News: Local Authors, Books, And Brazilian Bites

Tanggal dua puluh lima, bulan lapan two oh satu tiga, meet the authors of Fixi Novo books Dark Highways and Wedding Speech at Borders, The Curve from 3pm to 5pm.

Also: Boey is back with When I Was a Kid 2 and he's currently on tour in KL. Here's the latest schedule of his appearances.

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"What if everyone could be persuaded to stop scribbling for a period of, say, 12 months? Of course we would lose some marvellous work during The Year of Not Writing, and that's not to be taken lightly. But look at the compensations: we could all kick back, take stock, and get off the spinning carousel of keeping up with the latest offerings. Just think what could be done with the free time: books we've loved could be revisited; philosophy or poetry could be afforded the time they demand; tomes of previously forbidding length could be tackled with languorous leisure."

Somebody at the Guardian thinks it'll be great for everyone if writers took a year off from publishing books.

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The Edinburgh international book fest may be seeing the rise of the author-as-performer, but that might have its problems.

"Certainly a disquiet is growing among some authors about the economics of the live performance, especially when many festivals pay their authors nothing, and book sales frequently fail to compensate for lost working time. (Edinburgh pays authors, whether Nobel laureate or first-time novelist, £150.) According to McDermid it is 'outrageous' that some book festivals 'pay the people who erect the tents, staff the box office, run the bar – but don't pay the people on the stage'."

Also at the Festival: "When you've had any contact with real persecuted minorities you learn to use the word very chastely," says former archbishop of Canterbury Willam Rowan during his appearance, among other things.

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Though Violet Duke's (or whoever 'her' name is) self-published novels have reached the best-seller list, book prizes still won't touch selfies (my terminology). Someone at the Guardian asks why books of literary merit aren't considered unless a "proper" publisher picks it up.

The Guardian piece seems to argue that disconnect between what 'literary' critics like and what the reading public likes will shrink as the latter's influence grows - making traditional gatekeepers such as publishers and book-prize panels increasingly obsolete.

"It's safer for an editor at a mainstream publishing house to buy a book that reads a lot like last year's bestseller, than to stick out their neck in support of an unproven concept that might not deliver. But readers have no such reason to be cautious, so buyer power is increasingly setting the agenda in mass-market publishing."

In light of this, comments such as this one make me cringe, however truthful they may be: "You still think the book industry is created for and by intelligent people? That only clever people read books? Think again. Just remember that the last best seller was a badly written soft porn. (The smart ones are those tip-toeing around the manure to pick the lovely flowers and fruits, trying not to step on the crap or get it onto their clothes.)"

But have a look at why this curmudgeonly fellow gave up reading certain books before passing judgement. Guess there's no accounting for taste.


Elsewhere:

• In the 'rediscovery' of Muriel Rukeyser's Savage Coast, a novel about the Spanish Civil War, the question arises over what old, forgotten books are worth saving and re-introduced to the world.
• The Borders raid by JAWI over Irshad Manji's book and the arrest of store manager Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz last year has been declared illegal. Will it happen again?
• Go anywhere that the Google Play store doesn't operate and the app will delete all your e-books. Gizmodo picked up the incident, which happened to a fellow who travelled to Singapore and found all his e-books gone. What it all boils down to, says Gizmodo, is that "you're buying a license, not a book. And licenses can come with strings attached. Obnoxious strings."
• "It's not just the intrinsic value of certain books — their 'greatness' — that makes them existentially arresting; it's also the time and place when they happen to fall into our hands." When the time and place is right, books can become one's "personal touchstones".
• "Sicha has spent the past decade developing what has become the lingua franca of the Internet: un-snobbish endorsements, presented in a candid, self-consciously hysterical tone. ... His humorously helpful parentheticals, doubt-inducing scare quotes, casual 'like's dropped carefully amidst otherwise competent sentences, and gratuitous exclamation points litter the online landscape. When typed by Sicha, though, these superficial markers of style—so easy to replicate!—communicate a set of core values that he's carried with him from job to job: genuine egalitarianism, acrobatic diplomacy, unregulated intimacy."
  
  Sounds like Alice Gregory really likes Choire Sicha's book or writing style. Sicha himself talks about how the Internet kills and saves book culture.
• From George Orwell: A Life in Letters: Mr O wants to know if a friend could take up his reviewer's slot in an English daily. The lowdown: "It's rather hackwork, but it's a regular 8 guineas a week ... for about 900 words, in which one can say more or less what one likes."
• "Big books are epic, dense, packed with plot and content and ideas, aren't they? They weigh more, cost more, take more time to read. And now that time spent reading has to compete with films and on-line everything and facebook and twitter ... surely that means that big must be more important than ever, to justify all that time they take us away from our PCs?" So, are big books making a comeback?
• Good stuff: how South American chef Alex Atala is introducing Brazil's indigenous culinary delights to the world.
• So not the Man Booker longlist: Kirkus Reviews thinks these novels of 2013 (so far) are overlooked.
• "...Cartland's world was for ladies only. That Berlin Wall between women's and men's popular fiction persists to this day. While we men get Chris Ryan's SAS yomping and throat slitting, women get the chilly fantasy of EL James's Christian Grey. Yet with the distance of time, Cartland's work now deserves to be analysed, like a Fifties recipe for braised veal Orloff, with a mix of admiration and horror." Before EL James, there was Barbara Cartland.
• $#!+ book snobs say - with translations.
• These one-star reviews sting even more when superimposed on the photographs of the authors of the books being panned.

Rushmore Revelations

So it's a bit odd that I reviewed this book after Flashback. Not so odd if you know that this was written months before Flashback was released. Wish I'd thought of a better title, though.

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Rushmore revelations

first published in The Malay Mail Online, 19 August 2013

Dan Simmons's time-tripping historical novel, Black Hills, can perhaps be considered among his better works of historical fiction. It chronicles the life and times of Paha Sapa, a Lakota Sioux named after his tribe's most sacred region, the Black Hills at what is today South Dakota in the US.

The novel starts right in the middle of the Battle of The Little Bighorn. A young Paha Sapa touches the body of a dying George Armstrong Custer and, with his supernatural talents, absorbs his ghost. He also divines Sioux war chief Crazy Horse's violent death in the very near future.

Soon after, Paha Sapa's guardian, his tribe's holy man, sends him to the Black Hills on a vision quest, far away from the paranoid Crazy Horse's deadly fury. What Paha Sapa sees there horrifies him: four stone giants, rising up from Mount Rushmore to literally devour the "fat of the land": trees, animals, and people.

Mount Rushmore was originally known as Six Grandfathers to the Lakota Sioux, and lies along a path taken by a chieftain on a spiritual trek. In the novel, it is the spirits of the mountain, also dubbed the Six Grandfathers, who show young Paha Sapa the dreadful vision.

However, he never gets to tell his tribe what he saw. While escaping an enemy tribe's patrol, he loses his tribe's treasure that was placed in his care. Feeling suicidal, the boy leads the white cavalry unit that captured him to Crazy Horse's war party, hoping to die in the ensuing skirmish. The plan fails, and Paha Sapa's life in a new America begins.

As William Slow Horse, Paha Sapa rides with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, marries the daughter of a French missionary, and has a son with her. As Billy Slovak, he ends up working for sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who is raising four stone giants out of Mount Rushmore: carvings of former US presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Believing that these were the stone giants he saw in his vision quest — the future he's supposed to prevent, Paha Sapa begins planning his version of 9/11 for the Mount Rushmore monument.

Simmons is quite the storyteller. He weaves lots of history and Native American culture and language into this tale with ease. Minor complaints, such as the non-linear storyline and the eye-gouging italics used to render much of the spoken dialogue and Custer's monologues, all fade from memory as one turns the pages.

Paha Sapa's observations of the white man's world through the lens of his tribal roots are interesting, even though he feels he no longer belongs in what is now the white man's country. So it's perhaps understandable when his son Robert enlists in the army, saying "My country is at war", Paha Sapa feels like exploding.

There's also Custer's ghost, lodged inside his mind. For decades he's endured the naughty love notes he dictated to his widow, or his taunts during the few "conversations" they have had.

And he believes that by leading the US cavalry to Crazy Horse that day, he may have played a role in the events that led to the eventual surrender of the sacred Black Hills to the US. Small wonder he needs to blow up something.

The epilogue, however, reads more like an article, and is perhaps too quick a wrap-up. I found the ending a bit too fantastical, even for a work that's part sci-fi, but it does sort of explain how Paha Sapa does, indirectly, save his beloved Native American culture.

While there's a bit of posturing about how all of humanity in general — natives and newcomers — are "fat takers", there is, I think, also a warning for all of us, spoken through the Six Grandfathers in one of Paha Sapa's visions:

"...the tides of men and their peoples and even of their gods ebbs and flows like the Great Seas on each coast of this continent we gave you. A people no longer proud of itself or confident in their gods or in their own energies recedes, like the waning tide, and leaves only reeking emptiness behind. These Fat Takers also shall know that one day..."

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Black Hills

Dan Simmons
Reagan Arthur Books (2010)
485 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-316-07265-6

News: Not "Pak Lah's Book" And All That

Early this year, news portal FZ.com broke the news about what was referred to as "Pak Lah's tell-all book", a report that was panned by the book's editors because it's not "Pak Lah's book", no, no no, because he didn't write it.

Again: Not Pak Lah's book

Some time last week, talk about the book was resurrected by newsbites from former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Awakening: The Abdullah Years in Malaysia is a multi-author collection of "serious reflective collection" by scholars and other professionals on Pak Lah's tenure.

But the editors decided to postpone the official KL launch and the much-talked-about Singapore launch of the book because the nasty, nasty media predictably hyped it up again as "Pak Lah's book", even though he only has one contribution in it.

Am I to understand that they did not expect any of this? In light of the GE13 results and the upcoming UMNO general assembly? This is Malaysia, after all.

Crybabies, one would say. But what pressures could the editors and publisher be under, for them to have to tell people not to hype it up?

Curious? Get a copy from MPHOnline or Silverfish Books.

Other book-related news:

• "Classically, we have defined ourselves by the things we love. By the place which is our home, by our family, by our friends. But in this age we're asked to define ourselves by hate. That what defines you is what pisses you off. And if nothing pisses you off, who are you?" Salman Rushdie, speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, on today's apparently new "culture of offendedness".
• After learning that some of his books were banned from Guantanamo, John Grisham went inside to trace a fan of his works. What he learns kinda ticks him off.
• Wattpad introduces a crowdfunding service so fans of its writers can, like, help their favourites self-publish.
• Author Jeff Klima's take on book reviews. And here's his 12 evil ways to make your book more marketable.
• Fixi isn't just Amir Muhammad's imprint, it's a "conceptual approach". Does that make Amir Muhammad the Steve Jobs of modern urban Malay novels/publishing?
• And look, here's a review of Anchee Min's Pearl of China.

Somebody Thinks This Is Funny

I was getting off work, thinking of the big Cadbury chocolate bar and other stuff I'm about to get to help me wind down.

Then my day was ruined.

Looks like the Readings from Readings sniping has resumed.

And somebody scrawled my name on one of the bullets.

To put it nicely: I AM NOT PLEASED.

For one, I'm very picky with what I read. Also, double exclamation marks?

If you want to impersonate me online, at least do some homework.

And yes, I had some history with Readings, but that's so Shang Dynasty.

I already wrote a review for it - and it'll be the only review for this series of books.

It's nice that they took the trouble - or maybe it's another "Alan KW Wong" they're trying to set up - but I don't like my name being used in what I assume is a personal, puerile beef with the editors, contributors or publishers of this book.

I don't even want to respond to this, but I still remember the Readings-related online shitstorm. I was actually worried about losing my job. And if I have to, I'll seek legal advice.

Better safe than sorry.


19/08/2013: Well, as of today Amazon scrubbed all the latest bad reviews except one: 'mine'.

Gotta say, I'm a bit ambivalent about how 'I' am being positioned opposite Amir Muhammad. He's a much better writer and reviewer - and not just of books.

Late, Late News: Zealot, Bezos, And Author PR

More developments on the Reza Alsan thingy include assertions that, contrary to what some believe, the author of Zealot knew what he was doing when speaking to Fox. As expected, the interview sent his book up, up, up the sales charts.

A few think that Fox blew the whole thing by sticking to a prepared script that did not involve a close read of the book; Lizzie Crocker at The Daily Beast offered some key points Fox could've brought up but didn't. Perhaps they should've waited a bit after reading the book to post their critiques.

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Début author Anakana Schofield asked why must authors join the PR merry-go-round. Someone answered. An excerpt: "Like it or not, books have a relatively small audience. Advertising is a classic way to reach a mass public (those who buy cornflakes), not a niche one (interested in literary fiction). And although cornflakes may indeed be fascinating, there's not much of a story to offer the media (though that may just be me being uncreative). With a book, there is. Which, again, is why we do PR."

Paul St John Mackintosh, however, is less kind to commercial authors who moan about self-promotion, and wonders if such people went into writing just for money and fame. To which he says, "If all you have to keep you going as a writer is your greed, yearning for celebrity, and self-regard, then the social media self-promotional grind is exactly the hell you deserve."

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What else?

• After a spell with a Kindle, a bookseller tries reading a paper book and finds it cumbersome: "The book was too fat. It was too heavy. It spread out too widely. It was as if I had taken an unruly small pet onto the plane and couldn't keep it under control." Shudder. Oh, and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.
• Silverfish releases a "dumbo's guide" to creating e-books - check it out, do what it tells you and start e-mailing it to editors.
• Why a freelancer is working in an essay mill: "I can make up to £150 for a standard essay of 2,000-3,000 words – an evening’s work. Longer items can fetch up to £2,000." How this freelancer does it will shock some of you - a little.
• Is Choire Sicha's new book Very Recent History a chronicle of "the panicked, fax-filled, poverty-waged life" of a freelancer? WANT.
• "Like a short story, a good recipe can put us in a delightful trance. The Oxford English Dictionary defines fiction as literature 'concerned with the narration of imaginary events.' This is what recipes are: stories of pretend meals. Don’t be fooled by the fact that they are written in the imperative tense (pick the basil leaves, peel the onion). Yes, you might do that tomorrow, but right now, you are doing something else." Why reading recipes is such a pleasure for some.
• Seems the London Review of Books isn't the only one with a woman problem. The most recent issue of the New York Review of Books only has one female contributor out of over twenty. A sad thing when it's said that female critics made it great.
• "In the time since Little Women was published in 1868 ... a countless number of women have — as Alcott put it — 'resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.'" Louisa May Alcott was no "little woman", says Harriet Reisen, author of The Woman Behind Little Women.
• Taiwan eyeing our Chinese-language book market? Makes you wonder apa lagi depa mau.
• In Uganda, trouble for author(s) and publishers of "defamatory" book(s) critical of the country's president.
• An interview with James Dawes, author of Evil Men. Writing about evil is hard, as Dawes suggests. "We imagine evil is other than human, beyond understanding, almost mystical. This lets us off the hook, lets us deny our own capacity for evil, and stops us from analyzing the very human, very common causes of it."
• "Yes, there will always be characters that some readers just don’t want to read about, but I think most readers can experience a character who is neither a Mary Sue nor a Humbert Humbert ... and still care about their story: how they got there, how they’ll get out. Readers see themselves and the world around them in these characters, just like we do ... and the very notion that “people” will reject a book because they don’t 'like' the characters is condescending and dismissive." Author Kelly Braffet wants people to stop griping about unlikeable characters in novels.
• What makes a good librarian, from a bunch of librarians.
• The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, which collects literary and cultural artefacts from the US and Europe to advance the study of the arts and humanities, just acquired McSweeney's archive, which "contains manuscripts of the books, essays and short stories it has published, as well as correspondence from its work with writers like David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and Heidi Julavits."
• Are developing markets fuelling a Wattpad boom? Wattpad, in case you have no idea, is an online community for writers to share stuff.
• What is literary fiction? Here's one definition. And here are some web sites for literature lovers, several of which I read almost daily - and scan for listicle items.
• Chuck Wendig wants you to know these 25 things about word choice.
• Mitch Moxley went to Beijing in 2007 to work in the China Daily. His story, which includes selective reporting and navigating political minefields, is becoming familiar everywhere.
• Obama visited an Amazon fulfilment centre and sent cyberspace into a panic. No, the US president does not hate bookstores, as some have implied, but to say that Amazon is the future of retail... maybe I'd feel better if it's not the only option in some far-flung future.

Oh, did I mention that Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has bought the Washington Post? People are excited. Some are stunned. And some are snarking about it, like this fellow:

People who purchased the Washington Post also liked these products

Jason Linkins @dceiver • 05 Aug 2013

At least one is ecstatic, enough to say that "the iceberg just rescued the Titanic" (shudder). But Bezos thinks it's too early to say that: "I don't want to imply that I have a worked-out plan.".

What he did say, with regards to the future of news, is that there won't be printed newspapers in two decades and people won't pay to read news online.

"Iceberg"? Hell yes. It'll be quite a chilly future ahead for the media if Bezos's predictions come to pass. Might be a good idea to pick up the fur coats now.


...Okay, better stop here and save some stuff for next week's updates.

High-Seas Hazards

This review was written over a year ago, perhaps at a time when Somali pirates were a big deal before Snowden, Tahrir Square 2.0 and the whole mess in Syria came along. It's been said that the increased scrutiny of the Horn of Africa has made piracy less attractive there, but with these things, one never knows.

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High-seas hazards

Kill some time with some fast-paced, lightweight pirate fiction

first published in The Malay Mail Online, 06 August 2013


Prolific African-born author Wilbur Smith's books might be "airport novels" (according to "Wilbur Smith can't stop the words" in The Star, June 21, 2011) but from experience, they can be fun, albeit hefty.

So maybe they should only be read if one knows one's flight will be delayed by some three to five hours. Many of Smith's books can demand a lot of one's attention.

Though better known for his epic historical novels set in Africa, Smith has written other standalone novels as well. His latest of the latter, Those in Peril, is an action-adventure tale of terrorism, piracy, religious extremism, vengeance, betrayal, sacrifice and covert operations.

This leaner book also lacks his hallmark lush, voluminous prose. Maybe he's slowing down. With over 30 novels to his name, it's probably time he did.

A haughty ice queen of a woman, widowed Hazel Bannock is the boss of Bannock Oil. In her employ is Hector Cross, a security expert who's also a former member of the British Special Air Service (SAS).

Though their first meeting is hardly cordial, readers will know they'd hook up at some point. Readers who don't are the ones knocked out cold by the clues thrown at them.

Elsewhere, in the Indian Ocean, Hazel's headstrong daughter Cayla had taken her mother's yacht for a cruise with Rogier, a guy she'd picked up. A huge mistake: Rogier, a member of a Somali bandit clan, sneaks his pirate buddies onboard the vessel. Cayla is taken hostage, but not before she leaves her mummy a text message.

Because of her spoilt little girl's carelessness and the complicated politics of the day, Hazel has to beg Cross, the "arrogant" and "awful know-it-all", to mount a covert rescue operation and bring her daughter home. Cross succeeds, but that's only half the tale. Is Cayla really the baddies' target, or is there something else afoot?

Though the storytelling is crisp and the plot tightly woven, the pace is hurried in many parts, probably to keep the reader from noticing the strange, unbelievable situations and gaps in logic. For one, the good guys somehow manage to find time for witty banter under the stresses of hostage rescues, black ops, and possible death.

While planning Cayla's rescue mission, Hazel and Cross even manage to find time for chess, a fancy dinner, skinny-dipping and a bit of you-know-lah, nudge, wink, nudge. At one point in the middle of a mission, Hazel even approves of her lethal, highly trained body-double's taste in lingerie.

Parts of this novel take place in the lawless territories of Somalia, so we know who the antagonists are. Still, Smith makes damned sure we know, with devices such as bad-guy names (Rogier is really Adam Abdul Tippoo Tip), bad-guy habits (the violent, misogynistic head of the Tippoo Tip family hunts people like how they hunt foxes) and bad-guy talk ("My name is Anwar (Tippoo Tip). Remember it, Cross, you pig of the great pig.").

Some of these presumably crass, unwashed brigands sound like they took acting classes at some British drama academy; at times, I thought I was reading a River God sequel.

Okay, fine. Cross and some of his friends aren't much better. They're a tad racist, potty-mouthed and have generally bad manners, but by the end of the sentence where they're introduced you'll be friends with them, too. Nobody will miss the bad guys when they get killed.

Some parts are uncomfortable to read. Cayla's sexual enslavement and scenes of radical Sharia punishments at a village square in Puntland, for instance, are unnecessarily graphic and appear gratuitously added for weight. And what's with the cameo by royal gaffe-machine Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh?

Smith reputedly has a knack for melding history, geography and a dash of Mills & Boon into his tales. Those in Peril, however, also includes an incredible plot, two-dimensional characters, sparse and rushed storytelling and a sanguine ending — fast-paced, intellectually lightweight, straightforward fun for anyone (not just airport-goers) with some time to kill.

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Those in Peril

Wilbur Smith
MacMillan (2011)
386 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-230-52927-4

And It Keeps Piling Up Further

So once again, my reading backlog grows - exponentially. I haven't bothered to update my reading list since the last time.

And there are a few more books I'd forgotten to add to that.

My workload increased of late and my sort-of bibliophobia got worse. So I've got a lot to catch up on.

There's a long weekend up ahead. Hoping to reset myself then.

Masterclass In Session: Online Retail With Carol Fung

The next title in the MPH Masterclass Series is probably the most technical one yet. Mostly because of the technical nature of the subject and the tutor.

In the UK, Carol Fung "fell in love" with the Internet and began dabbling in online retail. Upon her return to Malaysia, she turned a lucrative hobby into a career, eventually teaching others how to set up their own cyberbusinesses.

She has been running her own online retailing business for over a decade. As a certified eBay trainer, she has taught hundreds of people on the art of online retailing through workshops and seminars organised by the likes of the Malaysia Digital Enterprise Exchange (MDEX) and Gorgeous Geeks, an organisation that promotes the use of IT among female entrepreneurs.

The next title in the MPH Masterclass Series will be a bit technical

When approached about the idea of writing a book on online retailing, seems Fung thought that hers would only be among the latest drops into a really huge bucket. But she took another look, and apparently found out that none of the guides out there were for Malaysian audiences.

"Online, there are bits and pieces of advice scattered here and there, but nothing comprehensive that you can refer to if you wish to learn how to start your own online retailing business," she stated. "With books, it’s even worse. All the online retailing books I could find were from the US and the context was all American."

When she first started out, Fung had to learn by trial and error. In this single volume, she shares her accumulated knowledge and experience in this field.

"When I was a newbie, I learned by going online and asking questions to those who were more experienced," she writes in the first chapter. "I am so grateful to those who gave their time willingly to help me get started. I’ve benefitted greatly from their tips and advice, which is why I love teaching others to sell online too.

Carol Fung's online store, crazyaboutstamps.com, appears to be active

"I’ve been an eBay trainer, an MDEX consultant and a Georgeous Geeks mentor. Now, I’m taking it to a whole new level through this book, which has the potential to reach out to an even wider audience, including those who are not yet online. I really feel this is what I was meant to do and I’m so happy to be able to make this a reality."

After talking about how she made tracks in online retail, Fung guides readers, step by step (kinda), on how to set up shop online. Much of the book has the feel of a user manual, with lots of screenshots and pictures to help visualise the steps described.

From sussing out domain names and setting up accounts for eBay, PayPal, Lelong and Mudah.com, to taking pictures of photographs, determine shipping costs and pick shipping methods and setting up a Facebook store, Carol Fung's Guide to Online Retailing is a handy reference for any budding Netpreneur.

While this book is "the sum total" of Fung's 12 years in online retailing, it is not, she writes, "a comprehensive book on online retailing in the sense that I don’t describe every single possible platform available. There are simply too many. Rather, what I’ve done is to share with you the best options that I’ve found.

"I can truly say that what you’re holding in your hands is a guidebook that I wish I had when I was taking my own first baby steps into the world of online retailing so many years ago."

Print versions are going for RM35.90 a copy, while e-book versions will soon be available from MPH Digital.


Carol Fung is scheduled to appear at the Popular Bookfest @ the KL Convention Centre on 05 August, 5pm.

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Carol Fung's Guide to Online Retailing

Carol Fung
MPH Group Publishing
213 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-967-415-128-7

Buy from MPHOnline.com

News: The Aw-some Tash And Other Stuff

What other news do you need to know other than the inclusion of Tash Aw's Five-Star Billionaire (I'm spelling it with the hyphen) in the most "diverse", "daring" Man Booker longlist yet? Wait, are they still calling it the Man Booker Prize?

Booker longlisted Five-star Billionaire and its author, Tash Aw
(photos not mine)

If you must know, some of the other books in the longlist include We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (who's been shortlisted for the Booker twice), Donal Ryan's début and much-rejected novel The Spinning Heart and the unreleased titles (at the time of naming) Unexploded by Alison MacLeod, Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson, and The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. Check out the whole line-up here.

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...Okay, there were other happenings last week in the book world. Here's a round-up of some of the responses to Fox News' "most embarrassing interview" with religious scholar Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Seems they can't wrap their heads around the fact that a Muslim penned a book about Jesus, and the worst of them have predictably reacted badly. Already expectations of skyrocketing sales for the book (and the one-star tsunami at Amazon) are high.

Commentators in that Atlantic Wire report had nothing but praise for Aslan's "superhuman" patience in the face of an interviewer apparently offended that a Muslim would write anything on the founder of Christianity and is hell-bent on discrediting the scholar and the book, based solely on the former's religion.

In spite of Aslan's credentials and that he says writing books on Jesus is also part of his job. "I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament. That's what I do for a living, actually."

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"I don’t remember what I wrote ... and I don’t remember anything about the book itself except that I felt completely unrepentant about not recommending it. ... as far as I was concerned the only reason they didn’t go for this one was that it wasn’t good enough. 'Good' for me at that time meant tight and clever and stylistically showy. The idea that failing to see the merit of 'The Diary of a Good Neighbour' might have been a reflection of my own limitations rather than the book’s had no resonance for me at all. My mechanism of judgment was as ruthless as it was narrow."

After Robert Galbraith's unmasking, the guy who dismissed Doris Lessing's pseudonymously written novel reflects on his decision.


Elsewhere:

• There's a library in an Orang Asli village in Port Dickson? And it seems this library, located at Kampung Orang Asli Sunggala, needs books.
• "I write street lit because that’s the life I lived". Deborah Cardona a.k.a "Sexy" (the hell?), and a gritty, ignored genre.
• When a blog is a brand, "going dark" isn't an option for the blogger. But sometimes a hiatus - or a complete disconnection - might be necessary.
• A first-time author asks why is the media a) such busybodies, b) not paying her for 'promotional' pieces she wrote, and c) so obsessed with "how to write" when they should be asking "how to read".
• With the Penguin Random House merger complete, this behemoth of a publishing company is projected to corner about a quarter of the world's book publishing sector. The Atlantic and the Guardian are voicing concerns involving a scenario where giants battle for dominance of a less diverse publishing ecosystem, leaving smaller players to scavenge among the ruins. "Go big or go extinct" seems to be the game now.
• American publishers are pushing for the EPUB3 standard for e-books. Why?
• From GalleyCat: how booksellers can fight the scourge of showrooming, and, from the guy who introduced The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared to the world, comes The Illiterate Who Could Count. I'm wondering, how long before we get The Comedian Who Isn't Funny or The Mountaineer Who's Afraid of Heights?
• A Q&A with Tim Hely Hutchinson, group chief executive of Hachette UK, in conjunction with the opening of Hachette's sales office in Hing Kong. While he talks about change, the Asian market, and other things, Hachette New Zealand stops publishing new stuff.
• So research suggests the scent of chocolate keeps people hanging around in bookstores for much longer. Will an Eau de Chocolat for bookstores promote patronage and sales?
• How Neil Gaiman was "like sushi", which "kind of works" now, according to Neil Gaiman.
• Deadliest Catch crab boat captain Johnathan Hillstrand pens children's books, one of which features... crabs.
• A long infographic to help you find out what kind of reader you are.

Adventures In Translation

Sometimes, editors get to read the darnedest things.


English: I can save some time.
Malay: Saya boleh menyelamatkan masa.

"That clock is falling!" he shouted. "Don't let it break!" Diving forward, his hands reached the clock before it hit the ground.

"Phew!"


English: I soon found out.
Malay: Kini saya sudah boleh melihat!

"The scales fell from my eyes!" Saul (later, Paul) exclaimed.


English: I thought he was going to faint.
Malay: Saya ingatkan dia akan pengsan.

"Hey, you!" he said, tapping her on the shoulder. "Act III, Scene 4. This is where you pass out."

"Oh, right," she mumbles and collapses onto the floor.

The director clutched at his face. "Cut!"


English: He threw his head back.
Malay: Dia menolak kepalanya sampai ke belakang.

Because his neck muscles had gone slack. Surprised this wasn't translated into, "Dia melontar kepalanya ke belakang."


...and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It makes the job interesting, at least.

News: Leaks, Letters, Libraries, And Lonely Planet

"Robert Galbraith" is reportedly pissed with how the name behind "his" pseudonym was leaked. Claims that the leak was not a publicity stunt followed revelations that someone in a legal firm let slip that JK Rowling was actually the author of The Cuckoo's Calling, an acclaimed crime novel with previously modest sales figures.

I think it's more because JK Rowling or her publishers were more pissed because they were robbed of the privilege of the unveiling at an appointed time. Given Rowling's reputation, it's possible that the publisher will eventually spring this on us. That being said, entrusting anybody with secrets can be risky in the age of Instagram.

Now that the cat's out of the bag, sales, predictably, went through the roof. At least Rowling can add another feather to her hat, unlike some other authors who could only enjoy posthumous fame.

Somebody writing in seattlepi.com thinks Rowling's case "is a truly illuminating example of the fundamental unfairness and absurdity that lies at the heart of the book publishing industry."

---

Following the Taliban's 'apology' to Malala for shooting her, writer Mohammed Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti) exploded some Taliban mangoes.

Thanks for owning up that your comrades tried to kill her by shooting her in the head. Many of your well-wishers in Pakistan had been claiming the Taliban wouldn't attack a minor girl. They were of the opinion that Malala had shot herself in order to become a celebrity and get a UK visa. Women, as we know, will go to any lengths to get what they want. So thanks for saying that a 14-year-old girl was the Taliban's foe.

With that out of the way, he starts piling it on.

Like you, there are others who are still not sure whether it was "Islamically correct or wrong", or whether she deserved to be "killed or not", but then you go on to suggest that we leave it to Allah.

There are a lot of people in Pakistan, some of them not even Muslims, who, when faced with difficult choices or everyday hardships, say let's leave it to Allah. Sometimes it's the only solace for the helpless. But most people don't say leave it to Allah after shooting a kid in the face.

Read the whole thing. Please.

Meanwhile, back home, Uthaya Sankar SB pens his thoughts (in Malay) over a perceived insult to religion.

---

Another Wild West myth explodes:

...the idealization of [Wyatt] Earp as a good guy with a gun, an unswerving servant of law and order, is a myth. As a young man, Earp was arrested for horse theft and consorting with prostitutes. He was run out of a Texas town for trying to sell a rock painted yellow as a gold brick. He was drawn to police work not because of a devotion to the law but because, during the Gilded Age when public corruption was rampant, it was an easy source of cash. He went to court in 1896 for having refereed a fixed heavyweight championship prizefight, and as late as 1911, at age 63, he was arrested by the Los Angeles police for running a crooked card game.

Gosh darn it. Wyatt Earp. Who knew?

---

"'Technically,' because like ... any number of other YA books that some adults like to raise hell about, these titles promote only what readers want them to promote. Because without context of story, you can make a book about anything you want it to be about!"

As young adult books get darker and steamier, parents start worrying. Are these YA titles so terrifying, or is there an element of hypocrisy involved?

"Some grown-ups are afraid of context.

It’s clear not only in their claims about what it is YA books are promoting but also in their strong stances that YA books were never as “bad” in their day.

Of course they were.

Elsewhere:

• Someone in Singapore has compiled the stories of 300 hawkers in the island state into a book and will also be conducting guided tours to some famous hawker centres there. The book, part of the Singapore HeritageFest 2013, is going for about RM211 and can be found here. Want to ask, "How did they manage to find 300 hawkers in Singapore?" Don't.
• Translated Chinese novels not going out to the world as fast as foreign fiction coming into China.
• Hey, Tash Aw is in Poskod.my. Speaking of his old backyard: "I grew up in what was then called Kampung Kerinchi. It was a slum, basically. Now it’s called Bangsar South. It’s really quite amazing." We think so too.
• Lonely Planet is cutting its editorial staff. Though it's not dead yet, the eulogies appear to be coming in. Meanwhile, Frommers, another travel guide label, will be publishing a new set of books under a new name, after it was bought back from Google by its founder.
• Spain's economic crisis sends crowds into libraries, which start looking like neighbourhood community centres. Wonder if this will boost the arguments in this article on libraries in the UK.
• Are women in the UK ditching newspapers because of sexist white male newspaper owners and what the latter think are news?
• Wanna write better? First, be a better reader. These techniques are said to help.
• What heppened when a library banned a book - with the author's permission - on Banned Book Week.
• Found guilty of conspiring to fix e-book prices with a bunch of publishers, Apple, predictably, appeals against the verdict.

And talk about sudden hedgehogs: Check out the cover and description of this (erotic?) werehedgehog romance e-book.

Now there's a terrifying title I wouldn't let young adults read - lest they start flooding Facebook with related memes. But I wonder if it explores an actual hedgehog-related condition?

News: Noms De Plume, Stalkers, Critics, And Cynics

Seems last week's been a week for revealing secrets. Sales of mystery novel The Cuckoo's Calling surged by 150,000 per cent after news emerged that the author, Robert Galbraith, was actually JK Rowling.

Not sure if this is good news for Rowling, seeing is that:

Being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience ... It has been wonderful to publish without hype and expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.

While Scott Pack unpacks the news, Kate Mills of Orion Publishing admits she and perhaps several other publishers passed on Galbraith/Rowling's mystery novel.

The Telegraph seems to be chortling at the editors' inability to spot the book as a winner - and figure out that Rowling was the actual author. Like editors are supposed to be clairvoyant and all that.

Meanwhile, online persona Ruth Bourdain seems to have outed himself due to the pressure in maintaining the charade. The mastermind behind the popular Ruth Reichl/Anythony Bourdain mashup was "mild-mannered" freelance writer and Food Section blogger Josh Friedland.

Both Rowling and Friedland intend to continue writing under their noms de plume. But will it be the same, now that the illusions have been shattered? And will there be pressure to perform now?

---

Sandra Botham, some lady in the UK, was convicted for tossing ink at crime writer Val McDermid over a perceived insult where she'd assumed that a "Michelin Man-like" character called Sandra in McDermid's that book she read in 1985 was herself.

"This is a work of pure fiction. All resemblances to real characters, living or dead, events and locations are purely coincidental." Was this disclaimer missing from the book or did Botham have a bad day over two decades long?

And here are some more incidents of author stalking "that could be out of a Stephen King novel" for further reading. Also: a peek into the "murky world" of literary libel.


Elsewhere:

• Goodreads asks its members what made them put down a book. Here are the results, in infographic form. Few surprises in the findings.
• Mob mag: Japan's largest yakuza group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, published a magazine.
• "Being cynical isn't necessarily a bad thing ... It's at the heart of great satire and, perhaps more importantly, leads us to question what is wrong with the world – and strive to make it better." Julian Baggini, in the Guardian, on why cynicism still matters.
• Guilty! Apple said to have 'led a conspiracy' to fix e-book prices with several big-name publishers. Here's how Apple apparently did it. While some may celebrate the court decision (hooray for consumers!), someone over at Forbes thinks it might lead to lower-quality e-books - and a dominant Amazon that can set its own rules and prices in the absence of any major competition.
• A Malaysian High Court grants stay application by ZI Publications over a raid and confiscation of Irshad Manji's book by religious authorities on its premises. If the JAWI raid on Borders was ruled illegal because the book wasn't yet banned by the Home Ministry, the same might be said of the raid on ZI.
• "Beans for the kids", "a glass of wine", and "little carps" are not what you think they are. Hint: they're all euphemisms for "duit kopi".
• Writing heals, it seems.
• "A five-star restaurant is like pornography: You'll know it when you see it, and it will likely bring you great pleasure." If this is how roving restaurant critic Hanna Raskin intends to help Yelp, good luck to everybody.
• Why do we read about bad deeds? A professor introduces Freud's "idea of sublimation" and suggests that "...authors write -- and, for that matter, readers read -- about acts of violence, cruelty, dishonesty, or aggression precisely so that they don't actually commit them in real life." Imagine that, even as some conservatives argue that reading about bad deeds encourages them.
• Should you boycott an author's works in protest of his personal views? HuffPost's senior books editor says it's pointless. Where Orson Scott Card is concerned, apparently yes.
• Clive James's acerbic review of Dan Brown's Inferno. Brown's an esay target for this kind of critique, and it's something I'd do if I had the patience, knowledge and an additional 30 years' experience in writing.
• As competition wanes, Amazon cuts back on discounts.
• The New York Times is shutting down its food blog, Diner's Journal. Is this the beginning - or the middle - of the end of blogs?

By the way, MPH's digital publishing division has a Facebook page up. IT CAN HAZ LIKES? THNX. I've been allowed to post stuff on the page, though I don't see myself contributing often because of my anti-social tendencies.

MPH Quill, Issue 38, July to September 2013

...features the girls of indie ice cream brand The Last Polka.

From what I heard, the senior editors had a field day with the interview, photoshoot, and presumably lunch at The Bee, Jaya One. The girls were dolled up by the Amber Chia Academy.

In this issue:

• Profile of three women entrepreneurs: Chantelle Chuah (JesseChantelle Chocolatier), Yoshini Jaya Manogaran (Urban OPI Nail Salon) and Nicole Rodrigues (Mountain Juice).
• Also profiled are three blogshops: thecalaman.com, trendyconfessions.com, and The Pink Sort (facebook.com/thepinksort).
• A chat with Philippe Charriol, founder of the luxury brand Charriol, and a feature on actress and poet Hélène Cardona.
• Kid Chan talks about his past and his book, and Ellen Whyte talks about Angkor Wat.
• Articles on how to be happy, a quiz to find out what kind of a spender you are, and a (rather oversimplistic) way to tell if your man is a prince or a player.

And more, coming soon to bookstores and news stands.

News: Textbooks, Excerpts, And A Ghostwriter's Lament

• "Textbook sales, for both higher education and K-12, will reach an estimated $13.7 billion in the U.S. this year, according to Outsell, a research firm. The overall market is expected to increase over the next few years as the student population is growing." Is the industry that Jobs said was "ripe for digital destruction" heading down that path?
• How a Hong Kong book fair is helping the territory's writers penetrate the mainland market. Still ... guess nine to 11 per cent in royalties is quite common in conventional publishing.
• "In the course of five years and approximately 600,000 words, I'd become so good at mimicking the voice of another author that I'd lost my own, and I'd failed to nurture my own career, not to mention well-being, as carefully as I had the lives of the characters that had never belonged to me." A ghostwriter wakes up to the espresso.
• After laying off its in-house shutterbugs, Chicago Sun-Times drops its regular book coverage.
• Because they're people, too: a new book on the victims of the Long Island Serial Killer. Also from Salon: an excerpt from a book on the apparent militarisation of the US police force.
• Lest we forget: everything we need to know about the e-book price war.
• Two ways to not approach a publisher: online stalking and when queueing up for the dunny. S'not on, mate.
• Hooray for best-selling author Amish Tripathi, whose Immortals of Meluha has publishers lining up for his next potential blockbuster.

Betty, the Vampire Slayer

Forget the pom-poms and wooden stakes - Elizabeth I of England blasts bloodsuckers to kingdom come with raw magic in this retelling of her history

first published in The Malay Mail Online, 03 July 2013


As queen, Elizabeth Tudor, also known as Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603), was noted for slaying some notable things. Mary, Queen of Scots. The Spanish Armada. But what if she also slew vampires?

That's the premise behind The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer. The novel's marketing set-up touts it as the start of a "sumptuous new series" based on the Virgin Queen's "never-before-seen" diaries, "revealed to the world" by Lucy Weston, the minor vampire character in many Dracula films and the "owner" of the seemingly defunct www.lucywestonvampire.com. "Weston" is also credited as the novel's author, but I have no idea who is/are behind "her."

The novel begins days before Elizabeth's coronation, court official William Cecil and polymath Dr John Dee lead the future queen to her mother's gravesite where she begins to glow, smells roses and hears her mother's voice.

It turns out to be more than just pre-coronation jitters. Liz (let's call her "Liz"; "Betty" is still too long) is revealed to be a slayer of vampires and descendant of Druid priestess Morgraine (a.k.a. Morgan le Fey), whose powers have awakened in her.

Cecil and Dee confess to being members of a circle entrusted with this secret and her protection. She is less than pleased with the revelation, but eventually embraces it for the sake of her kingdom.

The vampires are led by Mordred, the illegitimate son of the legendary King Arthur and, therefore, a legit claimant to the English throne. He joined the creatures to save England a thousand years earlier. Back then, he courted Morgraine and offered her the same deal, but was rebuffed. Now, he's eyeing Liz.

On the night she is crowned, Mordred warns Liz of the dangers she and her kingdom faced from rival countries and the Pope and offers her power and protection from those dangers – if she becomes his vampire queen. He's told to sod off.

However, Liz finds him charming, despite what he is, but she also has those rival kingdoms and court intrigues to deal with. There's also the ironically vampiric nature of her gift which, among other things, allows her to blast vampires to smithereens with energy bolts; every bloodsucker she kills feeds her powers and urge to kill more of them.

Besides Cecil and Dee, other real-life figures here include Liz's governess, Kat Ashley; Francis Walsingham, who would become the royal spymaster; and Robert Dudley, the queen's long-time companion and reputed lover.

Written in a way that brings to mind Shakespeare, this two-narrator work barely registers as Harlequin horror. Though convincing from a historical viewpoint, the novel stumbles when it came to the romance/horror bit.

Scenes with Liz and Mordred are more like a dance, not tussle, of emotions, even as the two are torn between duty and their mutual attraction to each other. The plot feels loose and almost every twist can be predicted. Except, perhaps, how it ends.

And Mordred, that powerful, time-warping and space-bending immortal being of the night, is so addled by his feelings for the fledgling queen, judging from his side of the story.

To the chagrin of Lady Blanche, the token jealous other woman and his second-in-command, he still hopes that Liz will join him, even as she starts slaying his kin.

I say it's because of her rank and powers. Slayer Liz comes off as a wilful royal brat, steeped in the belief that her right to lord over her subjects is divinely ordained; any talk of altruism, charity and justice seems obligated by faith and duty.

Nor does she believe the "radical" idea that all men are equal: "Truly, if that addled notion ever becomes common currency, the world will be undone." She's so made for Mordred.

The romantic "tension" between Liz and Rob Dudley feels just as obligatory. The blow-hot/blow-cold stuff and love scenes are all by the numbers. Rob's a pitiful, poor rival of Mordred. Historically, Rob never got to marry Liz, partly due to the queen's vaguely feminist tendencies. He must feel even more inadequate, now that his royal lady love can go pew pew pew like the Death Star.

The ending and the asides by Mordred in the first part of the "secret diaries" seem to hint at a future continuation of and a dark turn in Elizabeth Tudor's so-called secret history as a vampire-killing machine.

But would such a series still be viable, now that the Twilight saga on the big screen has ended and, perhaps, driven the last nail into the coffin of a tired, well-milked genre?


This review is based on an advanced reading copy.

---

The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer

Lucy Weston
Gallery Books (2011)
304 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9033-3

News: Serious Stuff, Borders, Coffee, And A Keynote Speech

• "As a native of Burma or Myanmar, the title 'Freedom and Literature' seemed surreal to us in the recent past. However, for me, literature itself, either creating or reading it, always relates to freedom." Burmese writer Dr Ma Thida's closing keynote speech for the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference at #Word: Cooler Lumpur Festival. On that note, here's some coverage of the event.
• JAWI's raid on Borders over Irshad Manji's Allah, Liberty and Love was is still unconstitutional and illegal, and the High Court has asked that the charges against store manager Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz be dropped. Doesn't look like JAWI can appeal the decision, but I don't expect this to end with a whimper.
• "It's not that we should include things that are 'frivolous,' necessarily, but we should include things with male and female bents, and even things that are not serious in subject, but serious in terms of the work they entail—the seriousness between the writer and his or her subject, and the reader and the page." Jen Doll's thoughts on gender, publications, and 'serious journalism' in The Hairpin.
• He is legend: RIP Richard Matheson.
• Barnes & Noble to stop making its own colour e-readers.
• Over at The Economist, some thoughts about Alice Munro's retirement. But do writers ever retire?
• Coffee cramps creativity? Not really. "Idleness and willfully unrealized potential, though, are," says James Hamblin in The Atlantic. In this article (looks like an ad, doesn't it?), ambient noises in a coffeeshop can boost creativity.
• Potong stim: Ballantine Books decides to cancel Paula Deen's book, Paula Deen’s New Testament: 250 Recipes, All Lightened Up, despite pre-orders taking it to number one on Amazon. The support for Deen is as pointless as the circus surrounding her use of the 'N-word'; it's not the worst thing she's done. But I guess the publishers didn't want to risk having the books gather dust due to all that negative publicity.
• Despite changes in demographics, children's books in the US "stay stubbornly white".
• Chef Jamie Oliver, author of numerous cookbooks and articles, manages to finish a whole book: Suzanne Collins's Catching Fire. Quite a feat, since he's dyslexic. But shouldn't he have read the first Hunger Games novel first? Prob'ly too much t'ask o' him. But way to go, chef.
  
  Meanwhile, here's a possible key to reading more: "Carry a book with you at all times. Every time you get a second, crack it open. Don’t install games on your phone – that’s time you could be reading. When you’re eating, read. When you’re on the train, in the waiting room, at the office – read."
• If someone reviewed beer a la Gertrude Stein, will he be dubbed a 'beer stein'? I know, I know, lawak tempang. That being said:
  
  

  Left-Hand Black Jack Porter (6.80% ABV): Spiritous in spirit, tea like in tea. All this and not extraordinary in heft, hefted. A little sweetness is so ordinary. Very likely there is no cream that is present, yet inside the milk is a shade. Life and limb for an age aged for darkness. Herbaceous yet what is an herb to the hereby untenable mouth.

  
  Hmm.

Examining Education

"We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat." Is the call of these protesters in China, against a crackdown on cheating in college entrance exams, a sign of the Chinese exam system's impending collapse?

China's education system, which in many ways reflects ancient Confucian principles, places an overwhelming emphasis on memorization, recitation, and examination. Courses in critical thinking largely do not exist and students are not encouraged to engage in rigorous debate in class.

These entrance exams are considered a level playing field, where children of peasants can trump the scions of government officials and Communist party strongmen. But when an education system "places an overwhelming emphasis on memorization, recitation, and examination", I suppose, from the disturbing Telegraph report, that a culture of cheating to pass exams has broken and will break attempts to re-introduce order and fairness in a merit-based arena.

Even the parents in that report are upset that their children are not allowed to cheat. What else can that say other than, "holy crap"?

Though cheating isn't rampant in our own exam halls, much has been said about our education system, from the dumbing down of the syllabus to the quotas. Yet this isn't enough for an NGO, who is calling for the abolishment of meritocracy in education to "return justice" to certain students.

The notion that meritocracy should be scrapped because it 'empowers' others is absurd. Not all students score big in exams, either. Me, for instance.

In the NST, Professor Emeritus Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Kim lamented the damage our rote learning-based, result-oriented education system has done to the understanding of this nation's history.

"When I asked who was Tun Tan Cheng Lock, they just smiled and did not know the answer," the historian said during a conference, on students' 'excellent' history scores, despite not knowing who one of the founders of MCA was. "Some of them don't even know the history of their own school."

It's been a long while since I attended a history class, so my memory on this is sketchy. But if the system is as broken as Tan Sri Dr Khoo says it is, eliminating any form of meritocracy from the system can only make things worse than they already are.

Will the powers that be ignore well-meaning calls for a proper implementation of a school syllabus, like the one from this letter writer on how history should be taught and why it's important? More importantly, will the points this Dr Ranjit brought up be taken into consideration?

At least, if we can get a merit-based system right, we can claim to be better than China in that regard.

News: Fiery Flavours, Fonts, Flops, And Stuff

So much to ponder after the cool but hazy Cooler Lumpur Festival. I had to miss out on the Festival's closing events because of dinner at my relatives and haze-induced health problems, but what events I have attended left much food for thought.

So, more on that, and book reviews, later. For now:

• London Review of Books has virtually no female contributors? Here's what LRB had to say about it.
• Mary Roach on the Naga king chilli, aka the Bhut Jolokia, and a chilli-eating contest.
• Mystery book sculptress strikes again, leaves another piece at Leith Library in Edinburgh. Speaking of libraries: Carnegie Medal winner Sally Gardner (Maggot Moon) praises books and librarians, while bashing UK education secretary Michael Gove's new curriculum in her acceptance speech.
• Penguin introduces rewards system and chance to preview new releases. Is this the gamification of publishing?
• Yellow person has a fit when white person enlists another white person to write a book on yellow people's street food. Yellow person's words, not mine.
• Georgia is "sharper, more pleasing, and easier to read" than Times New Roman? It seems typefaces do influence how we read and think.
• RIP Michael Hastings, journo who brought down US general Stanley McChrystal. News have emerged about an e-mail he allegedly sent before his death, which suggests he may have been tailed and casts a pall over his death.
• In the Guardian, seven writers reflect on failure. They even arranged the list in alphabetical order.
• Oliver Pötzsch becomes first Amazon Publishing author to sell one million copies in print, audio and Kindle.
• As news emerges about Stephen King's Joyland being pirated, German researchers look into new DRM technology.
• Joshua Rothman at The New Yorker remembers the time when Dan Brown visited his English class in 1998. "I, for one, assumed that [replacement teacher] Mr. Terry had somehow run out of steam, and had brought in Dan Brown in more or less the same way that, toward the end of the year, a teacher might bring in a movie." Fifteen years later, two of Brown's books were made into movies, so I guess Rothman's class got a good deal.
• I don't know which Robicelli wrote this take on the Paula Deen circus, but I found it entertaining - and more.
• Zounds! Papa Hemingway was a failed KGB agent? Some of us may be glad he was better at writing than spying.
• Are political memoirs on the way out? I HOPE SO.
• Kickstarter apologises over raising funds for an 'offensive' seduction guide. "Above the Game" sounds like a dig at Neil Strauss.

One aside: Edward Snowden, who reportedly said "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things", is now, according to David Wiegel at Slate, is "on a world tour" of countries with an even worse record on press and information freedom that the US. "At the moment he's less concerned with irony than with avoiding jail," Weigel adds.

While his 'disclosures' may have opened up debate on privacy and state surveillance, I wouldn't take what he says seriously anymore.

Award Angst

Did you erupt with cheers, champagne and confetti over Tan Twan Eng's Man Asia win? He is the first Malaysian to win the most prestigious literary award after the Booker which he was also shortlisted for.

But it seems not everybody's happy.

Weeks ago, I heard rumours that an author, upon hearing the news about Tan's win, felt a bit boh song about it and wondered why his books weren't considered.

I was hoping it was a rumour. What kind of prize duffer would be presumptuous and thick-skinned enough to feel that way?

How is it possible for anyone to not like him or his books?

First: Tan Twan Eng does not "always win". Believe it or not, there are prizes he's not eligible for. The Costa Book Awards, for instance, are given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland (Tan's based in South Africa).

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is for writers who write about South Asian themes (which Tan doesn't do, yet), and the biennial Bollingen Prize for Poetry recognises an American poet's best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement (Tan's no poet, though some have described his prose as "lyrical").

And not everybody likes The Garden of Evening Mists. Apart from the reviewer in the Guardian, at least two local book critics didn't think it was all that. These days, commercial success doesn't necessarily mean quality - hello, Twilight! Not to disparage Evening Mists, which I heard is a better book.

Also, the winning book was published in 2012, an important criterion. Did The Snubbed One write anything during that year, and did his publisher submitted it for the running? And was he or his publisher aware of the Award's terms and conditions?

And have a gander at the Booker's terms of entry, which include:

2. Conditions of award

Any eligible book which is entered for the prize will only qualify for the award if its publisher agrees:

a) to contribute £5,000 (about RM24,580) towards general publicity if the book reaches the shortlist

b) to contribute a further £5,000 if the book wins the prize

c) to comply with Rule 4g

Which is: "Each publisher of a title appearing on the longlist will be required to have no fewer than 1,000 copies of that title available in stock within 10 days of the announcement of the longlist. The publisher, publicist and agent of the longlisted author are strongly advised to attend a briefing meeting shortly after the longlist is announced."

There you go. And publishers have a few more hoops to jump before and after the submitted books make it to the Booker longlist. Which probably explains why we tend to see certain books and certain publishers making longlists of certain awards each year.

Second: The Man Asia longlist of 15 authors was "drawn from 108 published works from nine Asian countries submitted to a panel of judges led by literary critic and journalist Maya Jaggi, also included three debut novelists and a Nobel laureate," says a Bernama report.

Look at the names of the authors, some of whom are already established writers with at least one accolade. Look at the names of the judges, some of whom are strong authors and literary critics.

What are the chances that The Snubbed One could sneak into that glitzy line-up? How many authors could slug it out in a literary deathmatch against Orhan Pamuk?

And 2011 was a year with an even more formidable line-up that includes Haruki Murakami, Amitav Ghosh, Tahmima Anam, Anuradha Roy, and the eventual winner Shin Kyung-sook, whose novel Please Look After Mom has sold over two million copies and has been adapted for the stage.

In a radio interview podcast, writer Michael Cunningham, who was a jury member for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and winner of said Prize for his novel The Hours, said something about how difficult it is to write a really good novel, and thinks people who think they can dash one off just like that shows "disrespect" for the craft.

However, many writers have made do without ever being in a prestigious lit-prize's longlist. EL James, unfortunately, comes to mind, as do several others who have followed in her footsteps.

Not that I think that would help make things better for The Snubbed One, if he's really out there.

Whatever can be said about Tan or his books, he's the literary equivalent of Nicol David right now. Recently, his Evening Mists pipped Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies for the Walter Scott Prize, which was recently opened to authors from the Commonwealth.

Nobody should begrudge him the accolades he's received, especially Malaysians. And he's one of the few who have made it internationally, alongside names such as Tash Aw and Preeta Samarasan.

No winning book? Write one. Life is way too short for munching on sour grapes or chopping down poppies.

News: Cool Mud, S&M, Publishing, And Book Stacking

Local online news portal The Star reports on the upcoming Cooler Lumpur Festival 2013. Although the Festival will have a YA fiction-related programme, a local writer, editor and book reviewer laments the overall lack of programmes featuring children's and young adult literature in local lit fests.

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"'...Are you sure this isn’t just a small bunch of very loud women with their panties all whirled around in some kinda panty tornado?' And there I'd correct you and note that I am a dude and, in fact, my panties are indeed whirling about in a panty tornado because this is a problem in our respective industry and it sucks." So, yeah, Chuck Wendig wants you to know these 25 things about sexism and misogyny in writing and publishing. Also related is the sexism shitstorm over the cover of and a column in a recent edition of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's (SFWA) magazine.

Speaking of sexism and misogyny (hey, another kind of S&M), Laura Miller over at Salon tears into The Daily Beast's alleged slut-shaming of CIA deputy director Avril Haines. British tabloid The Daily Mail also picked it up, and suggests this detail in Haines's past is "pertinent" - "for an agency that was recently embarrassed by the resignation of its director, David Petraeus, over his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell".

A former British intel chief and now writer of spy novels thinks Brits should snoop on their neighbours for the sake of national security. Which, from what passes as news in that country, they might already be doing - and is way creepier.

I'd be chuffed to know that the first ever female deputy director of my country's intelligence agency hosted an "Erotica Night" at a bookstore she co-owned. At least this shows she's a human being and not a Cylon. Does anyone think we can get her to join next year's Cooler Lumpur Festival?


Okay, what else?

• In Turkey, Kurdish book publishing is still a risky business. Even more so now, with Turkey's government tightening the screws after the recent protests.
• Author Randy Susan Meyers's ten tips for writers reading in public. Just in time for a certain arts and literature festival.
• It's tempting to think that Snowdengate somehow boosted sales of George Orwell's 1984. June 6 - around the time the story broke - is also the anniversary of the book's release.
• University presses facing challenges in the new era of democratised, increasingly commercialised publishing.
• Reading fiction, apparently, helps with thinking and dealing with ambiguity.
• Egyptian author and human rights activist Karam Saber is jailed for his allegedly 'blasphemous' book, Where is God? He, along with those protesting the sentence, are probably asking the same question.
• I can't say much about the Popular-The Star Readers' Choice Awards, but the points raised in this article are worth pondering.
• Random House wants you to plug into audiobooks. Yes, you, runner-in-training. You, guy in the gym. You, frequent flyer. You, on the lawn mower or your SUV. Because: "Reading the latest Dan Brown novel, 'Inferno,' while driving a car or mowing the lawn would be perilous, but probably not for audiobook listeners." Not too sure about that.
• Do grammar police arrest the imagination? Prompted by Sherman Alexie's asertion that "Grammar cops are rarely good writers. Imagination always disobeys." Can someone cite the Guardian writer for that arresting pun?
• "My grandmother, the writer Han Suyin, died last November at ninety-six. The funeral was in Switzerland, and I went only because my mother asked me to. Twice. 'You’ll be fine,' I said. 'Just remember what an asshole she was.'" Looks like Karen Shepard really does not like her grandma.
• Nine reasons why Dan Brown is one of the most important (living) authors. Thoughts? I know. Me neither.
• Book-stacking techniques to liven up bookstore displays in Japan? Will this become a sport or drinking game?

Coming Up For Air

These days I bury my head in a pile of printed pages, mainly to muffle unpleasant noises from the real world. Once in a while, though, I come up for a breath of air.

This time, the unpleasant noise is about our prime minister's brother.

Weeks ago, a CEO of a certain low-budget airline called out a local daily for its potentially incendiary headline. Though his views had some support within 'his own people', including the PM's brother, he was roundly mocked and accused of being 'ungrateful' and 'forgetting his roots'.

When outsiders call out BS on an authority or entity, they're accused of being ill-informed, making things up based on perceptions and the like. But what if the calling out is done by insiders?

Checks and balances are integral to any form of governance and ensures that those in charge would remain on the straight and narrow. Because power and privilege will always go hand in hand with the temptation to abuse them.

Years ago I saw something terrifying on a car sticker: a slogan for some "Pembangkang Sifar" (Zero Opposition) campaign. It chilled me to the marrow.

Though it sounds like political posturing, to me the slogan was a window to a mentality that places overwhelming faith in the belief that "our leaders will never let us down", that there is no alternative other than the status quo, and brooks no opposition to it, even if it's out of loyalty, faith and genuine concern.

When facts are absent, perception is everything.

Several years ago at Wisma Kebudayaan Sokka Gakkai Malaysia, Austrian storyteller Folke Tegetthoff narrated a version of heaven and hell that shared the same setting: an enormous cauldron of broth ringed by people wielding spoons with really long, long stems.

The people from hell starved trying to feed themselves with the spoons; the denizens of heaven were, in contrast, well fed because each one fed the person on the opposite side of the cauldron.

How wonderful it would be if that 'heaven' existed in this country, this world. But the moment you try to feed your neighbour he'll be looking for ulterior motives - particularly if you're from 'the other side'.

Isn't it tragic, how we can't get over ideological differences to band together and do what the right-minded consider the right thing? Even from within the ranks?

...Okay, back to my pile of print. Good weekend, y'all.