News: Novels For All, Tweets Of The Week

I'm mourning the end of a nice long weekend, so no yard-long list of Book Marks. Let's start off with something positive and more important.

Non-profit community Novels for Nepal is morphing into Novels for All, in its goal of encouraging reading while raising funds for charity. One of its initiatives, Café Reads, has been going on for some time now, raising funds to refurbish a study room in The Divine Mercy Boys Home in Kepong.

Novels for All has set up mini-libraries in several cafés in KL and PJ, including Artisan Roast TTDI, The Bee @ Publika and MyBurgerLab which isn't a café, but who cares if it's for a good cause?

Each of the books in the DIY shelves are for sale at RM10, or one can drop some spare change into a donation jar in the premises. All proceeds will go to the project; the target is to raise RM1,000. Sadly, books have been filched from these shelves.

All titles are handpicked by dedicated members of the group, so you probably won't see Fifty Shades (thank G*d) or anything from Harlequin or Mills & Boon.

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Those following the Buku Fixi-Popular micro-saga shouldn't be surprised to know that the inevitable has happened:

Popular x nak jual Fixi lagi & kembalikan 1000+ buku. Termasuk stok cetakan 2011. Menunjukkan mrk x pandai jual buku. pic.twitter.com/slRlUmMY

BukuFixi @BukuFixi • 23 Jan 2013

So Popular Bookstores has decided to stop selling Fixi titles and has returned over a thousand copies of the former's books, which includes stock from 2011. Which, according to Fixi, is no big loss, since buyers are going to other bookstores as well as its own online shop.

Maybe those returned books can be sold as part of some kind of promotion. I'm curious as to how fast they will go.

Guess that's the end of that. Both sides should let it go already.

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Meanwhile, controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen had some words for countries that banned the screening of Tamil film Vishwaroopam, allegedly due to the film's terrorism theme and portrayal of Islamists:

Malaysia banned #Vishwaroopam.Coward countries will ban it.Coward cinemas will not show it.This fear of Muslim fanatics is just plane stupid

taslima nasreen ‏@taslimanasreen • 26 Jan 2013

Sharp words and typo aside, I'm unsure as to how this film could worsen perceptions towards Islamists, especially those who openly advocate violence and bay for the blood of critics and opponents. When they are their own worst enemies, who needs filmmakers, writers or poets?

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Is a library in Sydney, Australia going to shelve Lance Armstrong non-fiction titles under "Fiction"? Uh, no, it isn't. And it can't. "Libraries can't arbitrarily reclassify categories of books, because that depends on the ISBN number that is issued by the National Library," said a spokesman for the Manly council in Sydney that runs the library. Fair enough, though it would be a manly thing to do. Suing Lance and his publishers for 'cheating' readers, however....

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As readers go digital, physical books as collectibles may become a viable option. A 101 on collecting books seems to argue that it's easier to hoard for love than financial gain - spotting books that will become eBay bonanzas in the future.

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Move over, Disney princesses, for Chitrangada, Sita and Draupadi, says New Delhi-based writer and educator Saraswati Nagpal. Perhaps its time a new generation of Indian women had some homegrown heroines to look up to.

Now, if only someone can stand up against those who want Joe Anton's supporters barred from the Jaipur lit fest.

Yeast, Encore

I rarely produce two reviews from one restaurant, but this place changes character according to the different times of the day. And I am sort of taken with the food there, even though I can afford to dine there, like, once a month. Thank goodness they also sell breads and pastries.

Two realisations: Virtually all my food reviews end with some form of "I'll be back", and I seem to be reviewing more restaurants than books lately. Which is why I guest-blogged this piece elsewhere first. In hindsight, this makes no difference, since every piece I've ever published will still be archived here.

Truth is, I love food more than books but eventually there'll be some foods I may no longer be able to enjoy. Books, on the other hand, do not raise blood sugar or cholesterol levels, although stress level warning labels should be applied to some.

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Paris on a plate

When it comes to classic French bistro fare, Yeast Bistronomy rises to the occasion

first published on Nooks and Gems, 27 January 2013


The words spilled into the chat window from Melody's end: "I feel like splurging."

Me too, as it was just after payday and I can always count on Melody's sombre moods as an excuse for a posh evening out. And I had one spot in mind.

"Let's go to France!" I typed out.

"Haha," she shot back. "You going to fly me there, izzit?"

"No, we'll drive. Only twenty minutes to get there."

Because another slice of France had arrived on our shores just a few weeks back.

Diners at Yeast (left) and the vacherin aux fruits rouge
(vacherin with red berries)

On one of her occasional food hunts, Melody had stumbled upon a quaint little boulangerie (bakery) with a cheerful yellow signboard in Bangsar. As I am often a grouchy bear in the mornings when I wake up, she had to drag me there for breakfast one early morning – "Try it, you'll like it" – in case she couldn't finish the food.

Besides breakfast eggs and baked goods, Yeast Bistronomy also offered lunch and, more recently, dinner. I took three looks at the lunch and dinner menu (so many lovely items) and decided that we would be back.

Yeast Bistronomy was a slightly different place at night. The cosy Parisian-style boulangerie in the morning was now a cosy Parisian-style bistro and wine bar by night. The bread shelves and baskets were mostly empty, save for a few doggie bags filled with samples of the morning's baked goods for patrons to take home after dinner.

Chefs at work at Yeast Bistronomy

The founder himself met us at the door and showed us to the seats we picked: at the bar, facing the open kitchen. A veteran of the food and beverage business, Christophe Chatron-Michaud helped open and run restaurants with names such as Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Chatron-Michaud reminds me somewhat of New York chef Eric Ripert).

In addition to easing his palate's homesickness, he started Yeast to bring Malaysians what he claims is a more authentic French culinary experience with imported French talent. Form his home country is Yeast's baker, Christophe Gros who inherited his father's skills as an artisanal boulanger (baker) and Yeast's head chef Clara Champonnois. Even the butter Yeast uses, a delicately flavoured, creamy product from the Charentes region in France, is covered by the European Union's Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) scheme.

Frisée aux lardons: French chicory and bacon salad,
with poached egg

With that kind of attention to detail, little wonder the baked goods we'd sampled one Saturday morning had that effect on us. What would the dinner menu do?

We picked seats facing the kitchen prep area, not far from the stoves. Rather warm, but we like being different, and these were ringside seats to some hot cooking action.

After our orders were taken, the bread basket arrived, along with a bit of that EU-covered butter. We nibbled sparingly at the bread, mindful of the need to save room for the main dishes.

Hearty, flavourful beefy braised goodness. Not telling you
any more about it... go and try it yourself

We shared a salad and soup. The frisée aux lardons is a classic French bistro salad that consists mainly of French chicory and bits of bacon, topped with a poached egg. No complaints with the salad, and the sweetness of the soup du jour, a sweet corn soup, was just right and went well with the shredded duck confit.

Nothing says France more eloquently than foie gras, but boeuf bourguignon will do if you're on the look-out for creeping calories or PETA-type activists. It's enough for Melody, who considers the dish of beef slowly braised in a sauce of red wine a classical French must-try.

Petites Madeleines Chaudes: Tiny bundles of fluffy warm sweetness

What arrived was three chunks of beef sitting on a rib bone laid on a bed of greens, drizzled with sauce that mingled with a pool of "root vegetable" puree — I suspect it's celeriac, which is a kind of ... root vegetable. We saw the sous chef dipping into a crock full of the stuff for someone else's order; "celeriac puree", he told Melody when she had asked.

Mon dieu, the rich, tender, melt-in-your-mouth beef ... each mouthful was a trip back to an old French kitchen where peasants simmered tough cuts of meat in red wine to make them more palatable. The mellow, slightly nutty puree cuts through some of the beef's richness, making each bite feel less heavy, so it goes down much easier. The crispy fried onions on top were a nice touch.

By now, Melody was almost full. I wiped the plate clean of beef juice and sauce with some leftover bread. I sighed deeply. "Okay, I think we can forgo dessert."

For some reason, Monsieur Chatron-Michaud thought different. In spite of Melody's protests, he insisted and assured us that it was just "a little something" that won't bust our guts.

We looked at each other, hoping that the "little something" was measured by Malaysian standards.

We ended up with a vacherin aux fruits rouge, a glass filled with vanilla ice cream, red berries, red berry coulis and bits of meringue at the bottom. The heavy-looking concoction was strangely light, not very filling, and delicious. We also had a ramekin of tiny madeleines, still warm from the oven and dusted with icing sugar.

I look over at Melody, whose mood had significantly improved - but that happened after the braised beef, which I can spell on the first try by now.

"So, can you roll proper French 'R's now?" I asked, still surprised that she had taken French lessons at university.

She seemed uncertain. "I ... think so." And then, she threw out a few phrases. "What do you think?" she asked afterwards.

I think there are some things even authentic French cuisine can't do.

---

Yeast Bistronomy

24G, Jalan Telawi 2
Bangsar Baru
59100 Kuala Lumpur

Pork-free

Fridays and Saturdays: 8am-10:30pm
Other days from 8am-10pm

Breakfast: 8am-11:30am
Lunch: 11:30am-3:30pm
High Tea: 3:30pm-5:30pm
Dinner: 6pm until closing

Closed on Mondays

+603-2282 0118

enquiries@yeastbistronomy.com

Web site | Facebook page

Honk If You Wear Suspenders

For a while, the then homemaker/author wrote a series of English language columns for The Star, and also authored several books on winning contests and tourist destinations.

Since returning to full-time employment, Teh seems to have stopped blogging, but hopes to write more books.

Like what we've done with Adibah's books, we're converting her books, Honk! If You're Malaysian and Do You Wear Suspenders, into e-book format.

As is often the case, I ended up reading the books instead of merely proofreading them - I believe there is a difference. And it was kind of fun.


Malaysiana, sharply sliced and served
Honk! If You're Malaysian and its prequel, Life's Like That are similar to Sri Delima's three books on Malaysiana, but has a more urban feel to it. The city, specifically Kuala Lumpur, is the backdrop to a lot of scenarios.

Unlike Adibah's coy, teasing former schoolteacher, Teh spares nothing and no-one when delivering advice and home truths, like the fiery, quick-witted, sharp-tongued aunt in the family everyone wants on their side of a discussion - or argument. No beating about the bush for her. Busybodies, procrastinators, fake beggars, annoying LRT passengers, look out.

And: "If a typical Chinaman, the type who wears Pagoda singlets and baggy drawers, tries to kiss me, I would punch and kick him until he resembles pickled mustard." Don't you like her already?

One thing about Honk! is just how insightful and instructional many of the articles can be. Her tips on becoming "the savvy shopper" (shh, don't let the supermarkets in on them) shows she's an old hand in writing tips and tricks. I'd heard that Congratulations! You Have Won!, now out of print, was considered a best-seller in the day.

Equally instructional are her suggestions to avoid being a victim of snatch thieves, decorating your new car, and things to do when the traffic lights turn red. Encyclopaedic chapters on things such as the kinds of beggars we have; the kinds of men, according to how often they wash their cars; and some common Manglish phrases are entertaining and enlightening.

The new cover for Honk! If You're
Malaysian that marks its 20,000th
sale milestone

And with a certain chapter, she scores a palpable hit for women everywhere who've been deprived of their husbands, thanks to the World Cup.

When Teh introduces chatroom lingo, she points out that: "...PITA isn’t the bread with a pocket where you can stuff all sorts of fillings for a delicious meal. POTS aren’t the vessels you use to cook your chicken stew in. SOS isn’t the distress signal you draw in the sand when you’re marooned on an uninhabited island. GAL isn’t a young girl, and KIT isn’t a set of tools."

Is Teh Malaysian? Definitely. Are you Malaysian? Honk honk!


Life, love, lexicon
Teh's Do You Wear Suspenders? The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim, however, shares the same concept as Ellen Whyte's Logomania series. Both also started life as newspaper columns. Teh introduces idioms, eponyms, heteronyms, malapropisms, contronyms, oxymorons and so on through the life of a fictional character.

Eh Poh Nim, a marketing executive with a pharmaceutical company, is a talkative woman who can't resist any opportunity to show off her English knowledge - you know, the kind who'd use "pulchritude" instead of "beauty" and tells you of several other synonyms for it. And:

If she was entertaining clients at the lounge and someone ordered a Bloody Mary, she would launch into an explanation of how the cocktail of vodka and tomato juice came to be named thus.

"Did you know that Bloody Mary was named after Queen Mary I? She put to death some 300 people as heretics and imprisoned many more. What a shame, isn’t it?"

If someone at the office came down with diarrhoea, she would announce to everyone that Daniel Elmer Salmon, an American veterinary surgeon, was the one who identified and gave his name to the bacteria Salmonella which was probably the cause of the diarrhoea.

Of course, this behaviour doesn't sit very well with many of her acquaintances and an old flame. But because of her generally upbeat disposition, it doesn't keep her down for long. And, quite unexpectedly, someone new enters her life.

Why does it sound like a story? Because it is. And that's why it's engaging.

Read what happens when Eh Poh Nim meets Big Bertha, chats with Big Willie and gets stunned by a ball of fire. Eh Poh Nim also gets educated by a dogged cobbler but don't pester her about it, as she can be acerbically alliterative when annoyed.

Also: Learn how to chew the fat and talk turkey and find out why you won't get any writing done with stationary. And no, I don't think Grand Prix legend Michael Schumacher makes or has ever made shoes in his career.

Though each chapter is short and doesn't really expand a lot on the characters, the length is sufficient for the purpose of this book. I don't think all the -isms and -nyms are featured here, just a few to help us get by - and maybe impress/irritate our co-workers and dates.


Fun, fast, educational
Some would feel that the stories are a little dated; Honk! and Suspenders were published in 2007 and 2009 respectively, though the articles that comprise them may be older. But it's great nostalgia and English is evergreen. Both are fun, fast reads. Informative, too.

...can't help wondering what the combined genius of Adibah Amin, Lydia Teh and Ellen Whyte would produce...


Honk! If You're Malaysian and Do You Wear Suspenders? is now available as e-books at MPH Digital. Sales for the former has reached 20,000 and it has been released with a new cover.

Putting Adibah Amin, Lydia Teh and Ellen Whyte in the same room, however, might be a bit foolhardy.

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Honk! If You're Malaysian

Lydia Teh
MPH Group Publishing (2007)
286 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-12-7

Buy from MPHOnline.com

Do You Wear Suspenders?

The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim

Lydia Teh
MPH Group Publishing (2009)
240 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-967-5222-08-5

Buy from MPHOnline.com

Book-Killers Of The Amazon Jungle?

Several years ago, I noted a news report that claimed anti-climate change trolls tried to sabotage sales of a book on climate change using one- or two-star Amazon reviews. I can't remember the details now as I forgot to save the link to the report or the book in question.

But I guess after Hurricane Sandy, a lot more people are thinking, "Come to think of it, our summers have been warmer lately...".

Now, another book is being threatened by an even greater, more insidious force: Michael Jackson fans.

From a 'speed read' of Randall Sullivans' book, Untouchable is largely sympathetic towards the late King of Pop and not nearly as kind to his siblings. The usual advice when it comes to such books is the best: take it with a pinch of salt. Or, as Michiko-san puts it: "Fans of Jackson's talent ... would be way better off viewing that documentary — or YouTube clips of the Motown show — than reading this bloated and thoroughly dispensable book."

But you know how some MJ fans are.

A group of such fans claimed credit for the rush of one-star Amazon reviews of Untouchable, sales of which seem to be buckling under all the negativity thrown its way. Out of the 16,000 copies distributed, only 3,000 were reportedly sold. One of the people behind this campaign said it was a "moral responsibility" to make sure the book tanks.

I'd like to believe that it was more due to the negative reviews by more mainstream voices. A reviewer in the LA Times, for instance, called it "a joyless slog".

...Still, I can't help but compare these guys to the so-called defenders of the US Constitution's Second Amendment. Especially when their actions seem driven by emotion and unfounded assumptions that something they hold dear is being threatened.

"Books used to die by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly killed," said Cornell sociologist Trevor Pinch, who studied reviews on Amazon, in The New York Times.

These days, we probably shouldn't expect or assume that objective, hardcore journalism is the sole reason behind the release of celebrity biographies, especially those that revolve around controversial personalities such as Jackson. But what about books that should be read? Books that are written by credible authors quoting unimpeachable sources?

Feelings about a book is part of a review. When a 'review' is mostly feelings or conjecture without the backing of fact or elaboration, it's just opinion, to be taken even more lightly than an 'actual' review.

Far from a show of solidarity for a maligned idol or "moral responsibility" in action, the negative campaign against Sullivan's Untouchable seems to confirm the possibility that the fate of a book - and to an extent, a writer's livelihood - can be determined via remotely directed mob justice.

Certain parties who are not fond of things found in books they don't like, even if it's just a paragraph, line or even a single word can now bury it, perhaps forever, with emotion-fuelled rants and falsehoods spread online by people who believe only what they want to believe.

As if there's not enough trouble already out there that keeps writers and publishers up at night.

So what if Randall Sullivan did get some things right or wrong in that book? How much does that matter now? Jackson's gone. One might not be able to libel the dead, but for Sullivan's career to be threatened or possibly ended by an angry virtual mob is also an injustice itself.

If the worst happens, will anyone claim 'moral responsibility' for the death of a writer's career?

Amazon can look away and pray this mess away, but if it's serious about making the product comments section a viable feedback tool, it needs to find ways to keep the trolls out. Too many comment threads out there resemble the insides of a chamber pot, and it won't be too long before Amazon's will be equally useless.

After all, wasn't Amazon set up to sell stuff in the first place?

News: Some Author Updates, Books and Obscure Punctuation

So Imran Ahmad spoke about his book yesterday at MPH 1Utama, and it was all right, even though lack of space limited the amount of seats. Some signed copies of the book should still be available at the outlet.

The 'perfect gent' holds court at MPH, 1Utama. And no,
this blog has not become "The Imran Ahmad Show".

And dear G*d, he's lost weight. 30lbs, I was told.

The Readings @ Seksan's event celebrates its eighth birthday this weekend on 26 January, from 3:30pm to 6pm. Writers scheduled to appear include Imran, Marina Mahathir and Eeleen Lee, with Bluetoffee Press editor and New Village zine publisher See Tshiung Han as the emcee.

Also: Boey Cheeming's When I Was A Kid is on its fifth reprint. Sales may soon reach - if not pass - the 10,000 mark.

Elsewhere:

• German publisher gets flak for cutting racist terms from classic children's book.
• Dear Abby ... RIP.
• Some reasons why print books will never die.
• Is there any pleasure in reading "repulsive" writers? And can chick lit be bad for your health?
• "To Lord Byron, from the author." An autographed copy of the original Frankenstein emerges from the past.
• Some juicy bits from Lawrence Wright's Scientology exposé Going Clear. Apparently, "the secrets" came to L Ron Hubbard while he was under anaethesia during dental surgery - if only half of us were as lucky.
• Imagine that: Facebook updates are more "mind-ready" than polished prose. Does this explain the slow death of literature?
• "In the English-speaking world, punning is viewed as more of a tic than a trick, a pathological condition whose sufferers are classed as 'compulsive', 'inveterate' and 'unable to help themselves'." Are puns that bad?
• Too good not to share: links to free e-book formatting and marketing guides, including the user manual for e-book conversion tool Calibre. And turn a blog into an e-blook with the Ebook Glue webapp.
• What do book editors want in 2013? More non-fiction, from the looks of it. Will it be bad years for fiction from here on?
• Eleven common words we're probably mispronouncing. For me, that's more than half the list and, goodness, "boatswain" equals "bo'sun"! Can we have, like, eleven more?
• Two spaces after a fullstop? Wrong, wrong, wrong. I think this has been posted on Slate before. And by golly, I didn't know there were these obscure punctuation marks for doubt, irony, authority and sarcasm.

Go West, Young Man

I had difficulty containing myself when reviewing this book. When you go through and correct a lot of bad stuff in your job, a good read will make you shed tears of joy.

I thought I did rather well, until a colleague noted that I was like a "little boy salivating over an ice cream". Urrrgh, there goes my cred....

There seems to be some confusion over the book's publication date and number of pages. The copy I got lists the date as 2012, while the web sites say 2013; the information in the inset near the bottom is from the review copy (not an ARC). The book is the same - just hope the differences aren't too big.

...Now I want ice cream. Vanilla.

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When a young man went west

first published in The Malaysian Insider, 17 January 2013


I suspect that, post 9/11, memoirs of people from a certain demographic were pretty hot items. But one of those had been rejected ― not because the author wrote it himself, but it was not a "miserable" book.

"It's not supposed to be miserable...!" the author said exasperatedly in an immaculate British accent when talking about it several years back.

Maybe it's because the author turned out to be a perfect gentleman.

The last I'd heard of Imran Ahmad, he was an executive at General Electric. So I was surprised to learn that he's now residing in KL, and he's released a US/international edition of said "not miserable" memoir Unimagined and went on another book tour in America.

This edition, The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets The West, has been updated with newer material and since it's been ages since I've looked at the older UK edition, it still feels fresh.

Each chapter is made up of what I'd call episodes, many of which are paragraphs of 10 lines or less. All events are in chronological order, making it easy to follow his life's journey. It feels as if one's reading a Tumblr account. The pages zip by quickly.

Some of the new bits include a brief story about how his parents met, and the day he was born ― Day Zero, as he calls it. "...I took my time in arriving (a trait I still exhibit sometimes) and I emerged in the early hours of–" ... No. If you want to send him birthday greetings, read the book.

In spite of the racism he grew up with as a Pakistani immigrant in Britain, Imran recalls his past in a generally frank and upbeat manner. The narration, so English it almost tastes of Earl Grey, made the funny parts laugh-out-loud and the sad parts even more poignant.

It also conveys his thoughts of each past self as he makes sense of the world around him. When "blatant nepotism" robbed him of the title of Karachi's Bonniest Baby, you can almost visualise one-year-old Imran, looking all dapper in his suit, thinking to himself that, yes, this was the beginning of "my lifelong struggle against corruption and injustice."

What a struggle. Growing up in London, he faced the prejudices of the day because of his religion and nationality; to one's dismay, things haven't changed much since then.

Bullying, unrequited love, uppity schoolteachers, being unjustly scolded and feelings of validation when scoring top marks or appearing in the newspaper (I had no such luck) and the like... it all jogs your own memories even as Imran recounts his.

His resolve to fit in and battle the prejudices of his schoolmates by becoming "whiter than white" raises a pang of pity, because by right one shouldn't have to, but I guess it's an unfair world out there and the young, without the benefit of experience, tend to judge books by their covers.

What I suspect will be of interest is Imran's ruminations over culture and religion ― that of others and his own. As a young man, he wondered where justice was when a presumably Muslim renter left his parents an "astronomical phone bill" ("Does not his heart tremble with fear at the thought of God's judgment?").

He draws parallels between aspects of his culture and that of Mr Spock's ("Like Muslims and other Asians, Vulcans have arranged marriages, and are not given to displays of emotion in public.").

Some of his observations are darkly hilarious in hindsight. The 1978 Black Friday incident in Iran, for one, was an awful time, and "confusing" for him because the Shah who instigated the event was installed by the CIA.

"The role of America in this is very disturbing, since America is one of the forces of good in the world. They probably didn't know anything about the torture." Am I the only one who cracks up at stuff like that?

If there was anything in the book I didn't like, I didn't notice. Some, however, will find it a bit long-winded (his life was eventful, maybe?), a little self-absorbed (it's his life story), too preachy in parts (perhaps, but it's still fun), and uses too many italics (what).

The book, it seems, was banned in Qatar due to the religious and cultural bits (everybody's a critic). Looks like it's shaping up to be one of those "love it or hate it" kind of reads.

Still, I can't help liking it. The wit, introspection and interrogation of his motives and those of others are fun to read (Former Waterstone's bookbuyer turned publisher Scott Pack loved it and I tend to pay attention to his book recommendations, never mind what some have said about him. And, as shown previously, he's quotable. If I extract any more I'd be infringing copyright big time.


The KL launch of Imran Ahmad's The Perfect Gentleman will be on Saturday, 19 January at MPH 1Utama, from 3pm to 4pm, and Tuesday, 22 January at Kinokuniya KLCC, from 6pm to 7pm.

---

The Perfect Gentleman

A Muslim Boy Meets the West

Imran Ahmad
Center Street (2012)
336 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2854-7

News: Fisking Online Trolls, And Various Miscellany

It seems Robert Fisk has had enough of the "digital poison" spewed by "gutless" anonymous Internet trolls.

"Anonymity on the Net is as pathetic as the anonymous 'sources' that have contaminated the gutless journalism of the New York Times or CNN or the BBC for decades. And the innocent must be able to seek redress in cyberspace as well as in print. Poison-pen letters are illegal. ... So why should we be forced to drink poison on the Net?"

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A Tumblr of lousy book covers are such a hoot, as is this blog about lousy Polish book covers. The cover for this book (G*d, Amazon will sell anything) is strangely compelling, and if that's not a big enough red flag, there's the book description and author background. Oh, and here's a blog about very bad sci-fi/fantasy novel covers.

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"I had no idea. LITERALLY no idea that bananas could be sliced. For MY ENTIRE LIFE I have simply peeled and chewed bananas. BUT NOW...NOW...I can have my bananas SLICED. perfect little banana discs!!!!"

Love the Amazon review comedy around the Chef'n Bananza Banana Slicer.


In other news:

• A new law in Turkey quietly lifts ban on 23,000 books. It's always the lifting of bans that are done so quietly ... unless it's an election year, perhaps.
• Author dumps "bullying" publisher over e-book royalties and starts his own publishing house - which also sells his own books, of course. Speaking of 'bad' publishers: Is Edmund Curll (c. 1675–1747) the worst publisher of all time?
• Abandoned Ship, a book on a honeymooning couple's nightmare after the Costa Concordia capsized.
• Keep your highlighter - it doesn't help you learn. Try flash cards and recall instead. Some of the best and worst learning techniques, outlined.
• Here are three books said to explore the delights of the indie bookstore. Now that's an idea: stories - fiction or non-fiction - revolving around small bookshops. That would make an interesting collection.
• Christopher Tolkien thinks Peter Jackson and company "eviscerated" his dad's book. So, not everybody is fond of the LoTR movies.
• It's that time of the year again: the hunt for the 2013 Hatchet Job of the Year. As expected, Zoë Heller's takedown of Joseph Anton is there, and Ron Charles's scathing review of Martin Amis's Lionel Asbo. It'll be a long wait for the results.
• It seems UK publisher Transworld has dropped Going Clear, Lawrence Wright's book on Scientology. Was the potential for legal tussles with the notoriously litigious group too much to think about?
• "...it's an uneasy business, reading a friend's book." When a friend writes a novel, how should you handle the disappointment?
• The poetry of Pablo Neruda, as 'read' by cats. And here are some bookstore cats, cat-alogued. Another reason why bookstores shouldn't close.
• In Mumbai, book piracy is not only socially acceptable, some Indian authors "see it as a stamp of mass popularity." Not sure what that means to the child pedlars who hawk these books.
• Research suggests racial bias rooted in lazy thinking, makes people closed-minded and less creative. Well, DUH.

The Bookstore Chain's Fix(i)

In the apparent slow death of Barnes and Noble, Dennis Johnson, founder of book blog MobyLives, and co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House, sees the karmic fate of commercial volume booksellers who're said to have crowded out the small-time players.

He notes that within 30 days, B&N has shuttered many of its US outlets. He's not sorry to see it go, but he's not happy with this development because, he argues, major bookstores such as Barnes and Noble also happen to be 'book showrooms' where people can preview books before buying them online; should such bookstores close, sales of e-books will also suffer, resulting in a domino effect that will hit every part of the industry.

So who'll fill the void left behind by the megastores? Indies, maybe or online distributors ... anything that doesn't squash a small business every time it rolls over. Besides, you don't need these companies to sell books these days. When author Joe Simpson felt bullied by his publisher over e-book royalties, he started his own publishing house - which also sells his own books, of course.

At home, local Malay fiction publisher Fixi is having trouble getting its latest publications into another popular bookstore chain. Around August last year, it decided to keep two Fixi novels, Hilang ("Missing") and Murtad ("Apostate"), off its shelves due to objectionable content that includes coarse language and (possibly) references to human gonads.

(...y'know, an official ban on books like that would leave a lot of bookstores with many empty shelves...)

But it seems that these were not the only Fixi books it had problems with.

Last December (not too long ago), this chain seems to have stopped taking four of Fixi's latest. Attempts by the publisher to contact the management have failed, and they're wondering why. Fourteen e-mails "in two years (between 10 December 2012 and 9 January 2013)", yo, and no official reply.

Later, Fixi released part three of this saga, which also throws a bunch of stats comparing online sales from their own web site and various book fairs with those from the chain, a rather long - and entertaining - way of saying, "No big loss, bro. We doin' fine on our own."

Fourteen e-mails and several Facebook nudges in two months may sound pushy, but at this day and age, a simple "Yes, we will" or "No, thank you" shouldn't be too hard to manage.

Perhaps this chain feels it doesn't need to explain its decision, or is it not convenient for them to explain? In light of the Borders employee's arrest over Irshad Manji's book, we probably shouldn't blame bookstores for being too cautious (a list of outlets carrying Fixi titles can be found here, or shop online at Fixi's web site).

Whatever the reasons, this bookstore (or rather, book-and-mostly-stationery store) chain didn't make itself look good by keeping quiet, and it no longer pays for corporations to be cold and aloof. Bookstores rely on people to keep them going, regardless of size, and these days the human connection is becoming a critical survival strategy.

The story (thus far) of Parnassus Books, which author Ann Patchett runs with former Random House sales rep Karen Hayes, is particularly inspiring, with regards to the founders' efforts and the community it's in, and how it appears to be bucking the trend that indie bookstores are dying.

"Amazon doesn't get to make all the decisions; the people can make them, by choosing how and where they spend their money," Patchett says. "If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read a book. This is how we change the world: We grab hold of it. We change ourselves."

Some would argue that "it's only two years" and that, when it comes to the community spirit, we may be a long way from the folks at that corner of Nashville, Tennessee. But if there are more and more people out there supporting small presses like Fixi, perhaps the time when Malaysian publishers and bookstores can produce and sell what they (and not the powers that be) feel is all right won't be too far off.

News: Parnassus At Two, Sully Goes Indie, And Paying For Readings

"Anyone I mentioned this plan to was quick to remind me that books were dead, that in two years ... books would no longer exist, much less bookstores, and that I might as well be selling eight-track tapes and typewriters."

It's been two years since Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes's Parnassus Books opened, and it seems to be doing fine.

Patchett cites some reasons why this is, including just plain luck. "But this luck makes me believe that changing the course of the corporate world is possible," she adds. "Amazon doesn't get to make all the decisions; the people can make them, by choosing how and where they spend their money."

---

Andrew Sullivan to split from The Daily Beast to go indie - subscription-based, of course. He also spoke to Salon regarding this move.

This move has sparked quite a bit of chatter in cyberspace; it's been discussed or talked about in TIME, SmartPlanet, and AmericaBlog, to name a few. John Scalzi put his two cents in, and wonders if he should do the same for Whatever (the answer is no).

---

"Reading aloud is back in fashion"? How book readings may revive the storytelling traditions of yore. Plus, some advice on holding a fun readings. And from way back in 2011, some thoughts on writers and their brands, and whether bookstores holding readings should charge for admission.

Considering how glum things seem to be for bookstores, libraries, etc, maybe that's not such a bad idea. Paid admissions to readings imply a line-up so good, you have to pay to watch them live; people pay to watch artistes and musicians perform live, don't they? For the hosting venue, it's an additional income stream. And attendees, I think, would feel a little better supporting an event with their wallets than just showing up.

---

The most popular literary tweet of 2012 is:

Harry Potter inspired an entire generation. But apparently that isn't good enough for the #Oscars.

Professor Snape @_Snape_ • 27/02/2012

Elsewhere:

• The KL launch for Imran Ahmad's The Perfect Gentleman will be at MPH 1Utama on Saturday, 19 January at 3-4pm and Kinokuniya KLCC on Tuesday, 22 January at 6-7pm. This book is the US/international edition of Unimagined, which was published in 2007; here's a bit of background on that book. This edition will include more material and an extended ending.
• Some rules for using hyphens. I found this useful as a reference and foundation for a personal style guide.
• Jungleland, the search for the fabled ruins of a "white city" in Central America. The author talks about it here.
• "In the name of the dead": Yang Jisheng's tombstone to victims of China's Great Famine. Meanwhile, Murong Xuecun (real name Hao Qun) asks, "What do Weibots think about China's Great Famine? " The 'answers' will shock.
• A year in literary criticism: a chat with author and critic Daniel Mendelsohn.
• Author JA Konrath has a long list of writer's resolutions for writerly folk, one of which is, "Get over yourself."
• This essential guide to dim sum by Carolyn Phillips on Buzzfeed's Lucky Peach is a great dim sum primer for the heavily Anglicised Chinese person.
• Girl power sweeps Costa Awards. O-kay.
• Fifty Shades trilogy to be read deeper at American University. O~kay....

A Kalamazoo Xmas Do

first published in The Malaysian Insider, 02 January 2013

Know that thing about people gaining weight during Christmas? It's true. I must've packed in several days' worth of calories in a single meal over at Café Kalamazoo.

Interior of Café Kalamazoo

Run by the god-brother of a friend of Melody's and his friends, its early days were fraught with danger. What were they thinking, planting themselves several doors down from the wildly popular Betty's Midwest Kitchen and offering a similar type of cuisine?

Melody and I didn't return until months later, after it underwent a revamp. Some grey walls were replaced with a cheerier theme, and the sign sported a more welcoming pastel yellow. It felt more like a hangout for close friends than a run-of-the-mill café.

The peanut butter and chocolate milkshake is so damn good

Missing the food they used to have during their days at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the restaurant's partners set up shop at Aman Suria to serve up the same, plus a bit more.

Fewer clues to their alma mater exist now than when they first opened; what remaining WMU memorabilia has been relegated to a yellow-painted section of a wall near the counter.

I can't say much about the burgers, but we were charmed by mains such as the cheese-drizzled pesto chicken and the hearty beef meatloaf.

One of the chefs, we were told, spent a great deal of time testing the sauces, and the results were great. Some thought had been put into the combination of dishes, sides and sauces.

Hearty, fall-off-the-bone ribs... a must-try at Kalamazoo

The peanut butter chocolate milkshake, more dessert than drink, had the effect of a nightcap and sedative on my perpetually strung, hyperactive nerves. A few sips and my shoulders slowly sagged in blissful submission to the sweet, nutty liquid ambrosia.

Some of these goodies, however, made way for a Christmas menu last weekend that included hand-picked regular items. Melody and I decided to skip the Christmas turkey, which she didn't like anyway. She went with "something light": a pork burger. I picked the Alabama BBQ Ribs and Chilli Cheese Fries.

The fries came first. American chilli "with a touch of heat", fries and cheese on a plate make for some heavy, tasty comfort food, but I felt it could use an additional three to four touches of heat. "Chilli" is such a misnomer for a dish whose main ingredients include tomato sauce, minced beef and pinto and/or kidney beans.

Beef meatloaf that makes you wanna sing ... ♪ and I would do
anything for love... ♫

My ribs arrived together with Melody's pork burger; the ETA for the food was faster than I'd expected. My burger fatigue hasn't quite run its course yet, so I gave it a pass — didn't even take a photo. She didn't say much, so I guess the burger's okay.

But oh G*d, the ribs. Pull-off-the-bone tender but not sticky, slathered in a runnier sauce dotted with herbs I couldn't identify. I got pumpkin mash, a sweeter and less filling side dish compared to potato that really made room for more.

I was still dipping into the chilli cheese fries between each rib bone, supplementing my plate of fries with the ones that came with Melody's burger. Once the rack o' ribs was no longer recognisable as such, the cutlery was cast aside in favour of fingers.

Her friend walked over to see a nearly clean plate with picked-clean bones; I'd wiped up the sauce and leftover bits with pieces of a burger bun Melody couldn't finish. She'd noted that any chef would be pleased to see me "enjoy myself so much". I certainly hoped so.

As a token of appreciation, Melody's friend brought us two pieces of marinated fried chicken from the kitchen to try. "Strictly staff fare," we were told. Nice, but a little heavy on the marinade.

And what a shame that both of us were too full for dessert, which included the cakes baked and supplied to Kalamazoo by Melody's friend's mom. The macadamia cake and Black Forest cake came highly recommended. The green tea and red bean cake we had on a previous visit was nice but dry — a glitch that they had pledged to fix.

Back home, the bathroom scales confirmed my worst fears: I'd gained the weight I'd lost pre-Christmas weekend.

Oh, what the heck. Eleven months at the gym and it'll all be gone.

---

Café Kalamazoo

A-G-36, Jalan PJU 1/43
Aman Suria Damansara
47301 Petaling Jaya

CLOSED FOR GOOD

News: 2012 Year-End Wrap-Up

I may have dropped the ball somewhere while monitoring the flow of publishing news, but I guess, judging from the avalanche of "[x] things that happened in 2012" lists, everybody's too bogged down with the usual year-end hangover to come up with something original.

• The so-called "new adult" genre: Take existing young adult genre, add steam. Also happening in the UK. Meanwhile, Macmillan gets steamed up with launch of crowd-sourced romance imprint Sw♥♥n Reads (yes, the two hearts).
• Amazon will not allow you to give your mom's/dad's/spouse's/friend's books five stars anymore.
• Paramount and the Puzo estate ends their legal battle over the Godfather.
• Mayapocalypse? Didn't happen. Printapocalypse? Not happening - yet.
• A copy editor's twelve days of Xmas. What's yours?
• Twelve WTF moments in publishing for the year 2012. On the local front, a bunch of reviewers - including yours truly - and book columnists featured The Star share their memorable 2012 reads.
• Because this is too long to tweet: ♪ O, newspapers are a-closin', their budgets are a-slashin', when the subs are all let go, "Let is snow, let is snow, let is snow"! ♫

Guess that's it for 2012. See you all next year.

A Year In Reading

Must've done about only twenty books this year. 'Not a whole lot'? How about, 'abysmal'?

Maybe I'm starting to become bibliophobic. On the bright side, more truth in blog titling!

I've read a few more books than the reviews for this year suggest - it's just that I'm lazier to review the ones I read for leisure - which I don't want.


Call of the wild (Beast)
I'd thought of skipping this year's Big Bad Wolf blowout. I didn't feel the urge to fight the crowds and I had only finished one or two of the books I bought at last year's event.

So I brought someone else along for the fun. And I ended up buying half the books I did last year, owing to an inadequately filled wallet. But I managed to snag some of the reads I wanted.

Trophy pic of purchases from the Big Bad Wolf book sale
...soon to become a Malaysian social media tradition

Mick Foley's Countdown to Lockdown and Ernest Cline's Ready Player One came highly recommended. I also managed to find Carrie Fisher's Shockaholic and Keith Floyd's Stirred But Not Shaken. Waiter Rant? Self-explanatory.

...Now, if only I can get to the other books I'd promised to read.


Year in review(s)
I started reviewing books for The Star towards the end of 2007; this year saw my fiftieth Star book review, published in November. I started writing reviews and book-related pieces for online news portal The Malaysian Insider as well.

As an online medium, like the blog, TMI is more flexible, in that I can put in URLs and write about books that are not so new; books published more than a year ago are, generally, less likely to be reviewed in The Star.

Most of this year's reviews were for books I'd read this year, though several were read last year.

• He Knew He Was Right, John and Mary Gribbin ("Gaia's irrepressible prophet", TMI, 26 December) - Tiring, uninspiring. After reading The Vanishing Face of Gaia, I doubt even Lovelock could've made his interesting life story more arresting.
• Uncommon Grounds, Mark Pendergrast ("This beautiful and caffeinated world", TMI, 22 November) - The language is slightly more accessible than the previous book, but still a scholarly work.
• We Are Anonymous, Parmy Olson ("A glimpse into the abyss", The Star, 16 November) - The scariest book you'll ever read this year. Also my fiftieth book review for The Star.
• Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter ("Splendour from ruin", The Star, 04 November) - A darkly funny, quirky read with a somewhat (I feel) upbeat ending.
• The Black Isle, Sandi Tan ("Growing up with ghosts", The Star, 02 November) - The ghosts in here should be laid to rest, along with the tired, overused World War II-Southeast Asia theme.
• Another Country, Anjali Joseph ("Mostly melancholy", The Star, 21 October) - This jumble of snippets from a life of a migrant feels like it was rushed to the presses.
• The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling ("Not so casual, actually", TMI, 03 October) - Not a bad attempt to weave a little magic into the mundane. But comparing used condoms with chrysalises? Eww.
• A Land More Kind Than Home, Wiley Cash ("Hope in faith", The Star, 14 September) - Potent and poignant, especially when set against the stands taken by the US's religious right.
• Flashback, Dan Simmons ("Induced nostalgia", The Star, 19 August) - Another rush job, from the looks of it. A "meh" effort compared to his previous works.
• An Unexpected Guest, Anne Korkeakivi ("Make room on the shelf", The Star, 10 August) - An easy read about the 48 (or was it 72) hours in the life of a diplomat's wife.
• Stretch, Neal Pollack ("Downward dude", blog, 22 July) - The smells of sweat and stale gym-socks come to life in Pollack's misadventures in yoga. Namaste, motherf—er.
• The Family Corleone, Ed Falco ("A dying breed of crook", The Star, 27 May) - So vivid, it's almost like watching a movie. And it might be made into one, now that the Puzos vs Paramount legal battle is over.
• Gone Bamboo, Anthony Bourdain ("Tropic tempers", blog, 16 May) - As rough and profane as Bone in the Throat. The mobster shtick gets old fast, however.
• Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson ("Whimsical whodunnit", blog, 11 May) - A clever novel of a crime that solves itself, i.e. not driven by the detective.
• Kopi, edited by Amir Muhammad ("Caffeine fix(i)", blog, 02 May) - Some of the stories in this coffee-themed Malay-language short story collection will, like its namesake, keep you awake at night.
• The Mirage, Naguib Mahfouz ("Mama's boy", The Star, 20 April) - If the aim of this novel is to make the reader want to beat the apron-clinging protagonist to death and back, it succeeded beyond measure.
• Without Anchovies Chua Kok Yee ("Flash fiction", blog, 15 April) - Frustrating glimpses of potential in what looks like a hurriedly assembled collection of mostly half-formed short stories.
• A Decade of Hope, Dennis Smith ("A long decade", blog, 14 March) - Ten years is enough time for people to not care about 9/11 anymore - or pick up this book.

Dig me out in time for work
next year... urrrgh...
• Columbus: The Four Voyages, Laurence Bergreen ("Clash of civilisations", The Star, 17 February) - A not-so-flattering portrait of the man who helped the conquistadores obliterate the major pre-Columbian civilisations of Latin and South America.
• The Beruas Prophecy, Iskandar al-Bakri ("A nearly fulfilled prophecy", blog, 05 February) - A potentially engaging Malay sword-and-sorcery tale that's marred by colourless two-dimensional narration.
• Queen of America Luis Alberto Urrea ("Sweeping, colourful yarn", The Star, 29 January) - A lush re-imagined story of the life of Mexican mystic, folk healer and alleged revolutionary Teresa Urrea.

O-o-okay, not as bad as I thought. Still way below the 100 books a year someone in my line is supposed to read...

And that list does not include the books I've read but not reviewed: James Clavell's Noble House (dew kui lou mou, so damn thick), End Specialist (or The Postmortal) by Drew Magary (gripping), Alexander McCall Smith's The Ladies' No.1 Detective Agency (nice), When I Was A Kid by Boey Cheeming (neat) and Tarquin Hall's third Vish Puri book, The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken (a rrrolicking good time, yaar!).

Do I want to top this next year? Love to, but that's tempting fate - not a good idea in any profession.

Gaia's Irrepressible Prophet

When I was writing this, I'd forgotten several other relevant titbits: levels of carbon pollution rose again last year, and a lot of it is coming out of China; revelations that sea levels are rising at a faster rate than expected, threatening coastal cities in the US; more proof that the classic Maya civilisation was laid low by climate change, among other things; a tornado in New Zealand (tornadoes in New Zealand?) killed some people; and the nasty winter weather in the US this year.

I needed more examples outside the US, as I've already chewed enough schadenfreude over the American panic over climate change after Hurricane Sandy. You're still with the rest of us, Yankees! Our problems are also ours. Still.

As for Lovelock, well, I thought he was a bit of a crackpot. But that's because Lovelock's a seemingly lucid mind that is supporting a theory that now seems less outlandish than it was when it was first introduced.

Mankind has been unfavourably compared to a virus; the notion of an Earth that can wipe us out if we overstay our welcome should be the cause of many sleepless nights and/or suicides. What's perhaps more terrifying than rocks falling from outer space is the possibility, however remote, that Lovelock could be right.

Puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?

---

Gaia's irrepressible prophet

first published in The Malaysian Insider, 26 December 2012


Floods in Madeira, Portugal. The "snowmageddon" in parts of Europe and the US. Hail in parts of Damansara and KL. The ash from that Icelandic volcano. And the earthquake bonanza of 2011, along with the Fukushima tsunami. The world appears to be going mad.

But it wasn't until Hurricane Sandy flooded New York that brought home the news that maybe, maybe, this whole global warming/climate change thing wasn't born out of some New Age-fuelled paranoia.

Just when we thought we'd be okay after dodging the Mayapocalypse ...

James Lovelock, author of The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (2009), seems to suggest that all this is natural, at least where climate change is concerned.

One year earlier in a Daily Mail report headlined "We're all doomed!", he pictures a hot, chaotic world coping with climate-caused disasters: droughts, famine and floods, and that we might as well get used to it instead of trying to fix it, because "it is too late to repair the damage".


Our living planet ...
Arguably, not many people have heard of James Ephraim Lovelock, but they may have heard of NASA's search for life on Mars, and the fight against ozone-eating CFCs. Lovelock was the British scientist who invented the scientific instruments that would be instrumental in both. He is perhaps more famous for another invention: the Gaia theory.

To most of us, Earth is just a ball of rock with a liquid centre and a thin layer of air. The Gaia theory depicts the Earth as a living, self-sustaining super-organism (this is as non-scientific as I can manage). The theory was formulated in the 1970s and developed with the help of a few others, particularly the microbiologist Dr Lynn Margulis.

This theory suggests one way the Earth regulates its own temperature is with the help of ocean-dwelling phytoplankton. When the seas warm, the organisms breed and produce a gas which ultimately helps seed clouds and increases cloud cover, creating a sun shield of sorts that cools down the planet's surface. Proof that seems to support this was said to have been found, though conclusive evidence remains elusive,

The concept of a living, sentient Earth wasn't the only strange idea he had. He loves nuclear energy — his answer to our CO₂ and energy problems — and rubbishes the idea that radioactive waste is bad. As a Brit and beneficiary of the British National Health Service (NHS) he also believed "there was always a nagging fear that in the States you could be financially ruined by a severe illness."


... and its spokesman
James Lovelock's youth gave little indication of the man he would become. He skipped classes and didn't care about homework. He cleared "obstructions" to wherever part of the English countryside he wished to roam with home-made explosives. He went to study chemistry in Manchester because a girl he'd fancied was there.

He was once accused of cheating in class because he gave all the correct answers, but it turned out that the university's standards were... a bit low. Lovelock argues that when lives are concerned one must be correct — a viewpoint shaped by his days at school and an accidental chemical explosion. He didn't just "know" he was right, he made sure he was.

He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock and Gaia, penned by John and Mary Gribbin is a celebration of his life, philosophies and Gaia theory and, perhaps, given the more positive reception to the latter these days, an "I told you so" to his detractors. Lovelock also received the Geological Society of London's highest award, the Wollaston Medal, in 2006 for his work on the Gaia theory.

John Gribbin himself is an interesting character. The astrophysicist and science writer predicted — wrongly — that a huge earthquake caused by an alignment of the planets would destroy Los Angeles. His book, Get a Grip on Physics (2003), was reportedly spotted in Tiger Woods' wrecked SUV.

Sadly, the way the biography is written isn't nearly as interesting as the authors, the subject or his ideas. The writing is dry and uninspiring and it's jam-packed with lots of information about Lovelock, his work and the history of the Gaia hypothesis. It was hard work, digging out all those gems about his life and any other relevant titbits. The material that over-explains the Gaia theory is deadweight to the average reader, but one suspects the average reader is not really who the authors are writing for.


He may still be right
John and Mary Gribbin may think Lovelock knew he was right about climate change, but do we?

Until Climategate, most of us seemed to agree with Al Gore. Lovelock's gloomier predictions of mankind's fate takes into account the planet's extremely long, but finite lifespan (perhaps like Lovelock's own — the man's pushing 100); our Sun has five billion more years before it loses all its energy, and when that happens the Earth will die anyway, but not before the planet, he hopes, shapes us into better beings.

"We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger," he said in that gloomy Daily Mail report. "It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race."

Early this year, however, Lovelock more or less conceded that maybe his projections about how our climate would change the world were a bit "alarmist", though his views on nuclear energy, wind power and sustainable development remain unchanged.

Even if The Day After Tomorrow isn't happening any time soon, the things happening in some parts of the world of late pretty much shows just how screwed we are if the weather catches us off-guard. Just ask those who were flooded out by Hurricane Sandy in New York.

---

He Knew He Was Right

The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock and Gaia

John and Mary Gribbin
Allen Lane (2009)
240 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-846-14016-7

News: Submission Calls, The Gent Returns, And We're Still Here

It's been quite a year, what with this one being the end of a 5,000-year Mayan long-count cycle. So yes, we're all still here, because.

Metaphorically though, the world did end for some people, so let's not have too much fun with the failed Mayapocalypse.

On the books front: Amir Muhammad's Fixi now has an imprint for English language books. Fixi Novo has issued a call for submissions on its Facebook page for pulp fiction in "American English". Why can't they use text?

Also, Ianslip Books, a boutique publisher affiliated with Sang Freud Press, is calling for submissions of short story or poetry collections. E-mail them at Ianslip[dot]books[at]gmail[dot]com for more information.

Imran Ahmad, author of The Perfect Gentleman (also known as Unimagined: A Muslim Boy Meets The West) gave an interview in the NST about his book and the coming sequel(s), and his upcoming appearance at MPH, 1Utama on 19 January, from 3pm to 4pm. More details at www.perfect-gent.com.


Elsewhere:

• Research finds that one in 7 kids in the UK has never been to a bookstore.
• Forbes's three predictions for book publishing. Smashwords founder Mark Coker has twenty-one.
• 2012 in publishing, according to publishers: books that made their year, books that should've done better, and books they wish they had published.
• Because these are fun: Eater's most scathing restaurant reviews for 2012.
• Jeet Thayil's (Narcopolis) reflections of Singapore.
• Huh, writers. Sharing caffeine habits in style.
• A writer with a pseudonym-sounding name defends romance in a piece with a whiff of Mills & Boon. Hmm.
• The cloud-sourced novel The Dragon Lords has 13,000 collaborators? Negotiations for royalties should be exciting.
• China is investigating Amazon's e-book business? I wonder what they'll find?
• "'Here be dragons'? Nein!" How technology killed the tall (travel) tale.
• Free books about death and grief might not be such a good idea after Sandy Hook.

Pleasure In Pain

first published in The Malaysian Insider, 23 December 2012

Melody was meeting a Frenchman in Bangsar at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning, so I had to get the car ready. "This had better be worth it," I grumbled through a mouthful of toothpaste.

Look for this sign

After coffee, the next hot artisanal thing to hit our shores seems to be bread. Melody had been on one of her food hunts and, that morning saw us at Yeast Bistronomy in Bangsar.

Located several doors down the Kiwi-style Antipodean café, Yeast is a boulangerie, bistro and wine bar that aims to bring its patrons the time-tested homespun tastes of (mostly) traditional French breads, pastries and bistro fare.

Croissants and white chocolate bread

Lunches are light, with mostly sandwiches, salads, quiches and savoury tarts, but expect big dinners with such treats as poulet rôti (roast chicken), steak au poivre (steak with pepper sauce) and boeuf bourguignon (braised beef short ribs with red wine sauce).

The term "bistronomy" is said to echo the desires of some French chefs in the 1990s to serve fine yet affordable cuisine in a more open, friendly atmosphere.

That's what it feels like at Yeast, as French café music plays in the background. Features of its décor: yellow walls and signage, black-and-white chequered floor tiles, framed mirrors and blackboards, we're told, are common in similar establishments in Paris.

French start-up
Yeast founder Christophe Chatron-Michaud spent 28 years developing and running high-end restaurants in Europe and the US before he decided to settle here with his Malaysian wife and now managing director of Yeast, Lissan Teh.

The almond and berries brioche... a refreshing
change from the jammy stuff

Yeast was not just set up by more than the need for bread from home. "Malaysians are becoming more open to try new things," says Chatron-Michaud. "So we feel that it's time to bring them our kind of food." Nor was it difficult to set up the place, given the couple's experience in the F&B industry.

Yeast Bistronomy cultivates its own yeast, the key ingredient in the secret recipes for its various pre-ferments or starters (levain) that give its breads ― particularly sourdough loaves ― a more complex taste. This trait is unique to bona fide artisanal bakeries. The ovens are also proper boulangerie equipment; we're told that some of the ovens used here are more for things such as pizza, rather than bread.

Like its pre-ferments, the leading talents in Yeast's kitchen are all home-grown. Hailing from Lyon, artisanal boulanger (baker) Christophe Gros learned the trade from his dad and had worked with Michaud before. The chef in charge of the bistro part did her rounds in France, New York and Scotland.

Oeufs cocotte ... a very satisfying way to start the day

Besides bringing a slice of Paris to our shores, Chatron-Michaud also hopes to educate the locals on the finer points of artisanal European bread. For instance: What does one do with a baguette or a pain de campagne (French-style sourdough bread)?

"Most people do not know what to do with our breads," he reveals. "So we're planning a series of spreads: basic things such as olive and balsamic to something meat-based, perhaps, to give an idea of the things that can be done with bread." He's also not above pairing curry-based fillings with baguettes ― how progressive.

And what an education we had.

Bowled over
Generally, traditionally baked artisanal breads tend to have a thicker, harder crust and a more chewy, harder-to tear-away insides. Chatron-Michaud admits that it's hard to tear Malaysians away from notions that all breads are soft and smell and taste sweet, but Yeast has something for that. The pain au chocolat blanc (white chocolate bread) was a revelation: a small white-choc-studded loaf that would make a great dessert bread.

Bread, runny yolk and smoked duck ... yummy

Melody found the plain and Valrhona chocolate-filled croissants "too pretty to dismantle." Fortunately, I have no such compunctions, so we had some of the best croissants this side of the Klang Valley: crispy and flaky outside, chewy and smooth inside. Moistened by the rich, creamy, unsalted Lescure butter from France's Charentes region, our tongues itch to roll off the menu items in French, many of which I'd only read in books or seen on TV.

One bite of the other croissant explained why Yeast also uses Valrhona chocolate in other pastries such as the equally crispy-outside-yummy-inside chocolate pain aux raisins. The brioche aux amandes et fruits rouges (almond-and-berries brioche), an island of chopped berries in the middle of a pastry crust studded with almond slices, was a refreshing change from the usual sticky, sweet jammy stuff.

The bread with smoked duck and Gruyère cheese was heavenly, as anything with smoked duck is wont to taste. Yeast uses smoked duck instead of bacon in other items such as the oeufs cocotte: eggs baked in a ramekin. Breaking through the layer of Gruyère on top, we spooned the eggs, seasoned with bits of smoked duck, onto the buttered, toasted farmer's bread and bit down. For someone deprived of duck for months, c'est divin! Served with a side of mesclun salad, this was Yeast's answer to the kopitiam tan chi, right down to the runny yolks.

A jar of chocolate sablés (a kind of shortbread) was brought to our table ― oh, the, heady, heavy aroma! Sadly, near-full bellies prevented us from furthering our "studies".

Before leaving, we managed to say bon jour and merci to Gros, who was making chaussons aux pommes (apple turnovers) in the kitchen. Practised hands moved with precision and swiftness as the dough is rolled, filled with apple compote and apple slices cooked with vanilla, folded, sealed and swept onto a tray, ready for baking.

Okay, this was worth getting up on Sunday at 7am. Sated we may have been, we felt that our "education" wasn't complete. We'd only had a fraction of what their menu had. With the faint presence of smooth Lescure Beurre des Charentes in my mouth, the words began echoing again ... confit de canard, frisée aux lardons, gratin dauphinoise...

We have to come back. We have to bring our friends (so we can order more). We might even start learning French. Because for the life of me I can't bring myself to call this place a "bakery".

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Yeast Bistronomy

24G, Jalan Telawi 2
Bangsar Baru
59100 Kuala Lumpur

Pork-free

Tue-Sun: 8am till late

Closed on Mondays

+603-2282 0118

enquiries@yeastbistronomy.com

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News: Big Bad Book Habits, Etc

Last week was a slow one for book-related news.

• Malaysians' "big bad book habits" are hardly surprising. I've also seen water bottles and empty cups on bookshelves at Borders @ The Gardens.
• Review of a book about a book: The Book of Kells by Bernard Meehan. Some pretty pictures from that book can be seen here.
• Writers, have a look at four ways of defeating self-sabotage. Plus, An interesting take on why bad book reviews are good for authors, and how to protect yourself from international writing scams.
• Wilbur Smith will be helped by co-authors? He's not setting a trend, he's following one. Plus, he's about 80, so it's bound to happen.
• Even Stephen King, horror writer, is scared of his mother-in-law. That would make a great book.
• Why editing is the single best marketing tool for writers.
• Adam Mansbach's (Go the F— to Sleep) year on the best-seller list.
• Guy Kawasaki wants to help you self-publish your book. Any takers?