A Long Decade

On that day, I was getting off a bus at Taman Tun Dr Ismail when I saw the burning towers on the newsstand. The days that followed passed in a blur. Far removed from the scene of the largest terrorist attack in the US, something of it reached our shores.

Several days later, the workplace was evacuated due to a bomb threat. I remember feeling more relieved than panicked; it'd been a lousy day and I couldn't wait to leave.

There were wars in the Middle East. Regimes toppled. Reprisals. But they couldn't get the one who was said to have inspired the 9-11 attacks.

Until May 2, 2011.

After all the anger and blood, however, one wonders whether any ghosts have been exorcised at all with the killing of the avowed terrorist leader.

That's the impression I got after finishing A Decade of Hope. This seemingly hasty compilation of interviews by Dennis Smith, with the editorial assistance of his daughter Deirdre, appears to be some attempt at burying the spectre of 9-11 with stories of how New Yorkers coped with the change wrought by the 19 airplane hijackers and the loss of friends and loved ones on that day.

Most of those featured are first responders to the tragedy: firefighters, police personnel and paramedics, with a civilian or two and the token American Muslim. And most of them are still grieving. Some cannot forgive. But all of them cannot forget, and aren't likely to.

The choice of interviewees may be more than coincidence; Smith was a firefighter before he became a writer, and it would've been easier to speak to people within that group. That would explain the strong firehouse camaraderie emanating from the pages.

I found the book a long, laborious and lugubrious read, mostly because I couldn't relate to any of the interviewees. Should I be moved, inspired? Is the publication of the book meant to be cathartic, the push we all need to move on?

Many of the interviews are lengthy, and while preserving as much of each as possible honours the spirit of the book, some substantial editing could've helped make space for a few more points-of-view. For one, there's too much background info on the interviewees and the people who died.

That some of the characters refer to each other throughout the book reinforces the - dare I say it? - the cliquishness of the collection. Over 3,000 was said to have perished that day; surely there were more people who'd be willing to come forward with their stories? Apart from the first responders?

Given the superhuman expectations we mere mortals have for first responders, seeing these men and women of steel grieve and bleed in the face of the disaster would show us the enormity of what happened to them and what they went through. It does, but I don't think it affected me the way the author wanted it.

The shadow of terrorism is still with us, but 9-11 just doesn't have the same gravitas these days. Bin Laden is gone, and Bush is no longer president. And we have other worries keeping us up at night.

The author has good intentions, which makes me ashamed to feel this way. Despite the honest, heartfelt outpouring of grief and hope, I just couldn't empathise; were I to try I'd end up sounding glib. Nor can I imagine the weight of the burdens they've borne and will continue to bear.

Nevertheless, whatever has been said about their leaders and foreign policy, one should note that the views and behaviours of a government don't always reflect those of the populace. Nobody deserves a 9-11.

With Bin Laden's death, the Americans can sigh away a collective breath held for ten long years; for many, some measure of justice has been reportedly done. But Smith's collection of voices suggest that the healing has only begun and that full closure may only be a matter of hope.


This point of view is based on an advance reading copy.

---

A Decade of Hope

Stories of Grief and Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends

Dennis Smith, Deirdre Smith
Viking (2011)
356 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-670-02293-9

News: Authorship Has No Privileges? And E-Books Are Like Apps?

"You have no right to make money anymore"
Seth Godin, whose book Stop Selling Dreams was kept out of Apple's iBooks store because of the buy-from-Amazon URLs in that book, has apparently come out and told authors to drop any sense of entitlement (like the big fat advances) and go out there and fight to hawk their wares. "Who said you have a right to cash money from writing?" he said. "I gave hundreds of speeches before I got paid to write one. I’ve written more than 4000 blog posts for free."

Authorship ain't the fabled aerie in the arts no more, what with indie publishers and self-published e-books bucking trends and flooding markets. But no complaints from Godin, it seems. "Poets don’t get paid (often), but there’s no poetry shortage. The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word–over."

He's got something to say about libraries and literary agents as well.

...So, still wanna be a writer?


Books: From Hardware to Software
Writing for the Guardian, Frédéric Filloux argues that, as books go digital, publishers will look more and more like software houses. And like software houses, publishers need to 'debug' their 'apps', i.e. e-books to distinguish themselves from the pack.

"Like the app business where abundance creates a need for more human-powered guidance and suggestions," says the general manager of the French ePresse consortium, "book sections of magazines and newspapers will have to adapt and find ways to efficiently suggest e-readings to their audience. ... The most potent selection tool will remain the quality of the product."

...So I left that field only to return to it?

Filloux may think that Apple is a quality app provider, but somebody at TIME thinks the late Steve Job's company should avoid vetting books for publishability.


Future of Books at Bath Lit Fest
At the Independent Bath Literature Festival, the future of the book, discussed. Hardbacks will become luxuries (as they'd been before Gutenberg came along), and authors will become "brands".

What Charlie Redmayne, CEO of JK Rowling's online venture Pottermore, said about publishers more or less concurs with Godin's exhortation to authors to 'come out more':

"...publishers should learn from the fate of the music world. Just as record companies make money only by sending artists out to play live, book publishers will expect authors to promote themselves more – to have a media 'presence,' acquire followers on Facebook and Twitter, interface with current readers and fans and establish a 'community' to buy their books on Day One."

Oh, and spend lots of time at literary festivals.

(Speaking of Rowling: it's been reported that she's no longer a billionaire, thanks to "Britain's high tax regime" that left her with "less than £640 million in the bank." How. SAD.)


Some E-Reader Pitfalls
E-book readership is growing, but are e-reader devices selling? Right now, says ZDNet, the market is dominated by the iPad, Barnes & Noble's Nook and the Amazon Kindle - all of which are from companies that are not playing nice with each other.

A major problem, claims CBSNews, when consumers ditch one platform for another. I wouldn't really know about that; though file formats such as EPUB are 'universal', issues such as ownership rights (when I 'buy' off iBooks, do I really get to keep it?) will mean that buyers will think twice before pulling an e-reader off the shelves. That, and the hefty prices (I think) of e-readers.


Other News

• The £130,000 (RM617,022) Sheikh Zayed Book Award for the "best literature in the Arab world" has reportedly been withheld because all candidates weren't up to mark. The advisory council for the Abu Dhabi-based award came to this decision after six titles were "longlisted" (shouldn't it be "shortlisted"?) for the honour. ...It's kind of like the Burj Khalifah of book awards, isn't it?
• A collection of World War II memories from residents of a retirement home became a surprise hit. More on the book, World War II Remembered, here.
• The Syrian tumult is keeping the country's publishing houses from the Riyadh International Book Fair. For the first time in six years, Syrian publishing houses were absent from the event but, from the report's headline, it looks like their presence was not missed much. However, "Abdul Aziz Khoja, [Saudi Arabia's] Minister of Culture and Information, expressed his regret over the no-show of Syrian publishing houses."
• In You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom, Nick Cohen says you can't always read the books you want. "...not because they have been banned but because they have not been written."
• UK-based e-publisher HopeRoad continues being a platform for Caribbean, Asian and African writers.
• One of the last of his kind: book scout Wayne Pernu.
• Trying to donate books to a library? It can be painful, as one donor in New York learns.
• As libraries are threatened with closure in the US, a book-printing machine comes to the Brooklyn Public Library.
• Some more self-publishing successes. And oh, look, a housewife scored a book deal with Harlequin. More endorsement for the genre. How many more "shades of grey" will be written about?
• Oh yeah... about those Nazi myth-busting Mein Kampf excerpts? No go.

Ruby Red Reads

I had the fortune of proofing Adibah Amin's As I Was Passing I and II and Glimpses for e-publication several weeks ago. A lot of reading, which has left me mentally tapped (on top of a much less interesting manuscript that followed).

The three volumes were mostly compiled from bite-sized articles from her old column in the New Straits Times, "As I Was Passing", written under the pen name Sri Delima (the glimmer of a ruby). Put together, the three books are a love letter to Malaysia, Malaysians and Malaysiana.

Books by Adibah Amin: As I Was Passing Volumes I and II,
and Glimpses: Cameos of Malaysian Life

Her anecdotal essays, crisp and humorous, open windows into the heart and soul of this country, past and present. She dissects the Malaysian psyche and its quirks and idiosyncrasies with relish and abandonment, poking fun at her subjects with affection not unlike an old teacher (which she is) putting ex-students in their place with fond reminiscences of misadventures and mischief past. Through it all, she displays a keen sense for the foibles of others and a keener sense of humour about her own follies.

The existence of text scanning errors warranted a line-by-line examination, which meant I had to read the books for errors. That it took longer than necessary to complete the tasks had little to do with the number of errors, however. And there weren't many to begin with.

The writing surprised me. So succinct, so simple! Her economy of words and vocabulary enhanced the effect she, perhaps, didn't consciously try to achieve.

One book. Just one of her books. Any one. Pick it up and read, really read it. Don't you dare skim or 'flip through' the pages.

Do this, and I can guarantee that all your writerly aspirations will be consigned to a deep, dark grave.

The angles! The succinctness in the storytelling! The efficient exposition of Malaysian cultures, fables and foibles. The twang of your heartstrings as something familiar is so vividly described, before the pang that follows when you realise that it's from a past you can never return to.

What's her secret? Probably an eventful life well-lived, well-observed and well-told, her pen sharpened and coloured by years of experience.

(That I'm fumbling over this quasi-review/commentary of her work just deepens the hurt.)

You will put the book down, stumble to your bed like walking through deep water, slowly slither into the sheets and curl up in there and waste away, like your dreams of the next great Malaysian novel or short story collection.

Everything you've ever written, every literary trick, every commercial gimmick you've employed in your middling attempts to tug at heartstrings or hit a nerve, your personal collection of painstakingly compiled library obscure words and catchphrases... all rubbish, irrelevant, old hat. Before Sri Delima's innate touch in conveying so much with so little, you are but the emperor with his 'new' clothes.

Above all, you will break all your pens and swear never to pick one up again - not even to edit or mark papers.

Forget about being the next doyen/doyenne of Malaysiana. Somebody had done it, in a way the likes of which will probably never be seen again for a long, long time.

(So shoo, shoo, go and write about something else. Vampires, maybe?)

...Okay, maybe there are a few things that I didn't like. For one, she has her own collection of stockphrases. Instead of "Tom, Dick and Harry", she uses "the Azmis, the Angs and the Arumugams" (pretty good alliteration, actually). Certain anecdotes are replayed. And the aliases: "EF"? "GH"? Invent some names, for crying out loud! And every repeated "ants won't die in her tread" (a supposedly Malay description of supreme feminine gentleness) urged me further and further into a formicidal rage.

...Okay, I was just nitpicking back there. Maybe she does struggle to come up with a topic and meet deadlines - late nights and all that (she hints at that in one of her books but I can't remember which one). And after all, is it not the wont of column writers to repeat certain words, especially when the time between columns is long enough that the repetition is not noticeable?

With these 'glimpses' into our past, present and psyches, Adibah Amin has managed to capture the essence of who we are and what Malaysia is, and more (wow, look at me pile on the book review tropes).

We want to climb trees and steal fruit, ride bicycles through villages (and scare some chickens), sit through bangsawan and dondang sayang performances and play games that require more than just two fingers.

We long for Malaysian hawker favourites the way they used to be made; the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of our hometowns; the clamour in a kin-packed house, the market, and a village feast.

We yearn for the days when our neighbours were almost like family, when we could laugh at ourselves and toss jokes without causing offence, when those who asked for help really needed it - not like these days when crooks and conmen take advantage of the good Samaritan in you.

But you probably won't feel like hiring maids. You'll be wary of polite but cash-strapped "foreigners." And the plight of the young couple, held hostage by tradition and bossy relatives who rarely visit, will infuriate anyone. "Let them hold their simple wedding ceremony! Big dos are expensive these days. You rant, rave and sulk about being defaced with charcoal when you see them maybe once a year or so, flapping your lips so freely when it's not your money, your children. What nerve! What gall!"

...She's good. They just don't make writers like that anymore.

Sadly, Cikgu Adibah has stopped writing entirely since suffering a stroke several years ago. I can't imagine what she feels about the current state of this country... nobody needs that kind of stress.

And when the glimmer of a certain ruby finally fades away, the loss of a warmer, friendlier and more innocent era and the voices of that time so well preserved in these books will be more keenly felt than before.


This piece was later published in The Malaysian Insider, 16 March 2012. I was surprised they accepted the submission. Many thanks to The Malaysian Insider.

I know, I'm not supposed to shill for books published by my employers, but these are some of the best reads I've seen in a while.

Besides: E-book versions of Adibah Amin's As I Was Passing Volumes I and II and Glimpses: Cameos of Malaysian Life will be out soon. Details to come.

---

As I Was Passing

Adibah Amin
MPH Group Publishing (2007)
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-06-6

Buy from MPHOnline.com

As I Was Passing II

Adibah Amin
MPH Group Publishing (2007)
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-08-0

Buy from MPHOnline.com

Glimpses

Cameos of Malaysian Life

Adibah Amin
MPH Group Publishing (2008)
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-58-5

Buy from MPHOnline.com

More News: Random House, Slate And Publishing

Publisher Random House triples the prices of e-books they sell to libraries. A slightly more detailed report by The Huffington Post says that libraries were informed that "wholesale charges for e-books would rise by more than 20 percent for new adult releases and more than double for new children's books."

The dawn of the immortal e-book that can be circulated without falling to pieces has put publishers in a bit of a spot, says the report. It is also noted that "HarperCollins' e-books 'expire' after 26 uses, Hachette and Macmillan only make part of their list available, and others like Penguin and Simon&Schuster don’t allow library lending at all."

The American Library Association has asked Random House to reconsider citing the financial pressures US libraries are also facing, as funding dries up and libraries close. "In a time of extreme financial constraint, a major price increase effectively curtails access for many libraries, and especially our communities that are hardest hit economically," said ALA president Molly Raphael in a statement.

• Slate finally gets a book review section. Followers of Slate should be excited, but if you're a book reviewer, some of the stuff already published may shrink your reviewer's balls to the point of dessication.
• It seems that book publishers in India aren't familiar with the concept of buying rights to sell foreign books, or that books, like music, are subject to copyrights.
• Get your book e-published for a traditional book deal. But would you wanna? Rachel Abbott, author of Kindle hit Only the Innocent, reportedly turned down a deal "because it didn't feel right." But it seems the book needs some ... touching up.
• Nine foreign words the English language "desperately" needs. ...I guess you can call me a "pilkunnussija". More such words here ... is there a book?
• Are painters of Hindi pulp novel covers going the way of movie poster painters?
• Some more tips on pimping your book. Because you can never have enough tips.
• Eight bad book blurbs by good writers, including Martin Amis, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides. Guess some people are just better at long-form writing.
• The "gay marriage" issue of the Archie comic has sold out, despite 'concerns' raised by conservative US group One Million Moms.
  
  Archie Comics co-chief exec John Goldwater: "We're sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people." A-men.
• When writers censor themselves - and why.
• Can writing as a career affect what one writes for art? Personal experience says it does, but I reckon there will be exceptions.
• A new French law passed to deal with the issue of orphan works - "out of print, still-in-copyright books, films, photographs, etc. whose rightsholders can't be found" - makes Google Book Settlement look good.
• "If you’re a book publisher, you’ve got the blues real bad." Crikey rubs it in - with salt.

News: Amazon, E-Book Censors And Seth Godin's Bad Apple

Why Jim Hanas and Others Cried "No More Amazon!"
In the midst of the Amazon vs IPG saga, author Jim Hanas has removed the Amazon "Buy" button from his web site for his short story collection, Why They Cried. The book was one of the titles distributed by IPG and yanked from Amazon's catalogue due to pricing issues between the two companies.

No big deal, right? Wrong, as Hanas explains, "...in my case — since my book has no print edition — it is much worse. My book page has vanished entirely. Reviews, summary, everything."

Hanas is only one of a slowly growing list of those who are dropping Bezos's online shopping behemoth. Oklahoma-based children's books publisher Education Development Corp decided to "stop selling to distributors that sell through Amazon in an effort to cut all ties to the Seattle-based company." EDC CEO Randall White went so far as to call Amazon a "predator" that "doesn't sell anything."

E-book social networking site Copia picked up the ball Amazon dropped by running sales on some of the titles pulled off the Kindle Store.

...But wait, is the "predator" changing its stripes? Or is that merely a diversionary tactic?


The New e-Gatekeepers
Apple, meanwhile, has allegedly refused to list Seth Godin's book in its online store because of the URLs to Amazon in the book's reference section, prompting the author to ask, who decides what gets sold in bookstores?

"First, because the web, like your mind, works best when it's open," states Godin. "Second, because once bookstores start to censor the books they carry ... then the door is open for any interest group to work hard to block books with which they disagree. Where does the line get drawn?" Where indeed.

Though e-books and self-publishing may have freed writers from the tyranny of the traditional publishing model, Apple's decision to not list Godin's book looks purely business-driven. Are these new gatekeepers, partly responsible for this new freedom, now retreating into the bastions of old to hold their positions in a borderless, more fluid publishing landscape?

Online transactions company Paypal has also begun blocking payments for an online publisher for material deemed obscene. "I've always believed fiction writers and readers should have the freedom to explore diverse topics and situations in the privacy of their own mind," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, one of what I think are the affected publishers.

Maybe, but when you start fantasising about rape, incest and the like and put it out in public, don't you...

Oh, right.

...Well, when a work of fiction is entirely about gratuitously graphic depictions of those kinds of things, maaaaybe someone should step in with some guidelines and put the foot down. But I agree with Coker's opinion that it's not Paypal's job: "When you sign up to a financial system you should not be required to look to it to provide you with moral correction."

How much of this has to do with the creeping influence of the far right in the US?


Dawn of the Niche Press
How can small publishers can get a leg up on the big ones? Hint: go niche, like small press Allium in Chicago that's reportedly filling a gap by producing fiction set in that city.

Small presses can also take big risks, which can pay off big. British publisher Hesperus Press, for instance, has acquired the UK rights to a Swedish bestseller with sales figures nearly as long as the title. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is a "laugh-out-loud funny, page-turning" novel that was turned down by some publishers (not named in the Guardian report). The MD of Hesperus thinks it might have been the "poor" quality of the original translation.

Niche-playing may lead to bigger things. Literary journal McSweeney's, for instance, is now an indie publishing house.

So...is it time for French-style niche publishing in India?


Google Slashes eBookstore Affiliates
Google as announced cuts its e-book affiliate programme. It appears that the number of referrals are too low, and Google is now limiting the number of affiliates to entities that are most likely to bring in the most hits.

Under this programme, affiliates: retailers, bloggers, publishers and other web site owners get between 6 and 10 per cent of a book's selling price, depending on the number of sales referred to Google's eBookstore. This rate is said to be higher than the Amazon counterpart.

Dear Mr Wolfgang Stockhausen...

First, let me thank you for your comments ("Amerigo's the man", 26 February 2012) regarding my review of Laurence Bergreen's Columbus: The Four Voyages.

Alas, I could only remember one reference Bergreen made to Vespucci in the book: near the end, where he states that the "New World" was named after the Florentine explorer. However, I can't recall if he explains how that came to be. I believe Bergreen was trying to keep his writings from straying too far from the book's central figure, so not much was mentioned about Amerigo Vespucci.

My wayward pen tends to run away when reviewing things, so I try to keep my piece within the perimeters of the book itself, and not the subject. Unfortunately, this also means that some salient points, such as the origins of America's name, are likely to escape notice. My thanks for pointing that out (this is why people should write to newspapers).

The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller is believed to have named the new continent for Vespucci in 1507. By the time Waldseemüller had second thoughts, a large number of maps had been distributed with the name, so it stuck. I don't think it occurred to Vespucci to give his own name to the New World.

Nor was Columbus on the look-out for a new land mass. He'd promised his royal Spanish patrons the fabled riches of China, India and maybe Japan: gold, spices and the like. From the book, one feels his fear of failing to live up to their expectations as well as his own.

Although Bergreen suggests that Columbus may have eventually realised that he stumbled upon a whole new continent, others posit that the Genoan mariner died believing he'd reached the shores of Asia.


I'd written this reply about six days earlier and sent it to The Star first; they published it on 11 March 2012.

In this version, the second paragraph is restructured, and the last line in the fifth paragraph is removed.

"It's An Election Year..."

So many voices have been raised over this matter that I felt mine wasn't necessary. My problem, however, is that I can't seem to keep my mouth shut.

Despite the financial and logistical problems that I'm sure will crop up, Erykah Badu responded with incredibly good grace towards the government's 11th-hour-and-58th-minute cancellation of her concert which would've taken place on Wednesday.

Badu also left a Facebook message about the ban, and I couldn't help chuckling sadly at the last line: "It's an election year." Or something like that. Did you see it?

Hailing from the US, Badu should know about election years. This year's campaign waged by George W Bush's party to replace Barack Obama is perhaps the dirtiest I've ever witnessed. The blatant racism and misogyny, the smug, self-righteous snootiness of the rich, the lies, half-truths and money being thrown around... Outsiders would wonder if the "United" in USA is mere rhetoric.

I pull my head out of the computer screen and, whaddya know, it's election year here too. At least, it feels like it.

Publishing the photo may have been "irresponsible", but so are the threats of violence and death to the purported 'offenders', and suggestions that the paper did it on purpose to inflame passions.

"Oh no, the cancellation will not affect our country's image at all."

Yeah. Right.

And when - or if - Badu plays in Jakarta, I can imagine the number of tweets dari seberang gleefully chortling at our missed opportunity.

Publishers' Miss Becomes A Hit

Patricia O'Brien's The Dressmaker, a work of historical fiction about a seamstress on the Titanic, was rejected 13 times based on the poor performance of her previous book.

So she submitted it for publication under the nom de plume "Kate Alcott".

After three days, someone bit. The Dressmaker by "Kate Alcott"? Oh, YES OM NOM NOM D PLOOM. It reportedly received rave reviews, and translation rights for the novel were sold in five countries - a first for O'Brien.

This is not about whether to use a pen name and which pen names would sell, although the subject is worth diving into. O'Brien had to hide behind an alias because the traditional houses who published her before were judging the success of this book based on what can now be considered an invalid benchmark.

Its success is one more reason for writers to bypass the well-known, lumbering old-school institutions.


Publishers be damned?
Then comes Anthony Horowitz's lovely piece on whether authors still need publishers.

For the foreseeable future, they do.

Despite being a best-selling author, one self-publishing phenom turned to a conventional publisher to do her editing, marketing, cover designs, etc so that she could be free to write books. A good publisher she's happy with, one presumes. For the kind of stuff she writes, doesn't she deserve the best kind of editing, packaging and publicity? Not that she needs much of the latter these days....

It seems the bigger the publishing house, the more it'll be hamstrung by its business model, and the socio-political climate of the countries it operates in. Far be it from publishers to challenge the ruling governments on what is fine to publish, however.

Publishers, therefore, can reclaim some of the ground they (think they have) lost by upping the quality of what they make and do. But will they pony up the kind of money for first-class editors, covers and marketing strategies? If they're willing to, will they end up overselling mediocre books, or not do enough to promote the better ones?

Every manuscript they take on is a roll of the dice, but one in which they can influence an outcome, i.e. make a product that's a bit better than the original 'script they got. I chafe at people who say things like, "What's one or two dozen typos in a 600-page book? It's not as if readers keep track of things like that." Or, "Did this country have phone booths with doors in the 1990s? Dunno, but don't lose sleep over it. No one's going to care."

Half a century ago, maybe. With readers now armed with Google and pay-per-view documentary channels, they are now demanding factual accuracy in books, particularly those that feature real-life people and places. If book reviewers can't find anything else to fill the obligatory space, they'll start hunting for nits to pick. And no amount of savvy marketing can hide the awfulness of a book from the multitudes of grassroots reviewers (book bloggers), who will make their displeasure of a crappy book known.

The self-published route may seem bumpy at the moment, what with dozens of badly edited and jacketed books flooding the market. With time, the small guys will improve and things will really start swinging then. The big marquee publishers will no longer be able to count on their history, traditions and the like to remain relevant. With every "meh" book - and the related typos - they produce, their cachet goes down to the point where they can't be distinguished from their small indie counterparts.

Guess who future authors will turn to when that happens.


Crowding out the old
I'm partial to crowdsourced publishing as part of the future. In this country, for instance, the creative pool of talent publishers crave is likely to comprise eccentric, anti-establishment personalities. But they're also the ones who are most likely to come up with concepts and content that surprise. After a job is done, they can choose to stay with the collective or move on to other things.

(Not to say that talent doesn't exist elsewhere.)

With the crucial elements of publishing: editing, layout design and marketing spread all over and connected by the Web, publishers can't claim to be the sole gatekeepers of literary tastes and harbingers of reading trends. Nor do we need critics of a Kakutanian bent to proclaim the best and worst of each book from rarefied heights like at the New York Times, not with the colourful and unrestrained outpourings of the Amazon/Goodreads crowd.

Of course, there's a chance that history will repeat itself; some of the now-monolithic publishers started small. With fame comes expansion, in operations and maybe heads.

The artists who designed a funky cover for a zine or a chapbook could grab the eyeballs of a big-name sponsor. And stories pop up every now and then about unknown writers who are lifted to prominence by discerning, renowned literary agents. Certain expectations would have to be met once they enter the mainstream. What happens when the independent artisan becomes a slave of the market?

That's when hard decisions have to be made. Grow big at the cost of quality and the personal touch, or stay the course and (metaphorically) starve?

The onus is then upon the indie writer/editor/designer/marketeer to lay down the law regarding the services he/she offers. Compromises have to be made to allow the artisan to consistently churning out good work while giving him/her the time to improve and live. It is hoped that the good client will understand.


A shapeless future
No longer will the rigid storied institutions determine how things are or should be. Many will be replaced by amorphous collectives, comprising seemingly disparate groups or skilled individuals, that fill similar socio-economical niches and redefine the rules of the game.

Traditional publishing houses will eventually have to adapt to an equally amorphous future, where an author can "redefine" himself/herself just by changing names. Institutions are much harder to change than individuals (some may disagree), but what's the pain of change when compared to the pain of irrelevance? Or oblivion?

Writing under aliases isn't a new thing. However, even the most flowery noms de plume can't hide the stench of bad writing.

News: New Village, (Maybe A) New Book, Peter Mayle and Libraries

After weeks of trawling the web, finally! Some big book news from home.

Headman of New Village
Feeling upbeat for See Tshiung Han (is that how it should be written?) and his New Village project. Check out their web site here.

Masthead for the New Village zine (Issue 0, July 2011), and one of the pages

It's definitely not your... usual kind of fiction. Given the risk-averse nature of the mainstream publishing industry, maybe it's a good idea to strike it out on your own. Self-publishing is becoming the rage, after all.

Congratulations to the New Village team and all the best with the project. ...Wonder if they're taking (literary) contributions?


Coming soon?
The distributors have informed me that they'll be distributing a book by artist Boey Cheeming. He'd e-mailed us sometime back to see if we can help him get what appears to be his illustrated childhood memoir into the local market. Would be thrilling if this comes to pass. In the meantime, read Ah Boey's (sorry, couldn't resist) graphic-heavy journal.


So-called "sex book" banned
One not-so-great news is the ban on Peter Mayle's Where Did I Come From?, a book that's been around when my age was still single digits. I remember reading an ex-neighbour's copy and... well, if the book makes you horny, I think you have some serious issues.

Sex sells, but put sex and Malaysia in the same sentence and you have a legion of news agencies who I presume want to bump up page hits by reporting on the same ban.

When will we ever get into the news for all the right reasons?


Other news

• Meanwhile, Kenny Mah sussses out some book cafés in Japan. Reminded me of Hoxes at Damansara Perdana, a little hideaway that eventually closed just as soon as I got comfortable.
• The Librotraficante (Spanish for "Booktrafficker") Movement is opening "underground libraries" in the face of an alleged ban on books on Mexican-American culture.
  
  Some time ago, the city of Tucson, Arizona banned the teaching of allegedly divisive, ethnically-biased Mexican-American studies in schools. Some see it as part of a wider plan to marginalise the Hispanic community by a state that's increasingly hostile to immigration, specifically Latino immigration.
  
  Why am I following this? It's just so... suspenseful! I want to know what happens next. And I do hope that there would be no book ban - or any ban whatsoever.
• Mercer County libraries add e-books to their shelves - but not without hiccups. As reported days ago, some of the big name publishers have stopped selling e-books to libraries. And some old fogies still aren't used to e-readers.
• New York payphone booths turned into "guerilla libraries". Would it work in Malaysi- no, it won't. But I guess it depends on what kind of books you'd put there....
• Survivors of the Bosnian war in pictures: The literary treasures of Sarajevo's centuries-old Gazi Husrav Beg Library. Pretty books, pretty pictures.
• Amazon does it again. The firm that's shaping up to be the Death Star of publishing and bookselling has pulled 5,000 titles by Chicago-based distributor Independent Publishers Group from its catalogue over sales terms. It's Amazon vs Macmillan all over again.
  
  Meanwhile, another boycott - by Barnes & Noble on Amazon titles - hits a number of books, including Penny Marshall's My Mother Was Nuts. It just means that it won't be displayed at B&N's network of brick-and-mortar shops, where new books are usually showcased. But is this a smart move?
• Satire, serials and shorts: Publishers are trying out variations of the e-book. Okay, e-books may be democratising publishing, but I still think you need people to make them better.
• Did you hear about Paramount Studios suing the Puzo estate to prevent more "Godfather" books? The suit claims that a previous Godfather novel "tarnished the legacy" of the film and "misled consumers in connection with advertising, marketing, and promotional material related to the first and second sequel novels".
  
  Just so happens that I have one of these books on a list of tentative titles to review later. Now I really want to get my hands on it.
• Speaking in tongues: Aravind Adiga's lingusitic journey. "...it was common for a boy of my generation to speak one language at home, another on the way to school, and a third one in the classroom. ... Kannada, which I spoke at home, and Hindi, which I had to learn in school, belong to different linguistic families and are as dissimilar as, say, Spanish and Russian."
• A shortlist for the Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year. Gotta love the standfirst.
• Oh, and Anthony Bourdain's book imprint Ecco announces new authors and books.

Yes, yes, JK Rowling is writing a book for adults (whatever that means) and US comedian Stephen Colbert is coming up with a children's book. Like I care a whole lot about either.

Language of The Reviewer

Ron Charles's hilarious video "Sh*t Book Reviewers Say" awesomely explains, without much explanation, how some overused words and phrases in book reviews might not belong there.

Some theorise that any review with two or more of such words is either a rush job or a disingenuous dissertation of the book, the author's art or both. Repeated use of certain words in the reviewer's repertoire imply inflexibility, laziness or, depending on the difficulty level, lexical snobbery.

Do any of the following sound familiar?

"...it's fun if you like that sort of thing..."

"It's just stunning!"

"...Kafkaesque..."

Holding a copy of Salvage the Bones: "...a love child between Jonathan Franzen and Emily Dickinson."

"...electrifying!"

Holding Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot: "It's like a cross between [Jhumpa Lahiri's] Interpreter of Maladies and Pat the Bunny."

"...her lapidary prose..."

"...an absorbing story...!"

"...gripping... provocative... riveting..."

Holding Karen Russell's Swamplandia: "It's at once thrilling - and deeply sobering...!"

"...so ...poignant..."

"The pages practically turn themselves!"

"...edgy ...haunting ...wildly imaginative!"

"Unputdownable!"

..."lapidary prose." Ha. No prizes for guessing who took that hit.

Because when you call something "Kafkaesque" ("marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity"), "Updikean" (like... John Updike), or "Dickensian" (reminds you of the poverty, social injustice and other aspects of Victorian England that Ol' Boz frequently wrote about), you're so not talking to the people who dig Danbrownian, Rowlingesque or Ahernite prose.

I'm guilty of some of these offences as well. A partial indictment:

"...gripping...

"...compelling..."

"...poignant... engaging..."

"...lyrical..."

"...poignant... poignant... poignant... poignant... poignant..." Yes, I'm a serial offender.

"...vivid..."

"...genius..."

It does feel as though I close one eye while typing, doesn't it?

Stripped of the remaining text and laid bare, these "forbidden" words stick out like sore digits. But is it such a horrible crime to re-use some words - particularly if they fit?

Now, let me introduce Orwell's wonderful essay on book reviewing, which I've been dying to do for months since I was given a printout of it.

One passage in the suspiciously autobiographical essay sums up the pain book reviewers go through:

...the prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash--though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment--but constantly INVENTING reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever. The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally
interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time.

...of course, I cannot argue against the existence of book reviewers who, for money or prestige, wallow in this misery.

"So then, Mr Local Book Reviewer, what are your two cents on this issue?"

When I have the time. I have at least two books which I haven't read to review for the papers and several more for the blog.

The Week Before Last

...I was busy with things to buy, things to rush, things to eat and drink, and things to read.

Dust mite-busting
After uncovering the main source of my stuffy nose problems, I've been taking small steps to address it...

From left: Demitze anti-dust mite spray, and LactoGG probiotics supplement

...And a Pen-SOH-nik vacuum cleaner, because a man needs at least one power tool in the house. Next on the list: anti-dust mite pillow and mattress protectors.


Book project wrap-up
At work, a book project to wrap up before the tentative date launch date of 10 April this year:

Coming soon to all good bookstores

Since last July, I've been editing this in-between other things at the office. This was a big one in terms of number of pages and images, all in colour.

Now, all we're waiting for is the Cataloguing in Publication data from the National Library. But the other pages are ready for printing.

For now, that's all I'm going to say. More will be revealed once I get my hands on a real copy.


Farewell, Coffee In Love Café
For those who still haven't caught on: the Coffee In Love Café at Easter Nursery, Sri Hartamas has closed, in preparation for a move to Publika, Solaris Dutamas. The café's concept will also change; I heard they're merging coffee with... tattoos.

However, I managed one last weekend visit before that, and how appropriate that Helen the owner was the barista on that day.

Helen in the house at Coffee In Love Café

Kind of sad to see the place go. Hopefully, the coffee, if served at the new place, will still be the same.


Reviews and more books
So a few of my submitted reviews were considered past their sell by date and won't make the papers. I felt less disappointed than I'd thought, probably because I was more concerned with keeping this blog fresh. And I'd read several books during Chinese New Year and finished a review on one of them. I'll be spreading these out over five or six weeks, so I guess I go that covered.

And the distributors' rep suggested more titles for review later, on top of the previous reading list:

Pantheon
Sam Bourne
HarperCollins (Feb 2012)
416 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-007413621

Unholy Night
Seth Grahame-Smith
Grand Central Publishing (Apr 2012)
320 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-446563099

The Family Corleone
Ed Falco
Grand Central Publishing (May 2012)
448 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-446574624

Had a nice dinner last week as well. You'll be hearing about it.

Later.

News: E-Book Rush, Book Deals And Libraries In The Lurch

The big news last week was the passing of artiste Whitney Houston. As tributes poured in, some people decided to cash in by publishing e-books dedicated to her and her memory. This, even before she's buried.

All these big pop stars can't even get a break offstage, thanks to the paparazzi and the spectacle-hungry fans they feed with all the latest on their idols. Even in death, her funeral had to be a public spectacle. For the world to mourn along, perhaps. But haven't they been doing that for days prior?

In India, a bookstore dies: The owner of the decades-old Manneys in Pune is folding up his shop because his children aren't interested, and there's no one he can pass the torch on to. So... Will the flame survive long after the hearth is gone? The article says "yes".

Someone is already asking whether out-of-print books can be considered antiques.

• More e-book app news: The Readium Open Source initiative has been launched to hasten the adoption of the IDPF EPUB 3 standard for e-books. Sounds like a good idea, if Apple, Amazon, etc can get on board. I expect some resistance from Apple in particular.
  
  Another platform that's "not Apple" (rubbing it in a little, I suspect) is Inkling's free interactive e-book publishing platform.
  
  Booktype, meanwhile, launches a collection of crowd-sourced e-book tools. From what I can see, it's a bit more involved than Unbound, where authors editors and designers get together to create and publish a book.
• Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other publishers are fighting over e-books while libraries suffer. The main concern is, according to the report: "If borrowing a book is too easy, in other words, you won’t buy it."
  
  It seems the digital book has raised serious legal, logistical and technical concerns among publishers and vendors. The tussles among these titans threaten to leave libraries in the lurch over e-book lending: what are libraries if they can't lend books - physical or digital ones?
  
  Underscoring that is Penguin's decision to stop selling e-books to libraries. They've also shut down some alleged book piracy sites, including library.nu.
• More fighting over Amanda Knox's future memoir, which is likely to discuss her murder trial in Italy. Since then, Knox has signed a US$4m book deal with HarperCollins.
  
  I'm sceptical, naturally. "Truth"? Perhaps. Booming sales? "Would be nice..." Sure.
• Some "Crabbit Old Bat" has some tips for you blogging writers. I thought the post makes a great point of reference.
• Apparently, it's hard to name a publishing house.
• Not a dream publishing success: Randy Susan Meyer's path towards publication. Think this is what the majority of authors face.
• Quentin Rowan, aka QR Markham, "author" of the controversial Assassin of Secrets, profiled in The New Yorker.
• Some non-textual content: Shit book reviewers say, by Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles. I think there's at least one nod to Michiko Kakutani in there. The way Charles intones, "...her lapidary prose..." just cracks me up.
  
  Do check out Charles's other video where he wears bacon on his head for his video review of Danielle Evans's short story collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
  
  There's more pork as devout Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow reads Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss. And does it quite well, too. Tebow to Tebow.

When New World Changes Old, And Vice Versa

I don't have much to add to this review, other than the doubts I had about the "Mongol empire in ruins". A quick but much-belated check revealed that the Mongol Empire began breaking up around 1368, when the Yuan Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Ming Dynasty.

Now, we have the Internet, which not only informs us when an empire falls but can potentially facilitate the fall of empires. Misinformation, conquest, and war and all its inhumanities, however, are still with us.

---

Clash of civilisations

The shockwaves of Christopher Columbus's voyages of exploration and discovery five centuries ago still reverberate today

first published in The Star, 17 February 2012


The Christopher Columbus I read about in school was the famous explorer and navigator who discovered America. His image then was viewed through rose-tinted lens, his exploits written and spoken of in admiring tones.

Years later, I'm older, just a teeny bit wiser, and ready for the rest of the story. So thank you, Laurence Bergreen, for writing Columbus: The Four Voyages. This book appears to be an attempt to fill the gaps in the Columbus narrative and explore the darker side of the explorer's forays into parts of the Caribbean. It is dark, and bound to instil revulsion towards the behaviour of the Spaniards who would later hasten the demise of the Inca and Aztec empires.

Apart from the life story of Christopher Columbus, or Cristóbal Colón as he was known in Spain, the author also shows us what it was like in Genoa and Europe back then, thus providing historical context for everything else that followed: Columbus's voyages and the subsequent colonisation of the New World and the subjugation of its native populations. Bergreen also notes that other Genoans before Columbus tried – and failed – to sail across the Atlantic. And the reaction from those who heard about his research: "You mean he made four voyages?" Yes, he did.

The Genoan's idea to cross the Atlantic and arrive in the East was, from Bergreen's writings, a badly informed venture based on mostly unreliable accounts by the likes of Marco Polo and the polymath Ptolemy (c. 90–c. 168CE). By Columbus's time, the rule of the "Grand Khans" in China was long over and the Mongol empire lay in ruins. But he didn't know that.

They even added an image of the explorer, allegedly painted
by Venetian artist Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547). No
paintings of Columbus were made when he was alive, and no
one is sure if the guy here is ol' Chris. If he hadn't been
away most of the time...

Of course, the undertaking needed lots of resources. Failing to sell his idea to the king of Portugal, Columbus turned to the Spanish monarchs. His proposal, in short, was: Give me men, ships, and stuff, and a nice shiny title, and I'll bring back spices, gold and all manner of riches – and convert a few locals to Christianity. The self-styled "bearer of Christ" believed his was a holy enterprise. That belief was strengthened by the safe crossing of the Atlantic on his first voyage, and a few other strokes of luck in subsequent journeys to "the East".

But his luck and supposed divine protection was not foolproof. Though a masterful mariner and expert on the water, Columbus was rather clumsy on land and in politics. Many of the men who came with him to the New World on subsequent voyages behaved badly, to say the least. Columbus himself was accused of using torture to keep the peace and force the natives to bring him gold. News of his alleged mismanagement of the New World settlements reached Spain, and at the end of his third voyage, he was sent back in chains and stripped of his authority. After returning from his disastrous fourth and final voyage, he died in 1506, a physical and emotional wreck.

Bergreen has done a good job researching and writing Columbus. The facts practically turn the pages for the reader, though one could argue that it could also be the morbid fascination with people's bad behaviour. Even some of the "noble savages" exhibit varying degrees of political cunning, using their ties with the explorers to their advantage.

As for Columbus himself, sadly, I came away with an impression that he was a self-serving, delusional jerk with gold fever, who was not averse to the idea of enslaving the natives, even those who had been kind to him and his countrymen. The author uses several forms of the word "delusion" a few times.

Though Columbus may not have been the first to reach the Americas, he did make it public, triggering the massive and continuous influx of people to the Americas. A partial result of that is the world-shaping superpower that is today's United States. His name has been given to many roads, buildings, vessels, geographical features, and towns in that country. The native populations there, however, would probably have other opinions.

Bergreen's Four Voyages shouldn't be seen simply as an indictment of his subject's failures – as a governor or explorer of the East – but also a historical account of the consequences of empire, and how lofty goals and high moral grounds can never fully justify the damage done to the colonised in the name of religion, wealth and nation.

Even so, Columbus shouldn't be harshly judged for the times his conduct was less than exemplary. His fate depended on the successes he promised he would achieve upon crossing the Atlantic. If he didn't make it, well, who can say that a world unmarked by his voyages would be any better?


18/10/2014  About a week after this review was published, someone wrote to The Star in response to it. The paper published my reply not long after.

Another issue I felt I haven't explored was the 'true image' of Columbus in comparison with one Bartolomé de las Casas. But I think I'll let The Oatmeal handle that.

---

Columbus

The Four Voyages

Laurence Bergreen
Viking (2011)
417 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-670-02301-1

MPH Quill Issue 33, Jan - Mar 2012

This issue is a bit... subdued, but still interesting.

Cover for this issue (left), and the Richard Zimler interview

Andrew Matthews, writer and illustrator of the best-selling self-help Happy books, talks about happiness, attitude, and success. And his latest book on bullying, a departure from his usual theme(s).

Sample shots from the Andrew Matthews feature

...That looks like a real practised smile.

Meanwhile, Eric Forbes speaks with Richard Zimler, author of such books as The last Kabbalist of Lisbon (1996), Hunting Midnight (2003), The Warsaw Anagrams (2011). Also featured is Margaret Stohl, YA author of the Beautiful Creatures series, and the Zapp family who travelled the world in a 1928 vintage Graham-Paige.

First pages of the features for Margaret Stohl (left) and the Zapps

Robert Raymer ponders whether creative writing workshops are fun or torture, while Geoffrey S Walker (The Bomoh's Apprentice (2010) and Blood Reunion (2011)) encounters an otherworldly distraction while writing.

Also included are excerpts of the coffee table book Sikh Community in Malaysia and bits about Charles Dickens, in conjunction with his 200th anniversary of his birth. And visit Cappadocia in the Turkish region of Anatolia, a place known for its chimney-like rock formations. It also has several underground cities where early Christians hid.

There was some talk about an annual issue for 2012, but nothing concrete so far.

News: Dickens 200th, E-Book Apps, And The Amazon Boycott

Last Tuesday (7 February) marked the 200th birthday of Charles John Huffam Dickens, author of such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist and founder of the literary magazine All the Year Round. I'd say more, but I haven't read or am familiar with his life or writings. Maybe it's the language, or the length of some of his works.

Bring in the e-book apps. Last week CNet featured another e-book publishing app: Booktango, plus some self-publishing tips. And the Booktrack soundtrack app for books "works", app-arently. The way things are going for e-books, we'll be watching movies on smartphones.

Red Staple Inc, meanwhile, has announced the release its browser-based, Red Staple Enhanced ePub Authoring Tools. And French firm Aquafadas is offering tools to help comic creators self-publish digitally.

Also: There's this book, A Lifespan of a Fact, which is said to be about the task of fact-checker for a novel in progress. The excerpt, however, does the book little help: it looks like part of an exchange between a beleaguered fact-checker trying to do his job and an author who changes facts to better suit his "art". It does looked hammed up, doesn't it? Despite the apparently less-than-glowing reviews of the book, I'm still curious about it.

Some time ago, Barnes & Noble announced that they won't be selling books published by Amazon, in protest of the latter's allegedly aggressive tactics to monopolise the book publishing sector. That number rose to three with Canadian outfit Indigo and US company Books-A-Million following suit. Then the American Booksellers Association for-profit division IndieCommerce hopped into the anti-Amazon bandwagon.

In the short-term, this tactic may help highlight Amazon's bold moves and open it up to some scrutiny, but I'm not sure what it would do to these companies in the long run as Amazon cranks out more and more popular titles.

• Running on empty: US indie publishing house Grateful Steps in Asheville, Colorado. Working without pay? In the US? That's dedication.
• Edinburgh book festival chief Nick Barley wants authors, not celebrities.
• Writer Adam Mars-Jones's take on Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall wins The Omnivore's inaugural hatchet job award. The prize is given to the 'writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review' of the past year 'not to punish bad writing, but to reward good and brave and funny and learned reviewing'", says the Guardian report.
• Tamil audio books, it seems, are making a comeback in India.
• Another self-publishing success story: Kerry Wilkinson sells over 250,000 copies on Kindle, beating Lee Child, Stieg Larsson and James Patterson.
• The future of academic publishing: accessible, borderless, connected. Sounds like the Internet.
• What's missing from children's books of late? A study suggests that kids' books these days are being set in nature less and less. Imagine that. And imagine this:
  
  "Junior, stop changing your iPhones so often. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know."
  
  "Trees? What are they?"
  
  Shudder. Elsewhere, more and more parents are reading less and less fairy tales to their kids. Why? "Too scary," it seems. Look at the top ten list. Of course "Jack and the Beanstalk" is "unrealistic". It's. A. Fairy. Tale. Make-believe.
  
  If only they knew just how Grimm some fairy tales used to be. Guess they don't make kids like they used to.

News: Franzen, Coelho And An Endangered Publishing Ecosystem

It's been three hours since I returned from a gym. That's my resolution for this year: spend some time working out - and tackling that problem I've had for years.

Some big news includes Jonathan Franzen's rant about e-books damaging society and endangering democracy. Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan blows off the latter, calling it "Wieseltierian piffle" (whatever that is). Sullivan's readers put in their two cents on the issue.

But Franzen isn't the only author who seems to hate e-books, and e-books aren't the only things he hates. That being said, "Things Jonathan Franzen Says Are Bad for Society" would make a great e-booklet.

Paulo Coelho, however, loves e-books. So much so, that he's spreading that love - by asking people to pirate his e-books. It's understandable when you know that he claims to owe his big break to his decision to make The Alchemist free for download on his web site. But Coelho's no struggling author, and I don't think he's sending out the right kind of message with his "Pirate Me!" plea.

• The Amazon vs Other Publishing Houses battle heats up with Barnes & Noble announcing that they won't stock books published by Amazon. Also joining the boycott is Canada's Indigo Books and Music. This guy says that move won't work.
  
  Someone even went so far as to say that Barnes & Noble is the last hope for traditional publishers. I hope B&N won't take that too seriously because, well, look at Borders. The Authors Guild, part of the Authors League of America, blogged its take on a "publishing ecosystem on the brink".
  
  Amazon, meanwhile, gets achy breaky with a publishing deal for Billy Ray Cyrus's memoir. Because who can resist the urge to insert "achy breaky" in a sentence like that?
• In response to the ban on Mexican American studies in Tucson, Arizona, which entails an alleged ban on books about Latino history and culture, the Librotraficante movement is planning to smuggle books that would be banned back into the state. Elsewhere in the US, some schools are adopting Mexican American studies.
• Some "big" and familiar reasons why indie authors are not taken seriously.
• Flavorwire's list of the most dangerous books of all time.
• An interesting piece on marriage and bookshelves. We've all heard of joint bank accounts - joint home libraries, anyone? I didn't know having different reading preferences could be a problem for married couples.
• Ewan Morrison says we're at the start of an e-publishing bubble. A dissenting voice speaks out. Also, there may be problems in pushing e-textbooks at one university.
• An author's guest post about the first month in Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select programme. In short: you won't get rich quick.
• Some things learned from opening a bookstore: tips for buying bookshelves, recommending books and stocking free stuff baskets. Because lists like these can come in handy.
• Why do we insist on learning lessons from the books we read? ...Yeah, why do we?
• Someone asks: Should "Mein Kampf", with its "hundreds of pages of turgid, often incoherent prose," remain banned? I say no. The ban hasn't worked at all in stopping the hate. And the "Never" in "Never again" is happening to other people.
• Another thing we share with Indonesians: not reading a lot of good books. No simple explanations here, however.
• It's not just budding millionaire YA authors. Serious photojournalists also have trouble publishing books. Here's one photojourno's rocky road towards publishing his book on the illegal trade of endangered species.
• Weighed down by serious reads? Take a book break and sit down with something lighter. Don't think anyone should be judged for that.
• Moon People is probably the worst book ever (for 2012) - just look at the excerpts. Makes me excited about what "the worst book ever" will be for 2013.

A Nearly Fulfilled Prophecy

“There shall come a day when a prince of my line shall possess this treasure, and it is that prince who shall make all lands below the wind subject to him.”

So promises Malik al-Mansur, the last king of Beruas, to anyone who finds the hoard of riches and artefacts he'd assembled and hidden after the Portuguese invaders sacked his kingdom. This is the premise of Iskandar Al-Bakri's debut, The Beruas Prophecy, published by Silverfish Books.

No vampires, zombies, child wizards or sentient jewellery here. This piquant package features a legendary treasure trove, villainous orang putih, Malay secret societies and unlikely heroes. We also get magic and an appearance by Taming Sari, the keris once wielded by the legendary warrior Hang Tuah.

Months before the Pangkor Treaty is to be signed, a promising silat student is shot dead by a bullying British officer. Said officer is part of a plot to destabilise Perak through the use of pirates, so that the Brits can "intervene" and set up shop in the state. But this officer and his cohorts are also looking for the fabled hoard of Malik al-Mansur, who ruled Beruas around the twilight of the Malaccan Sultanate.

Searching for the treasure, these Brits also get tangled up with two Malay secret societies. Indera Sakti, founded after the fall of Malacca, has become a nest of vipers who seeks the fulfilment of Malik al-Mansur's prophecy by one of their own. Darul Kubra, at odds with Indera Sakti, wants to keep the treasure a secret. A power struggle between two Indera Sakti factions adds to the excitement.

While causing trouble at the British's behest, pirate king and Indera Sakti bigwig Sabu sacks the village of Kuala Sepetang, the home of village elder and silat grandmaster SiTumi. Burning with vengeance, the old man and several other villagers join members of Darul Kubra who are out to foil Indera Sakti's latest schemes. Clashes of swords, silat and sorcery would follow.

If this book were a dish, it has all the ingredients - albeit with a little English mustard - for an exciting, gripping made-in-Malaysia senjata dan sihir epic with lip-smacking local flavours. It's also aesthetically pleasing: nice cover, nice typeface, and a comfortable layout. Reading about Malay traditions and jampi (incantations) in English feels like a sunny burst of citrus. Even Hang Tuah's origins and significance are explored briefly. No apparent romance sub-plots, but no problem.

...except the overly detailed "tell instead of show" narrative - from the first paragraph of page one.

Balik Pulau, 1823. Friday evening just after eight. Yaakob lives with his wife and three daughters in a village in the west of Penang Island. His house is a modest, timber one that has just two rooms. Yaakob built it with the help of his neighbours a week before his wedding, many years ago. His wife has planted vegetables and tapioca in the front yard, and banana along the sides.

Everything else after the description of Yaakob's house is not critical to the storyline. Also, we probably don't need to know that one Sir Robert Fullerton "was born in 1773, the son of Reverend William Fullerton", etc etc.

These awkward little info dumps continue throughout the book, even for cameo characters such as SiTumi's daughter Minah. One page after she first appears, the fish salter and mother is killed with a head shot by pirates raiding Kuala Sepetang. Nowhere is she depicted salting fish. She doesn't even get to take out a pirate's eye with a well-thrown ikan kembung masin, which would have been awesome.

Instead of the compelling cinematic tale it could have been, we get a wayang kulit where the dalang moves the characters about and recites the story. Action scenes become formulaic, jokes fall flat and the mysticism and lore sound clinically curated. One casualty is The Dark Mambang; the spiritual patron of Indera Sakti is more Muppet than malevolent in its appearances.

I've not seen a pendekar Melayu (Malay warrior) novel in English that's written this well, and with such good material. If not for the staid, sporadically choppy storytelling, The Beruas Prophecy would be a fine example for its genre.

---

The Beruas Prophecy

Iskandar Al-Bakri
Silverfish Books (2011)
233 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3221-34-9

Franzen's Freedom Fries

Heard about Jonathan Franzen's rant about e-books corroding social values and endangering democracy? I am, and you should be, puzzled at the leap from e-books to self-government. It's such a sudden transition that one wonders whether the journo skipped a paragraph or two somewhere.

However, some points are worth pondering.

I don't know if the "radical contingency" in the fluidity and stealth of e-book edits can "threaten democracy", but what I thought was pertinent was this bit when he argued for paper books: "Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper."

One year in publishing has taught me that one is never really, really sure if a book is going to be right, even after it's printed. Something will slip through: missing punctuation marks, typos and the like, or the occasional, unfortunately nuanced phrase. What we do is try. Really hard.

The loads of people touting e-books and self-publishing as the future appear to be inadvertently selling the myth that digital self-publishing is a viable road towards best-sellership in the new millennium.

Probably, but not without the "hard work" that goes into Franzen's idea of the book, such as editing and marketing. Why else did that self-publishing wunderkind eventually seek the help of traditional publishers?

Franzen also reportedly made a statement that suggests we left our nations' financial decisions to bankers because we're too busy with our gadgets:

If you go to Europe, politicians don't matter. The people making the decisions in Europe are bankers. The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people. And we are hostage to that because we like our iPhones.

Makes you wonder, right? Was it the editorial standards or did Franzen's train of thought, in fact, skip a few rails?

I do agree that the tech boom has its dark side. Hardware manufacturers seemed to be pushing newer, faster, smaller, higher capacity, etc on consumers, creating a market that recycles its gadgets every year or so. Like the Walter Berglund character in Franzen's Freedom, many of us are kept awake at night by the "trillion bits of distracting noise", finding ways to contribute to the chatter for no apparent reason other than to belong. Our offline lives become mundane.

Perhaps that's why some people shouldn't be connected to the Internet when they want to write or work.

But as it has already been pointed out, neither paper nor digital media confer a true sense of permanence. Paper degrades, turns colour or becomes mildewy. And what if an e-publisher pulls a book from its library? Then, this claim:

...Apple, for instance, is well-known for both refusing to publish apps for the iPhone/iPad/iPod ecosystem that offend its editorial sensibilities or are contrary to its own business goals, and revoking previously-published apps, effectively deleting them from customers' devices.

If true, isn't that more of a threat to democracy - and freedom of speech or expression - that the addiction to gadgets?

Books will be around, and it will take on other forms. Some of us just need more time than others to get used to the changes.

Read, Read, Read Some More

Hey, it's fill- um, reading list time.

I've been loaned a couple of books for perusal, and given a list of new and upcoming books to pick for review. And here are my selections from that pool, in no particular order:

• The Natural
  Richard La Ruina
  HarperOne (February 2012)
  224 pages (hardcover)
  Non-fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-062-08978-6
• The Mirage
  Naguib Mahfouz
  Anchor (February 2012)
  480 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-307742582
• The Wisdom of Beer
  Christopher G Moore
  Heaven Lake Press (2011)
  310 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-616-7503-11-0
• A Land More Kind Than Home
  Wiley Cash
  William Morrow (April 2012)
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-062088147
• An Unexpected Guest
  Anne Korkeakivi
  Little, Brown (April 2012)
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-316-21266-3

I won't be reviewing The Wisdom of Beer for the papers, though. As for the rest, well, there's no confirmation, either. But I hope I get to read them all.