authors' profile of him suggests a guy who wants more than what money can buy. And what's better than being the sun of his own galaxy, the fairy godfather of the top one per cent, the genie to these upper-upper-crust Aladdins?

The billions he allegedly stole let him play that role, but how he went about it, like he did with the 1MDB caper, was crude. If he couldn't throw money at a problem, he would try to talk his way out of it, or rely on the clout of his influential friends.

Reading about the excesses is like witnessing a Lovecraftian beast feeding itself with humongous fistfuls of humans: maddening, horrific, gory, yet so fascinating that one is compelled to watch with clenched jaws as it shambles along, leaving destruction and despair in its wake.

But the beast was careless, and for that it would be taken down. Almost all the perpetrators soared stratosphere-high before exploding spectacularly and crashing to earth like spent bottle rockets.

As in most crime thrillers, you know who the good guys and the bad guys are. This is the Jho Low, Najib and Rosmah many of us have come to hate. The at-times cartoonish villainy of culprits here earn them no sympathy and all the derision we can muster, to the point we forget that for all their faults, they are still people.

Other allegations such as the murder of Kevin Morais and UMNO-BN campaigning in GE13 with 1MDB money spice things up, raising the book's popularity among those who already assume the worst of them. Is there more to the tale? How much did the authors omit to keep the book at a mere 379 pages?

...Low would offer [Jordan] Belfort $500,000 to attend an event in Las Vegas with [Leonardo] DiCaprio. Red Granite had paid him handsomely for the rights to his memoir. But Belfort was starting to distrust this group. Eager to stay out of trouble, Belfort turned them down...

Damn kwa cheong hijinks with billions of brazenly stolen dollars leave us gasping, time and again, "No way all of this is true." The authors say it is, backed up by dozens of interviews and piles of documents, records and correspondence the DOJ is using to make their case, with editorial and legal oversight from the WSJ.

And it seems Wright had said the book was written for the sake of the story, not to rescue Malaysia or for a movie deal, and he was uncomfortable with the notion that he and Hope "saved" the country with it.

But wouldn't the publication of this book prejudice the ongoing 1MDB case? So far only several people have been formally charged by the United States' DOJ. Or is it fine because the guilt of the thieves have long been established?

At least, the guilty plea by former Goldman Sachs executive Tim Leissner suggests there is some truth to the allegations, and it looks like he's started spilling tea.

I am also a little annoyed by the author's descriptions of "palm-fringed" Penang and "jungle-covered" Sarawak, as if this part of the world is still Noel Barber's exotic, inscrutable patch of green. Environmental NGOs might argue to the contrary.

The authors' real-life thriller approach has paid off, but I won't blame those who feel the book is a hit job. At some point I wonder if the authors are as guilty of exaggerations as Low. For one, Malaysian officials smuggling files locked with the password "SaveMalaysia"? Why not just go with "HelpMe06biWanKenOBIYouAreMyON1yHopE"? #UseStrongPasswords.

If it gets Malaysians to read...

[1MDB] was supposed to have created jobs for Malaysians, but instead would be a burden on state finances for years to come. Most of the borrowings weren’t due for repayment for a few years, but 1MDB’s debt was a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off in the future.

Months after publication, whale fever hasn't abated - how else to explain why Kinokuniya is always "out of stock" every time I go there? (I know my luck isn't great but come on!) Also, the leviathan is still at large. The scheduled release of a Malay-language edition this month, the upcoming movie adaptation, and latest developments in the investigation are keeping temperatures high too.

Perhaps miffed that her victory lap was overshadowed by the hype over Billion Dollar Whale, Clare Rewcastle-Brown of Sarawak Report has accused Wright, Hope and their paper of not being honest about the source of their 1MDB reporting, plus other stuff. And who knew she had plans to shoot her own "how I broke the case" blockbuster?

(They did credit Sarawak Report for breaking "the first stories on Jho Low" and stated that it "was an important resource for us", but that probably wasn't enough.)

Whistleblower Xavier Justo meanwhile has disputed some of the details in the book regarding himself and announced that he's going to pen his account of what happened. However I look at it, it was about the money (not a cent less or more than what he believed his old bosses owed him) until - from what I could gather from this interview - he became a dad and, later, was convinced to do the right thing by Sarawak Report and The Edge.

And no one is blind to the whale-sized void in the narrative of how a supposed tukang kelentong from Penang managed to get Wall Street, Hollywood, and the world to dance to his tune, past raised flags, gatekeepers and blaring alarms.

How far did the con go? Who else was involved but not named? Why did Low do it? Why, as Wright asked, did he not stop when the financial hole got too big? Why didn't he put that money to work instead of living large? Given his pull, he could've gotten qualified professionals to manage and invest those billions.

It’s easy to sneer at Malaysia as a cesspool of graft, but that misses the point. None of this could have happened without the connivance of scores of senior executives ... Low straddled both these worlds—Malaysia and the West—and he knew exactly how to game the system.

What little that's published of him so far does not indicate any inclination towards candour. Nor should we expect any writing flair from his lawyers or PR advisers, who I expect will ditch him once what remains of his money runs out, or if the evidence piles up.

If that happens, wouldn't it be ironic if he ultimately had to approach the guys who helped expose him to write his side of the story?



Billion Dollar Whale
The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
Hachette Books
379 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-316-45347-9

Saturday 4 August 2018

Salt, Spice And Vinegar

Men Are Dicks* is an acerbic, white-hot riposte against men behaving badly


I got a copy of this bright fuchsia-covered book yonks ago at Publika during an event. The only thing I still remember was the organisers playing Dato Vida's "Ayam Mi" (THAT's how I am spelling it) song, which I wish I never heard, over the sound system. Dengar suara tu bulu-bulu roma pun nak lancarkan diri ke angkasa.

What really sold the book was the blurbs, especially Brian Gomez's. Given Gomez's background, one is compelled to believe him. He also wrote a great novel, Devil's Place, which you should read.




But I only opened this fuchsia-covered acquisition late on Sunday night and, risking sleep deprivation, devoured it in one go like a big bag of hot-and-spicy Chipster™ chips.

And it's Men Are Dicks* or MAD*, with the asterisk, because the author says men who read it aren't dicks. How can they be if they willingly paid to endure the ensuing humiliation, despite the warning on the cover?

Now, I've seen what passes for books these days, those that are lifted from blogs, WhatsApp chats, Facebook, Twitter feeds, or a combination of the aforementioned. And the contempt for many of them is justified. Ye lah, deep konon luahan kalian kat timeline korang...

Unlike many of these #AcahAcah-type compilations, some thought and wordcraft went into MAD* - a bawdy, candid, no-holds-barred, uproariously funny and at times jiwang and quotable offline Twitter feed about men (and, occasionally, women) behaving badly, mostly in relationships, sex and marriage.

Yang terasa pasti kena #BakarHidupHidup; it should come with a tube of burn cream, just in case. No surprise it stayed on the bestsellers' list for a long while.

And what’s this bull with blaming women for your uncontrollable urges? Wak lu! Your nafsu is not my responsibility. Bak kata my friend Leen Ashburn, “Men bila dah stim kodok, pokok buluh pun nampak macam Kate Moss.”

And it IS like a Malaysian-authored Twitter feed: a mishmash of anecdotes, poems, random thoughts and hashtags by the nom de plume Lily G that proves the point made in the title of the book in lurid, eye-watering detail. Wahlau eh, ngape ramai sangat ahli kaum Adam yang perangainya macam ni~

Though the author claims the anecdotes are fiction, they sound real enough, reminiscent of stories one sees on social media - too many instances of bukan nama sebenar suggests kebanyakan kes ni berdasarkan cerita benar. Not all of it are barbs, however.

She also suggests ways how men can not be dicks, some of which can't be repeated here. The wit is vinegar-sharp throughout and the burns keep coming, except where she pours her heart out in tribute to her grandmother, mother and sister.

The unitalicised Malay words and typos do add to the authenticity, but I might want to have words with the editor. Thank goodness there are no emojis; naik minyak bila tengok benda offline mirip benda online. Saya pun sehari suntuk ngadap skrin je - pasal kerja, OK?

What is it with men and threesomes anyway? Nak satisfy one girl pun ketar-ketar sampai lupa mother’s maiden name, ada hati nak threesome!

The Malay-English rojak in MAD* is damn spicy, and a glossary is handy for deciphering the more obscure bits of lingo, much of which was invented by the author, who also blogs about football - which explains the presence of icons of the sport in her lexicon.

Rakes, cads, playboys and their ilk are slapped with the label "Sundalese"; a "Magnum Almond" is a physically attractive man who's probably "good for one thing", while a "Sprouted Bread" is not as yummy as a Magnum Almond but a keeper; alpha males are dubbed "Steven Gerrard" or "Xavi Alonso"; a "Fernando Torres" probably means pretty boy; and the author refers to her "ample posterior" as Banana Republic. Rolls off the tongue, aye?

Some might be offended by the vulgar and sometimes racist language, chaplang prose and misandrist tone of this book. But when one skims newsfeeds these days, one is hard-pressed to disagree with it. History has been a long-running "men are dicks" monologue, with the occasional bad woman episode as an intermission.

Some of the stories in this book feel a tad confessional and all-too familiar - uncomfortably so. Near the end, Lily pauses to steel herself before she tells us about her granny and mom. Funny as they are, these jottings come from a place of pain, heartbreak and confusion.

People are always saying women who are angry all the time “sure tak dapat”. Well, I beg to differ. Tak dapat is nowhere near as aggravating as “tak puas”. Of course, I blame men for this. You would have thought with the Age of Information, they would have learnt something useful eh? Negative!

Yet we laugh at her asam pedas giler babs rants, at the characters' loathsome conduct, at how things haven't changed much over the years, at how powerless we feel when shit hits the fan for some of the characters.

We also laugh because it's easier than changing things so that some of the scenarios don't happen again. We Malaysians love shortcuts - probably as much as the feel of warm sand around our heads.

Most of all, we laugh because it feels so, so true.



Men Are Dicks*
Lily G
Neon Terbit
240 pages
Fiction (probably)
ISBN: 978-967-12365-7-4

Tuesday 24 July 2018

In Praise Of Procrastination

Andrew Santella builds a good case for killing time

first published in The Star, 24 July 2018


The inclination to delay or distract oneself from an immediate task is almost primaeval. When something needs to be done, whether you're a couch potato or an overthinking perfectionist, you will find some way to put it off, even if doing so will backfire on you.

Hence, procrastination is seen as a form of delusion or self-sabotage, a barrier to progress – criminal, indefensible. Scholars and the clergy have waged war on it, casting aspersions upon procrastinators.

So much so that, as writer Andrew Santella puts it in his book, Soon, "Even committed procrastinators can be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of not doing something, which is probably why our foot-dragging is sometimes called killing time."


When the to-do list starts feeling weighty, fire up the cat videos


However, one of Santella's aims with this book is to justify procrastination, his in particular. "I hoped that if I looked through enough history and enough scholarship I would be able to find some pretext or rationale for my habitual delay."

As a pro-time-wasting treatise, this book does the job beautifully. Among other things, Santella argues that procrastinators aren't necessarily unproductive, and these diversions may even be necessary. By the end, readers will feel a bit better about slacking off. Occasionally, of course.

In his efforts to unpack and rationalise the practice of killing time and to trace its history, the author delves into the time-wasting tendencies of English naturalist Charles Darwin, Florentine polymath Leonardo da Vinci, and German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, among others – including himself. In that sense, Soon is also the story of its own genesis.

The other reason I have never made a bucket list is that it requires acknowledging my mortality and I am resolutely not in favor of acknowledging my own mortality. To complete a task is to make it disappear, and in some way, to make ourselves disappear, too. ... I want the lists to go on forever–and me, too, if possible.

Santella's narrative starts with Darwin, who put off his work on evolution and spent two decades studying barnacles before finally publishing On The Origin Of Species in 1859. Then there's Da Vinci, who dabbled in many fields but didn't see a lot of his ideas through to the end, leaving behind nuggets of ideas, some of which would become reality long after his death.

This theme recurs throughout the book; the career paths of the featured luminaries seem to have been diverted by other pursuits that, in the end, enriched their work and their lives while also making them more relatable to us mortals.

"Darwin is remembered because he was brilliant and diligent and tireless," the author states. "But it is his delay that makes him so accessible to us, so human. ... We all have our list of things we should do, things we must do. And yet we find some reason to not do them. In this way, we can claim some kinship with Darwin. We all have our barnacles."

So one empathises with Santella's struggle to complete this book, especially if one is a fellow procrastinator. "...the more enthusiastic I got about the book, the more impossible the writing became," he admits. "I'm the kind of procrastinator who puts off longest that which most urgently needs to be done."

Considering his previous gigs for GQ, Slate and The New York Times Book Review, one would think he might have learnt how to roll with it.

Writers may be the world’s most persistent procrastinators, which is strange because they work in a trade in which the deadline is supposed to be sacrosanct. ... When [Douglas Adams] died in 2001, he was twelve years past the deadline for his last book.

In his journey of (not) writing his book, detours include meeting with Prof Joe Ferrari, who he considers the "most prolific writer and researcher on procrastination"; visiting a church in New Orleans while exploring the history of St Expedite (or Expeditus); going to Pennsylvania to see Fallingwater, the house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright; and pursuing Lichtenberg's story in Göttingen, Germany.

Those detours seem to have paid off, resulting in a brilliant, candid and quotable meditation on the dangers and delights of procrastination. The at-times meandering narrative embodies the quality being espoused but you won't feel it much. At just under 200 pages, the book is easy to finish and just right for those looking for a diversion.

One comes away convinced that, besides being a human trait we shouldn't be ashamed of, procrastination could help us to cope with today's frenetic pace and give us space to relax, reflect and maybe consider other possibilities.

"Just like the urge to travel springs from the desire to see what is beyond the bend in the road, procrastination starts with the recognition that there might be something, anything, better to do than what we're supposed to do," Santella writes.

"It is comforting to think that there might be something else to do, something better to do, even when we have no idea what it might be. Especially when we have no idea what it might be."

My time with the Great Procrastinators had taught me that the ability to think of reasons not to do what we are supposed to do is one of the greatest gifts the mind has to offer. Our evasions, our small delusions and self-deceptions, these are what give life its flavor. They are what help us feel a little less at the mercy of our obligations and the systems of control that impose them.

If only the book's message didn't intrude during inopportune moments. Instead of meeting writing deadlines, for instance, one finds comfort in chores, the post-election news cycle, or the antics of a blind dwarf cat called Potato.

Then again, why spend much of your waking hours on work? Life is meant to be enjoyed as well; who knows how much time you have left? As Buddhist monk and author Ajahn Brahm would say: "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow, because you might die tonight."

Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.



Soon
An Overdue History of Procrastination, from Leonardo and Darwin to You and Me

Andrew Santella
Dey St.
197 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-06-285110-9

Tuesday 10 July 2018

The Haunting Tale Of A Concubine And Her Child

first published in Malay Mail, 10 July 2018


Much has been said of novels about Malaya written by foreigners, not all of which are good. So I warily picked up this one and ended up finishing it in one go.

Though Australian author Carol Jones has written many books, including many children's books and several young adult novels, she tapped into stories from her Malaysian Chinese in-laws and further research for her first adult novel. The Concubine's Child follows the story of a young girl who is sold to a wealthy family as a concubine — and the child she eventually bears — across two eras: 1930s Kuala Lumpur and the 21st century.

Lim Yu Lan, the daughter of an apothecary, draws the attention of Madam Chan, the wife of tin-mining tycoon Chan Boon Siew. The older woman sees Yu Lan as the solution to her husband's lack of heirs.

Unable to bear children of her own, she essentially buys Yu Lan from her father, an inveterate gambler, and sets the hapless girl up as her husband's secondary wife and baby-making machine.

Bullied by Madam Chan and subjected to Towkay Chan's advances, Yu Lan's life in the Chan household becomes a nightmare. The reluctant concubine's only ally is the amah, Ho Jie, who befriends Yu Lan and teaches her ways to make her new life more bearable.

At first it seems as if the amah, who is not fond of her mistress, is doing it to spice up the drama between the two wives. Over time, though, she warms up to the girl.

Men brought only trouble. And if trouble was coming, better if it came bearing gold.

But before we know it we find ourselves in England in 2015, watching a couple try to fix a flat tyre in the rain. Turns out the couple are Sarah and her husband, Nick, who happens to be Yu Lan's descendant. Later, Nick announces that he's going to Kuala Lumpur for work. The news unsettles his mum, perhaps for good reason.

In Malaysia, Nick starts delving into his family's history. As his quest continues, the story of Yu Lan and her child unfolds further, bringing the two arcs — past and present — into a complete circle. And Nick won't be prepared for what he will find.

As the story progresses, what strikes me is how Chinese it feels despite the presence of elements of other cultures, regardless of the timeline — though it seems odd that the Chans would employ a Malay midwife for Yu Lan. The dialogue is peppered primarily with Cantonese, but the author also uses a smattering of local Hokkien and Mandarin.

Tiny hiccups aside, it doesn't feel as if Jones has thrown all her research plus the kitchen sink into this novel. She weaves in just enough of the culture to make it believable, conjuring images of old and present-day KL and walks us through the characters' day-to-day.

We choke on the smoke from incense in prayer halls, try to identify the herbs in an apothecary by smell, and chuckle at Nick's frustration with Petaling Jaya's GPS-defeating road network.

She smoothed her hair back from his forehead. “Sometimes, when I walk into a room, it feels like someone has just left. Except there’s no one there. It’s not a sound or a scent, just...”

Kudos as well to the writing. We jump back and forth between two periods yet don't feel jet-lagged. And it's nicely plotted, too. The prologue describes an ill, ageing woman who's about to tell her son the truth — but is she who we think she is? At least I did, but I was proven wrong. Such twists happen several times more, and eventually, I gave up trying to solve the mystery and just go with the flow.

At some point, supernatural elements creep into both arcs. Characters start conversing with people who aren't there and begin seeing ghosts, but are they real or not? Is there a curse on Towkay Chan's household and bloodline? Is Nick's growing obsession with his ancestry being fed by more than the need to find himself? The reader is left guessing right until the end.

Overall, Yu Lan's is not a sunny story. One is reminded of the black-and-white Cantonese dramas of yore, complete with shrewish first wives, their "salty wet" husbands, and the endless tears and wails of "woe is me." Concubine-taking isn't common or as acceptable these days, but it seems as if little has changed for women over the decades — something made more disheartening in the #MeToo era.

Despite their flaws, we are reminded of and urged to acknowledge the humanity of the characters — particularly the Chans, Ho Jie and Yu Lan, even if we disagree with some of their beliefs and motives.

Some of them eventually redeem themselves (somewhat) — Madam Chan especially, who was cajoling and cursing whoever she was worshipping at an altar when she is first introduced — but only a few linger on long after the book closes.

...she didn’t want to endure. What joy was there in a life that must be endured? She once had a dream ... That dream had fooled her into thinking that if she worked hard she could make a life of her own choosing. But she had been wrong.

All this, plus the girl's plight and hints of the unearthly combine to engulf one in a pale sepulchral nimbus, like that which shrouds supposedly haunted houses (and gloomy novels), bringing down temperatures and chilling spines.

I regretted reading this at night with the air conditioning on. Even so, I pressed on — like Nick — compelled to find out what became of Yu Lan, her child, and the household that became their prison.

In the end, it was all worthwhile. I feel Jones has done a good job with this novel; her in-laws would be proud. Though the modern arc feels mundane when compared with the Malaya one, probably because of one's familiarity with the former, the way the two are entwined and resolved are satisfying and worth the risk of a sleepless night haunted by long-haired, white-robed apparitions.

Maybe.


Carol Jones held a meet-and-greet session on 16 June 2018 at Lit Books, Tropicana Avenue, highlights of which can be found here. She was also interviewed on Malaysian business radio station BFM89.9.



The Concubine’s Child
Carol Jones
Head of Zeus
373 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 9781786699824

Friday 8 June 2018

A Presidential Race Against Time

James Patterson teams up with Bill Clinton in what might be this year's summer
blockbuster read


first published in The Star, 08 June 2018


I checked the cover, wondering if I was seeing things. Bill Clinton and James Patterson, teaming up on something titled The President Is Missing?

With recent headlines in mind, I thought, no sh*t, Sherlock.

But no, it's not non-fiction. Patterson's latest thriller (and my first Patterson novel), which he teams up with a former US president to write, explores a horrific 21st-century possibility: a crippling cyber attack that will plunge the United States back into the dark ages.

The US president in this novel, set against our current geopolitical climate, is Jonathan Lincoln Duncan, a veteran of the First Gulf War (1990-1991) who lost his wife to cancer and is plagued by a potentially life-threatening disease. Faithful to his wife, patriotic, reticent when it counts, brave (recklessly so at times), he seems a far cry from the real-life incumbent.

When we first meet him, President Duncan is staring down the House Select Committee in a hearing. On his orders, the CIA and US Special Forces thwarted an attempt by pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia separatists to kill a "most dangerous and prolific" cyber terrorist, whom he later contacted for as-yet unspecified reasons. He tells the committee nothing they want to hear, and risks impeachment by doing so. It doesn't help that a CIA operative was killed.

Later, an informant manages to meet Duncan, promising to reveal how to stop the threat, for a price. Against better judgement and the advice of his staff and doctor, he sneaks off to the rendezvous point where he and his contact – the informant's partner, a young Ukrainian maths prodigy – are ambushed, and the informant is killed.

A race against time ensues as Duncan and the Ukrainian kid go on the run, while Duncan's inner circle scrambles to keep things under control in his absence. The president's medical condition lurks in the background, threatening to succeed where the assailants failed.

In the middle of all this, a scheme is being hatched in the White House by the vice-president and the Speaker of the House. We also follow a female assassin codenamed Bach as she and her own team pursue the fleeing duo. Her distinguishing traits include giving her favourite weapon a name, apparent vegetarianism, and a habit of listening to classical music by one particular composer.

As one might expect of Patterson's oeuvre, the plot is straightforward, the pages turn quickly, chapters are short and numerous, and we get to know more about the characters and the world they inhabit than we need to. Not much suspension of disbelief is required, either. Except for descriptions of senate hearings, the presidential speech, and the workings in Washington DC and the White House, Clinton's presence here seems barely visible.

My biggest problem with this novel is too much exposition. Though things start off slow and begin to rev up around page 100, the pacing is bogged down in places by chunks of characterisation and figurative language. It feels as if a film is being storyboarded for a production crew. And is that flashback of how he met his wife even necessary?

Ultimately, these disposable details add little to the enjoyment of the story. One feels almost no urgency to retain whatever clues that might be hidden inside recollections of the past, Duncan's glowing assessments of his confidants, and the odd social commentary enabled by convenient scenes such as one of him interacting with a homeless war veteran and another of a black man being restrained by cops.

As a result, one's impatient gaze trails along the pages as it races towards the denouement, disregarding the challenge to piece together those clues and beat the authors to the big reveal. That is, if one can or bothers to. It turned out fine because I didn't see the ending coming, which made the reading experience a little better.

And is it odd that among the overly fleshed-out characters, I found the assassin to be the most compelling? She seems like the authors' favourite. Compared with the others, Bach has a more convincing backstory that unfolds more naturally, each revelation leading one to wish to learn more. She is bound to haunt the reader, albeit briefly, after the book ends; the others barely register.

I dove into this book with zero expectations and despite my misgivings (Bill Clinton, really?), I wasn't too disappointed. The premise is realistic enough and I like how it's plotted. Though the writing isn't hot (after escaping death, Duncan declares "But until we're dead, we're alive" – ugh), it serves its purpose.

Fans of Patterson and this genre will feel right at home with this novel, not just to pass the time but also as a timely balm for those yearning for a better president, government and nation.



The President Is Missing
Bill Clinton and James Patterson
Grand Central Publishing (2018)
513 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1385-3

Thursday 16 November 2017

Saving Timbuktu's Treasured Texts

A tale of a high-stakes rescue of a trove of ancient manuscripts that is the stuff of legends

first published in The Star, 16 November 2017


The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English is a painstakingly well-researched saga of a far-flung desert town in the West African nation of Mali and the incredible modern-day effort by that town's librarians and archivists to save its cache of ancient manuscripts. But it's also more than that: It appears to warn against taking anybody's word at face value.

A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and former head of international news at Britain's The Guardian newspaper, English tells the story of Timbuktu by alternating between two timelines: the West's long quest to discover the city, and the attempt in 2012 to protect its trove of texts from a civil war.

For centuries, the City of 333 Saints (and probably just as many spellings of its name) was a key part of a trans-Saharan trade route, small parts of which salt caravans still ply today. Early accounts by medieval-era travellers painted Timbuktu as an African El Dorado. The city did thrive on trade, but Timbuktu's wealth and stature has long faded since then.

However, it had other treasures. Timbuktu was also a university town in its heyday. Scholars from the Islamic world flocked there, and tons of written material on various subjects including mathematics, medicine and astronomy were produced, copied, and imported. It is estimated that tens or even hundreds of thousands of manuscripts could reside in its libraries and private collections.

Both strands of the narrative are well paced and thrilling. Tales of derring-do and misadventures abound, showcasing the best and worst of humanity. Besides the terrain and weather, the early European explorers also grappled with disease, hostile tribes, local politics and anti-Western attitudes, while the book smugglers had to deal with ransom-seeking thugs, faulty equipment and patrolling rebels.

However, we lurch between the two timelines like a camel's ungainly walk, making it onerous to closely follow both in long stretches. Key figures and events blur and blend into the background as impatient readers pray for the ride to end. Well, at least the experience is immersive.

The story doesn't end with the Great Manuscript Rescue. Questions eventually arose over details of the operation, the final tally of the salvaged manuscripts, how foreign donations for the task were spent, and whether the texts were in any danger at all. Even the principal rescuers appear to be vying to claim control of and credit for masterminding the effort.

One also notices similarities between the two timelines: the role of legend in shaping the image of Timbuktu in the minds of outsiders, the Timbuktiens' resistance against hostile forces and changes to their way of life, and how the town and its manuscripts became the focus of competing agendas.

From what I could gather, besides those ancient voyagers, the Timbuktiens of old may have concocted their own myths about their town and its personages. They attributed religious piety and supernatural abilities to the resident Muslim scholars, perhaps to deter invaders or bandits. Such sketchy and sometimes fantastical anecdotes helped feed the West's centuries-long curiosity of Timbuktu and boosted its reputation among adventurers looking for a challenge.

In the present, news of the manuscripts' successful evacuation raised a similar degree of excitement, relief, and a sense of victory. At the time, Timbuktu was occupied by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists embroiled in the civil war. They had vandalised some of the city's landmarks, which were accorded World Heritage status, and many feared the prized papers might be targeted as well.

But one can't help but wonder: could the threat to the manuscripts have been played up to bring more of the world's attention to this town?

English provides notes for his sources and appears to vouch for them but he seems cautious, as we should be, about who and what to believe. When it comes to researching and writing about people, places and events of bygone eras and in isolated locations, one has to start with and trust contemporary sources of information, and dig deeper from there because – pardon the clichĂ© – nothing is what it seems.

According to English, "This book is as much historiography as history. That is to say, it is an account of the interpretations of Timbuktu's past at least as much as it is the story of what actually happened there. The reasons for this will, I hope, have become clear: Timbuktu's story is in perpetual motion, swinging back and forth between competing poles of myth and reality. Spectacular arguments are made and then dismissed before another claim is built up, in an apparently continuous cycle of proposition and correction."

So one should read it without judgement, and take whatever is printed with a pinch of (caravan-borne?) salt. Like the glittering fables of West African empires, English's tale of these latter-day book smugglers can be compared to pearls: grains of truth layered with opalescent embellishments from the author's sources, with a little writerly polish.

Yet this doesn't diminish the story, its protagonists and what they sought to save, or cast doubts on the author, his work and his motives. Instead, English has brought us closer to this corner of the world, helping to lift the mystery shrouding it and revealing that even bare truths are just as fascinating as illusory palaces of gold in the African desert.



The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu
The Quest for this Storied City and the Race to Save its Treasures

Charlie English
William Collins (2017)
400 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-00-818490-2

Tuesday 7 November 2017

Rise Of The Streampunks

How YouTube and its stars are driving a revolution in media

first published in The Star, 07 November 2017


This book made me feel old and question what I'm doing with my life. Understandable, I suppose, as it's mostly about the new stars of online video, many of whom are millennials and Gen-Xers—dubbed "streampunks" by Robert Kyncl (pronounced "kin-sil"), chief business officer at YouTube.

Written by Kyncl with Google writer Maany Peyvan, Streampunks tells how a bunch of creators and entrepreneurs used YouTube to do their thing and transform how media works. The book also highlights the tactics they've used, the challenges they have faced, and what their success means for the future of media.

Kyncl and Peyvan set the mood by contrasting the barren media landscape that is the Czechoslovakia that Kyncl grew up in, with scenes from the YouTube Creators Summit in New York in the present day. The latter is attended not by greying guys in sharp suits, but youngish-looking people in "the rarest sneakers", "the sharpest athleisure", or just jeans and T-shirts, many of whom have tattoos or dyed hair.

And yet, there is an "overwhelming sense of respect as they exchange greetings with their peers from around the world", the authors note. Perhaps, above all, the people in that space are those who seem to be doing what they've always wanted to do, from vloggers (video bloggers) and beauty gurus to chefs and gamers.

How is it possible for these people to earn a living and achieve fame rivalling that of Hollywood stars, to have a global audience of millions and gain influence the likes of which big brand names would splurge for, by just being themselves and doing what they love?

Kyncl would probably say "YouTube", which would be a gross oversimplification. When TV was king, the authors argue, a small group of executives determined what got aired and what didn't—subsequently deciding who got the limelight and who didn't. With online video, that power has shifted to the audience, whose interests "are far more diverse and unique than those execs ever imagined".

So it turns out that many out there are interested in quilting, as demonstrated by the story of Jenny Doan from Hamilton, Missouri, the United States, whose YouTube quilting tutorials made her the Julia Child of the craft and brought her quilt company and her town global fame.

Other chapters tell of the rise of other personalities who built their brands on the platform. There's Lilly Singh, a.k.a. "Superwoman", who created that geography video for racists; vloggers Hank and John Green, the latter many would know as the author of young adult fiction bestsellers like The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns; Shane Smith, CEO and cofounder of Vice Media; and talent manager Scooter Braun, who brought the world Justin Bieber and made Psy's "Gangnam Style" as hot as Shin Ramyun instant noodles.

More than a collection of success stories, however, this book can be considered a primer for aspiring streampunks in how the stories are stitched together. Besides sharing some tricks of the trade, the authors make a good case for their subjects' bright futures, dropping names and lobbing figures to fortify their arguments.

But behind the six-figure subscriber counts and slick online clips is a lot of hard work, passion and perseverance. Hints of that are sprinkled throughout, but it's the title of the eighth chapter, "The Struggle is Real", that drives it home.

The cost of being "real" and independent is constant engagement with the audience, while coming up with new ideas, and learning to shoot better videos ... imagine doing all that and more for years before one's big break.

That's a lot of time and money spent, not to mention crappy clips, at least in the early stages. The issue of revenue is also looked at, spliced between accounts of the births of crowdfunding platform Patreon and premium service YouTube Red (which is not available in Malaysia when this was written).

One thing that's only briefly touched on and perhaps more suitable for discussion in other books is the potential downsides of online fame, as illustrated by the posting of anti-Semitic content in 2017 by Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. PewDiePie. Also, what to make of recent outbursts (which might have emerged before the book went to print) by some YouTubers against the platform's alleged demonetisation of videos that it considers not ad-friendly?

And just because there are YouTube videos of how braces are fastened doesn't mean one can watch those and start practising orthodontics. Even cooking videos and recipes don't always yield perfect results when followed faithfully.

On the whole, Streampunks paints bright picture of an emerging new media landscape powered by a growing horde of video wizards who are coming up with innovative ways to tell and share stories in an engaging and authentic manner.

As such, the overall tone for this book is quite rah-rah, no surprise considering who the authors are. Whether it's because they sound genuine about what they feel for these streampunks and the future of new media or that Kyncl works for YouTube—or both—is best left to the reader to decide.

But no one should deny that a revolution is happening in media.


An edit has been made to this version, for clarity.



Streampunks
YouTube and the Rebels Remaking Media

Robert Kyncl with Maany Peyvan
Harper Business
288 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-06-265773-2

Tuesday 19 September 2017

What We Reveal Online

first published in The Star, 19 September 2017


"Everybody lies" is a favourite maxim of Hugh Laurie's character, Dr Gregory House, in the medical drama series House. Despite this, he often gets to the bottom of what ails his patients.

Opinion writer for The New York Times and former Google data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz also believes that everybody lies. He says people lie to their friends, bosses, kids, parents, doctors, husbands, wives, and even to themselves.

"And they damn sure lie in surveys."

The images of perfect lives on Facebook and Instagram aren't the whole picture, either.

What people lie less to, according to Stephens-Davidowitz, are search engines.

"The everyday act of typing a word or phrase into a compact, rectangular white box leaves a small trace of truth that, when multiplied by millions, eventually reveals profound realities."

Which is why in his book, Everybody Lies, he posits that these small traces of truth make Google searches a gargantuan pool of "honest" data that holds insights into our true nature. But instead of volume, he focuses on the quality of the information and analysis: "You don't always need a ton of data to find important insights. You need the right data."

Stephens-Davidowitz explains why big data – a catch-all term for all the data out there, including searches, blog posts and everything else we put online – is powerful. It is so huge that even small samples can yield meaningful results, which is how companies such as Google and Facebook can conduct random, controlled experiments online to find out what works and what doesn't.

Big data also offers new types of information and ways to look at things from other angles. Who knew that the brightness of a place at night can indicate its economic situation?

There are limits, of course. The author tells us what can't and shouldn't be done with data, highlighting instances where it can be misused. The low-down on customers' buying patterns can help companies sell more products, for instance, but shouldn't be used to keep customers hooked.

At fewer than 290 pages, not including the acknowledgements, notes and the index, the book is small and digestible for its genre. It covers just enough about big data to make the case for its potential and leave one wanting to know more. The language is pretty straightforward and the tone is conversational.

Occasional displays of wit can be found in the text and the footnotes, particularly in observations about sex and porn, of which there are quite a few – which is perhaps unavoidable when discussing what's on the World Wide Web.

But several of these footnotes feel uncomfortably confessional. For instance, the author hints that he might be an unreliable narrator, particularly in relation to how hard he worked on the book. In a footnote, he says, "Since everybody lies, you should question much of this story." Because, that footnote concludes, "Everybody lies. Every narrator is unreliable."

Even big data, it seems, but that depends on how one interprets its multiple facets. And how much do fake news, bots, and hackers affect its "honesty"? Can this pool of Google searches be rigged to skew certain findings? The book does not appear to address any of this.

Nor does he trust many of us to finish reading the book: "No matter how hard I work on polishing my prose, most people are going to read the first fifty pages, get a few points, and move on with their lives." Maybe that's why, compared to all the information about data, the conclusion looks hastily scribbled, almost like an afterthought.

One can be easily swamped by all the revelations that support his argument: What we Google mirrors our true selves and can help us understand people better, but do we really want to? We reconsider our relationships with people, places, and the world at large anyway, from time to time. Some might feel they are being told what they might already know (eg, people can be horrible, and why they lie), except for the scope and intricacies of that knowledge.

Stephens-Davidowitz may not consider himself a focused author, but we can probably trust his work on big data, given his experience and reputation in this field, and how convincing (and perhaps a little biased) his case for it looks.

However, one should also bear in mind his advice to question everything one reads, online or offline. Mountains of information do not make a source, be it a database or a person, infallible. What we require is the wisdom to sift through all that data without letting it overwhelm us.

When we begin re-evaluating what we read, look for and wish to share online, the ever-growing mound of digital bread crumbs we leave in cyberspace will, hopefully, become a more authentic reflection ... of our better selves.



Everybody Lies
Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Dey St.
338 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-06-239085-1