Book Marks: Local Author News, Hugo Exclusions

I know I've been away for a bit, dropping my pledge to update once a week. But the publishing sphere seemed to have been quiet at the year-end and beginning of January 2024, so there wasn't much of note happening.

Also, I caught COVID in early January. The worst I've ever felt in a couple of years and I had to go see a doctor for medication and get more RTK test kits while ill. To my dismay, the nasal swab returned a strong positive result, though I should have guessed from my feverish brow and limbs that felt like lead.

And who knew all the medical equipment I bought on separate occasions on a whim – pulse oximeter, digital thermometer, and blood pressure monitor – would come in handy?

So I'm taking it easy for now, and I'll only be posting as and when sufficient material is available, while I wait and see what else COVID has done to me. Back to the usual programming...


Ipoh-based teacher Aishah Zainal's debut novel Hades was nominated by the National Library for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award. Published by Gerakbudaya, the novel is about a delinquent called Kei who forms a bond with a young mother who's his neighbour in a dilapidated flat. "At its core, Hades is a tale of the underdogs – of those living in poverty and what it does to people, especially women," Aishah tells The Star.

Getting into the shortlist will be hard as the competition is tough. There's Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood), Paul Harding (This Other Eden), Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead), and Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow), among others. Still, Aishah is with good company, and we wish her the best.

Also in the news is Vanessa Chan, whose debut novel The Storm We Made has been named the "Good Morning America: Book Club Pick" for January by US television channel ABC. Set in Malaya before World War II, it follows a Eurasian housewife who is lured into spying for the Japanese and the consequences that follow for her and her three children.

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RF Kuang's novel Babel should have been a nominee for last year's Hugo Awards. But the organisers of the award seem to have felt differently. Apparently, Kuang and fellow author Xiran Jay Zhao were excluded from the 2023 Hugo Awards that took place in Chengdu, China, as were several others.

The Mary Sue failed to get any explanation from the Hugo Awards for this exclusion, but speculates that politics may have been a factor. "Through their books and social media activity, Zhao has spoken out against the alleged Uyghur genocide in China and even once questioned if they would be allowed into the country for this reason, while Kuang has been open about how her father was a part of the Tiananmen Square protest."


Okay, what's next?

• "Writing about books means there is always something new I should be reading. But there is also always something old that I should understand—there are always books whose moment I might have thought slid past me, but it didn't, or books I just never saw before." Molly Templeton ponders why some books meant for their readers take so long to find them. Perhaps "the time wasn't right", as some would say.
• "Usually there are about eight or nine books per month that I'm interested in, that I note down on my trusty spreadsheet, and I get a chance to read four or five of them. But in March of 2024 there are 30 books on my radar that I want to read." Some might consider this a good problem to have but Maris Kreizman isn't so sure. In Literary Hub, she explores what's behind the deluge of new releases for March 2024.
• Associated Press reports that Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, "believes he found about 20 stories and poems written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s." Best known for Little Women, Alcott wrote a whole lot under various pseudonyms, leaving behind a pile of material for scholars like Chapnick to go through.
• A Q&A with Lucille Abendanon about her debut middle-grade historical novel The Songbird and the Rambutan. "The book is inspired by the real life stories of my Oma ["Grandma" in Indonesian] Emmy," Abendanon tells The Nerd Daily. "She was a prisoner of war in Tjideng during WW2. I would visit her in The Netherlands from wherever I was living in the world, and we would talk for hours about her life during the war."
• A recent Twitter drama involves a poet called John Kucera who was revealed to have plagiarised the work of other poets, including local writer May Chong. Various journals and other publications have discovered evidence of Kucera's plagiarism and removed the problematic pieces. Dude was prolific, it seems.
• Speaking of plagiarism, a court in Turkey ordered Turkish author Elif Şafak and Doğan Publishing to pay a total of 252,000 Turkish liras for plagiarising the work of another Turkish author, Mine Kırıkkanat. "The case was brought to light by Turkish author Kırıkkanat, whose work 'Fly Palace' was copied by Şafak in her 'Flea Palace'," the Hurriyet Daily News reported. From the publisher's response, an appeal may be filed.
• "I never imagined that my own manuscripts would end up in the hands of an editor like Marek, much less be the last he ever worked on. In 2018, I was searching for an agent for my first novel, The Reflecting Pool. Connections and good fortune put me in touch with my agent, Judith Ehrlich, who, in turn, introduced me to Marek. I couldn't have known just how impactful this introduction would be." Otho Eskin recalls his publishing journey and Richard Marek, the editor who changed his manuscript and his life.
• "...sometimes research becomes an excuse not to write, because you can endlessly go down these rabbit holes. There comes a point when you just have to write." The Indian Express speaks to Abraham Verghese about his novel, The Covenant of Water, "a multi-generational epic inspired by his grandmother's memoirs of what it felt to be a child."

New Mess, New Mystery

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

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

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


Continue reading here.

Teetering On The Brink

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

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


Click here to read the rest of the review.

End-Of-Year Kitchen Hijinks

Since I bought it last year, the tabletop oven has seen little use outside of warming up food and a batch of shortbread I baked as a test run. This year though, it's been used to bake fish, another batch of shortbread, and a couple of chicken meals.

The first was four (small) drumsticks on a bed of onion, carrot, and potato, with cloves of garlic scattered here and there. Marinade was salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. I was worried that I oversalted the chicken, but didn't turn out that way.

I didn't keep track of the time because I only eyed the condition of the chicken skin for doneness. At one point, I could see juices bubbling under the translucent skin. I turned the pieces to the other side when one side was nice and light brown.

All went down the hatch, with two pieces of wrap skin that served as flat bread. I was quite pleased with this, even though the onion and garlic powders clumped into a gel-like substance that didn't spread well.

Encouraged by this, I attempted another weeks later before New Year's Eve 2023. Two boneless chicken thighs marinated in a yoghurt-based marinade with turmeric, cayenne pepper, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, cinnamon and nutmeg – a chicken tikka-ish mix – with onions, carrots and potatoes. Plus a load of garlic cloves.

I tend to overcook things in the oven due to paranoia – what if the inside is underdone? And does the marinade need to be wiped off the chicken? Did I use too much salt? Too much turmeric? Can I still use the cooking oil, even though its best-by date was last April? So many questions.

Several potato bits seemed underdone but the rest of the dish tasted okay. This needs practice, though I shudder to imagine how much meat I'd have to go through to get things right. And I think I'll have to junk the rest of the cooking oil. I rarely use it, and though it didn't taste "off", playing it safe is prudent.

What caught my eye about the chicken was – yes – that claim about it being raised on yoga music. The logic being that animals raised in a calming atmosphere are less prone to stress and therefore healthier and yummier. I spotted this type of chicken when I went to check out a frozen-goods shop that also sold fresh chicken in the old OUG neighbourhood.

If "yoga music" is the sort I had listened to in my few yoga lessons, I~ don't think that's how one should use those tunes. Imagine a coop full of chickens taking yoga lessons with Yoga Music™ in the background one day, and then the next ...

I feel sinful eating that chicken. Should I say "namaste" instead of "itadakimasu"? And is it ethical to use yoga music in that setting? What would the composers and songwriters feel about that?

Anyway, the store that sells this yoga chicken also has buffalo meat, which would make a great stew experiment. I've heard things about buffalo meat that made me curious to see if it could be as good as beef. Too bad the meat only comes in one packaging size. How can one tuck in 500g of buffalo meat plus extras in one sitting?

We'll see. The year has just begun.

Malicious Sockpuppetry, Racism, And Plagiarism

The latest Goodreads drama over author Cait Corrain's setting up sockpuppet accounts to downvote books by several authors and upvote their upcoming romantasy debut came to a head when their agent and publisher cut ties with them when the whole thing blew up.

At least one observer expressed puzzlement over Corrain's actions: why would a debut author set to make a huge splash self-sabotage like this? Just how much of an emotional stake did they have on the debut that they would resort to gaming the system in their favour?

Corrain has issued a statement, claiming that a medication-induced mental breakdown over her novel's performance compelled her to review-bomb the books. Considering that her targets were mostly writers of colour, some don't buy that, including The Mary Sue: "Starting a new medication doesn't turn someone into a racist."

Goodreads has always been in the spotlight for shenanigans such as review-bombing, the practice of inundating titles on the site with one-star reviews to make it less popular. This strategy is egregious, especially when it targets authors from minority groups and upcoming titles that have yet to be released. While Goodreads has pledged to do something about it, cracking down on review-bombers and and such is tough. Any engagement on the platform is seen as valid, regardless of intent.


Pathologically self-destructive?
Corrain isn't the only author behaving badly of late. Barely a week after her scandal another Twitter (no way I'm calling it X) dust-up involving authors has one accuse another of plagiarism because their POC protagonist has solar-related powers, "just like mine!" The claim has been met with derision, because who has a monopoly on the sun? Some commenters have helpfully provided a list of fictional characters and mythological figures associated with the sun, just to rub it in.

Another author charged some parties with plagiarising his fan fiction: a sequel to the JRR Tolkien classic The Lord of the Rings. And who did he try to sue? Amazon, for "infringing" his work's copyright with the Rings of Power TV series, and the Tolkien estate. Predictably, the move backfired. The estate has since sued the fanfic author for copyright violation, and obtained an injuction to prevent him from distributing the book and to destroy all physical and digital copies. He was also ordered to pay legal costs.

An earlier case was about books that non-fiction ghostwriter Kristin Loberg worked on, which were found to contain plagiarised material. Publishers of some affected works reissued updated versions of the books without the borrowed parts and mentions of Loberg.

The LA Times noted the publishers' silence over the Loberg issue and suggested that Lobergs' workload – 46 books in about 17 years – was one reason behind her corner-cutting. "In addition to outside sources, Loberg frequently borrowed sections from her projects with other clients," goes the report. "The result was a sort of ouroboros of wellness content across multiple books."

The imagery of a snake devouring itself from the tail onwards aptly describes the self-destructive behaviour of these authors. Some of them can't seem to help themselves. Are they deluded or creating outrage to farm for attention or clout? At least one person believes it could be the latter in the case of They Who Tried to Copyright the Sun™ because no one can get their head that far up their ass. These days though, it's hard to tell. Could be both for all we know.


Tougher than swimming upriver
Several authors targeted by Corrain say this sort of attack and how the publishers involved handled it is "illustrative of racism deeply rooted within the literary industry." "Black people, we got to work twice as hard to get half as far," author RM Virtues told The Daily Beast. "In the publishing industry: twice as hard to get a quarter as far. And she had time to do all of this? To us?"

Publishing in the anglophone world remains overwhelmingly white, despite the growing inclusion of Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC) in the sector. Which is perhaps why businesses like those of Dhonielle Clayton, who's aiming to make books more diverse by pitching ideas for fiction with characters from various backgrounds, play a vital role.

"In an industry that's long had a diversity problem, Ms. Clayton has sometimes struggled to get publishers on board," The New York Times reported. "She's received countless rejections, and has heard many variations of the argument that books centered on people of color don't sell. But in the past decade, her packaging business has sold 57 books; 41 of which have been sold since 2020."


Expanding and deepening the pool
Diverse books appear to be on the up and up, an encouraging trend that makes opinion pieces like this one in The Telegraph glaring. While I'm against censorship and retroactive editing of previously published works, to say that sensitivity reading and "woke books" have destroyed publishing is a bit much.

Publishers pushing for diverse books is not "shallow", though I believe it has more to do with the bottom line rather than altruism. So what if the titles cited in The Telegraph tanked even though publishers paid a bomb for them? Maybe work out more realistic publishing deals and stop shelling out so much for books?

And the "independent publishers" the article mentions who are stepping in with good stories "while major publishing houses are busy maximising their ideological purity and preventing themselves from making money"? A publisher that "has published books including former Levi's executive Jennifer Sey's "Levi's Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice" and journalist Chadwick Moore's biography of Tucker Carlson, a New York Times bestseller."

Jennifer Sey, a former Levi's executive, is part of a think tank that is against COVID-19 measures such as masking and vaccine mandates. She also opposed school closures during the COVID pandemic and is a critic of the "woke mob" and cancel culture. Besides the Tucker Carlson biography, Chadwick Moore also wrote a book that decries "forced" diversity, equity, and inclusion training in the US as part of "a corrupt political ideology".

Stellar examples of free speech. Genre-bending queer feminist Westerns sound more palatable and less toxic than what amounts to right-wing figures making bank by peddling their outrage and victimhood. Voices worth uplifting might include those represented by indie publisher Whiskey Tit in Hancock, Vermont:

Take Charlotte and the Chickenman by Aina Hunter, about a futuristic society in which a group of animal rights activists proposes consuming white people as the most ethical form of eating. Or Postal Child by Granville author Joey Truman, about a boy who grows up in an abusive environment in Brooklyn and finds solace in befriending pigeons.

Just because diverse books aren't minting millions doesn't mean they're not being read. How much of it has to do with the gatekeeping that happens in the industry post-publication? How hard are publishers marketing diverse works? If anything, more effort is needed to diversify the publishing industry as more and more minority writers find their voices and hone their craft.

If publishers aren't keen on works by or about people of colour because "they don't sell", readers can make sure they do by broadening their horizons and reading more of such works. When the numbers go up, perhaps publishers will listen, and not because of the need for diversity for its own sake.

Book Marks: BookTok on BBC, Salled Ben Joned

All right, let's get to it, shall we?

• A self-published author and a bookshop owner tell the BBC how #BookTok is changing lives and publishing. But is the hashtag "pushing other book review sites to the side"? A clutch of one-minute videos may feel more genuine than text reviews, but in the age of AI, who can say? Different formats can complement or compete with each other. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.
• "For most of my life, I was never really aware of the impact of his work. But in my 40s, I became aware that he had contributed something quite unique and important to Malaysian culture." Sydney-based journalist, singer and guitarist Anna Salleh, eldest daughter of poet-writer Salleh Ben Joned, launched a new book that chronicles her father's life and literary journey.
• "Geungsi is my first local creation and graphic novel after settling back down in Singapore. I wanted to produce more local works for my own country. I was hopeful and until today, I think I'm still hopeful, but I realised that it's not as easy as I thought." Singaporean author Sean Lam hopes to make the jiangshi (reanimated corpse in Chinese folklore) trendy again through his work.
• In an edited extract from author Monica Ali’s 2023 PEN HG Wells lecture, she talks about experimenting with AI and comes off not worrying too much about AI taking over from human writers. What concerns Ali more is that "the bookpocalypse, when or if it comes, will mean an increasing homogenisation, driven by a 'dataset' that is simultaneously massive and narrow in its worldview, supported by a 'more like this' algorithm that crowds out diverse voices or those that challenge the status quo."
• Does jacket copy say too much sometimes? Tajja Isen at The Walrus seems to think so. She seems to feel that jacket or back-cover copy in some books sets up what readers should expect from and feel about them in a way that's "controlling, even demeaning" when all she wants is "a premise and some vibes, a taste of tone, a flicker of the voice the book contains. I don't want to be told what's about to happen, even in the vaguest sense. And I definitely don't want to be told what it's 'about.'"
• The spate of book bannings in the United States have people across the Atlantic a little bothered. Some attempts to stealth-ban books seem to have been made, but for now, the kind of fever engulfing the States is not likely to cross over to the United Kingdom ... yet. Back in the States, public libraries are fighting back against book banning. The San Diego Public Library is participating in the Books Unbanned programme that provides access to scores of books pulled from shelves at public and school libraries.
• Books by and about Palestinians have been censored or kept out of the limelight for decades, but since 7 October, Palestinian authors, and other figures seen to be supporting the Palestinian cause, have been facing discrimination, including the cancellation of their appearances at events.

Book Marks: Genres, Singapore Libraries, Ian Fleming's Productivity Hack

"Genre is a confining madness; it says nothing about how writers write or readers read, and everything about how publishers, retailers and commentators would like them to," writes Alex Clark in The Guardian. "This is not to criticise the many talented personnel in those areas, who valiantly swim against the labels their industry has alighted on to shift units as quickly and smoothly as possible."

The title of the article asks whether literary genres should be abolished, but I don't think it's necessary. And Clark's example of "a boiled egg" for lunch and something "complicated" and "unfamiliar" at dinner time strikes a chord with those whose lunchtime go-to on some days might be a kopitiam breakfast set of half-boiled eggs with kaya toast. "These are not perceived as contradictions, but as perfectly reasonable options available to those of us lucky enough to have them," he writes.

Let genres stay. If publishers or agents can't find a suitable pigeonhole for the next possible hit, be certain that new ones will be invented.

Okay, moving on...

• Libraries across the United States and the United Kingdom are closing down, but those in Singapore seem to be adapting to changes in the reading and literary landscape. In Channel News Asia, Singapore's National Library Board reported that "as of August, 78 per cent of Singapore residents visited NLB’s libraries and archives and accessed its content in the preceding year, up from 61.7 per cent in 2022, and 72.5 per cent in 2019 pre-COVID-19.
• "Innovators and business professionals are constantly bombarded with stimuli that fragment their attention. The proliferation of digital devices and social media means that distractions are not just external but also reside in our pockets, making concentrated work a significant challenge." A solution? Ian Fleming's "Rule of Forced Boredom": putting himself in a distraction-free environment where he could either write or do zilch. But to write a book in two weeks?
• "While many people know the city for its military base, Paju [in South Korea] is also home to the nation’s elaborate book publishing hub — officially known as Paju Publishing Culture, Information and National Industrial Park but commonly referred to as Paju Book City. Around 900 book-related businesses, including printing presses, distribution companies and design studios, line the streets, and signs reading 'Paju Book City' are everywhere." Not sure why this idea isn't as widespread as it should be, but one supposes that political will and leadership play a role.
• "If Prophet Song is a dystopia, then, like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale, it's one whose events are already happening around the world. ... The recent rioting in Dublin, and the shock and disbelief that greeted it, give the novel an uncomfortable extra timeliness." In The Guardian, Justine Jordan believes the winner of the 2023 Booker Prize is – or should be – waking western societies up to the forces threatening their sociopolitical fabric.
• In the wake of a shark attack, Mike Coots took up photography and shark conservation. His book, Shark: Portraits, is part of those efforts. "His book is a way to hopefully get the masses to look at sharks in a different light; not as murderous creatures stalking humans, but as an incredibly beautiful example of evolution. The book is years in the making. Thousands of photos taken over nearly a decade culled down to 200."
• "...Reylo fanfiction is no longer something you can just find on sites like AO3. In fact, several Reylo authors have made the jump from fanfiction to traditional publishing in recent years, transforming their fics into original works you can find at your local bookstore." The romantical shipping of Star Wars characters Rey and Kylo Ren goes mainstream with Reylo-inspired fiction and audiences are lovin' it.
• "Every generation decries the fall of civilization and the lack of young kids reading," Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan tells Rolling Stone. "You can find quotes from the ancient Greeks talking about how the world is doomed because of ’these kids today.’ Personally, I think kids are our best reason to be hopeful, and I think they will keep reading as long as we give them stories they love." YA authors including Riordan defend the genre as movie adaptations of YA works flounder.

Book Marks: Big Fiction, AI, Malaysian Bus Journeys

Lacking material, I put off last week's post. As these things go, I probably should have expected to run smack into a deluge of stuff on books and publishing this week. Who was it that said publishing activities tend to slow down towards the end of the year?

Anyway, this is what cropped up in the past two weeks...

In The New Republic is a review of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature by Dan Sinykin, an assistant professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A part of it reads...

"As publishers grew far larger—and ever more concerned with the bottom line—the lives of editors and authors transformed. More than ever before, they became cogs in a corporate machine, responsible for growth and returns on investment, necessarily responsive to the whims and demands of capital—and these pressures increasingly showed up in their output."

And how. I'm sure this is increasingly the case as publishers push more books out and the editorial process suffers as a result.

Sinykin and his book are cited in this prediction about the (near) future of books in Esquire. I'm not dismissing it outright, so let's see how many of these come true.

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Over at Observer, writers and publishers weigh in on how to cope with AI. "Reports of companies and individuals using A.I. to spread misinformation, infringe copyright and steal authors' identities have dominated discussions of the technology's role in the books we consume," goes the report. As the technology develops, publishers are finding it harder to detect AI use in submitted work, while writers seem to be thrilled with how AI is supercharging their productivity.

Meanwhile, several editors look at the adoption of AI in publishing and ponder where the tech would fit in the editorial workflow. "While generative AI's current appeal lies in creation, it requires human motivation and direction. This is the kind of briefing and tweaking that editors and publishers historically have done: acquiring, commissioning, copy editing. Our role has included adopting and adapting text to create (or curate) connections with audiences, elevating prose to the best it can be, or the perfect fit for that category."

Not everyone is sanguine about AI. This writer, whose farewell to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has proven premature now that Altman looks set to return as CEO, appears concerned that chatbots at workstations is but a step towards a dystopian post-human future. Also: "Even if we assume that the creation of a superintelligent AI is plausible, let alone desirable, was Altman ever the right man for the job here?"


Also:

• "A bus ticket gets you places. An open heart gets you hidden Malaysian experiences." Lam Ching Fu, author of the developing My Journey By Bus series, is profiled in Options @ The Edge. After covering stopovers in Perak, Penang, Kedah and Perlis in his first book, his second book takes readers from Pahang to Terengganu and Kelantan. In progress is part three, which covers Negeri Sembilan, Melaka and Johor. You gotta hand it to him to embark on such a project. Will it help spur improvements to the bus system? One can hope.
• Malaysia's youngest author? Meet Karen Chew, author of What Can an 8-Year-Old Tell You? While she was only eight when she started writing her book, she had begun to write when she was only about three to four – "first with a diary and later a blog," goes the report. One factor in her achievements has to be how she is schooled. Now we have to wonder just how Herculean efforts would be to get the current national education system to that level where every third or fourth child can write and publish a book at age eight.
• "People have agency. People are going to write what they want to. I'm not here to tell people what they can and cannot write. I'm here to ask them should they be writing that story? And I think more people should ask themselves that." After speaking up on Tillie Cole's problematic dark romance novel, BookTok creator Sat and others who have aired similar views found themselves harassed by fans of the novel. Questions are raised over how taboo themes should be addressed in fiction, specifically the dark romance genre.
• "...the most troubling side effect of #Booktok is how the publishing industry responded to a glut of younger, easily influenced consumers moving deeper into the romance genre. The plan, it seems, to entice and retain these customers was to take the embarrassing bodice-ripping, kilt-clad, flowy-hair heroes off the covers of romance novels and instead churn out aesthetic, minimalist designs." TikTok may be shifting copies, but what if erotica dressed up in YA covers are among those? And if a customer is about to pick a volume of stealthed smut off the shelf, should booksellers intervene?
• Lots have been observed and said about Javier Milei, who's set to be Argentina's next president, so perhaps it's no surprise that the controversial far-right figure is apparently a plagiarist too. El País claims Milei lifted whole passages from an article written by Mexican scientists for his book, which was published in 2020. "Accusations of plagiarism hung over Milei throughout his entire career, whether it be his academic publications, his campaign spots or even his autobiography," the portal adds.
• Could this be one of history's longest-running literary scams? The BBC reports that fake Robert Burns manuscripts "made by a forger in the 1880s, have been fleecing collectors for 140 years." While the counterfeiter was caught and imprisoned in 1893, many of the fakes still circulate. "Genuine Burns manuscripts can fetch tens of thousands of pounds at auction today," the report adds, "so there is cash to be made through the fake papers." How many people have been Burn-ed, I wonder?
• "It's believed Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a form of introspection rather than for larger public consumption. The entries range from blunt maxims to cogent dissertations, and there is no definitive organization to the work—though some patterns have been identified, with themes organized around Stoic philosophy." Though Meditations may not have been written for a wider audience, this self-help classic has become one of the go-tos for those seeking wisdom and life lessons.
• "My stories, thoughts, and insights are crafted with care, but they must struggle to find their place in a family budget that is under pressure to prioritize where every dollar goes. In this economic climate, choosing between a Netflix subscription and a Patreon pledge is not a matter of preference — it's a hard financial decision for many." Joan Westenberg ponders writing as a career in these trying times.
• "I knew at once that I would say yes—not because I felt any particular sense of confidence but because I was fully committed to trying. There are so few things we can do for the dead; this was something I could do for her." When she died, Rebecca Godfrey was working on a novel about heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim. Friend and novelist Leslie Jamison was approached to finish Godfrey's work. Jamison's quest took her on an odyssey of sorts, delving deep into Godfrey's thought processes, the life of the novel's subject, and her friendship with Godfrey.
• Former Huntsville Public Library employee Elissa Myers shares her experiences working at the library with Book Riot. "Her work is less about the book banning–that is there, too–but about what it means to be a queer librarian in a time of unmitigated bigotry, much of which is being directed at public employees in education and libraries."
• "Despite being a nation with a reputation for prudishness about sex, the British don't seem to have any problem reading about it, at least not if you go by the enduring popularity of one the country's most successful writers, Jilly Cooper." Explore Cooper's career, a brief history of the "bonkbuster" (urh), and the British affair with raunchy novels.
• "There's a reason why Medieval art is particularly, well, weird. While paintings and sculptures that remain from most other periods in history were generally produced by trained artists, the illuminated manuscripts made in Medieval times were often authored by monks and tradespeople, who weren’t necessarily following artistic conventions of the era." Can't get enough of the @WeirdMedieval Twitter account? The book is now out.
• "Hubert Seipel, an award-winning film-maker and author, admitted receiving support for his work on two books charting the Russian leader's rise to power and offering portrayals described as sympathetic to him." A German publisher has stopped selling books by Seipel after an investigation revealed he received payments from companies linked to an oligarch close to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Balmy Bookshop Vibes

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

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


Read the full review here.

Book Marks: Miscellaneous Marks

The weekly post was late last week, partly due to dearth of news and happenings. Not so this week, so let's take a look:

• Literary social media platform Goodreads is getting users to help it combat review bombing. Publishers Weekly reported Goodreads' statement on the matter, as well as the platform's efforts to remove ratings and reviews that may be review bombs and its plea to its users to report "content or behavior that does not meet our reviews or community guidelines".
• "Ada Calhoun, the author of four nonfiction books ... helped create the first draft ... Sam Lansky, an editor at Time magazine ... was the next to join the project. The book was completed with the assistance of Luke Dempsey, a ghostwriter and editor who has published books under his own name and worked with Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley". According to The New York Times, these three people worked on Britney Spears's bestselling memoir, The Woman in Me. Quite a team.
• "Bill Watterson is known for many things — from his world-famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, to his disdain for merchandising and his penchant for reclusion. Now he's returned to the world of publishing with a brand new picture book, but the subject matter marks a significant departure from the family-friendly tales he is known for." On CBC, author and publisher Michael Hingston speaks about Watterson's reputation and what his new picture book, The Mysteries.
• The adult fantasy novel Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is booming on TikTok and Instagram, but the author's use – or, rather, misuse – of Scottish Gaelic in the novel is getting airtime as well. Discussing this, Scottish BookToker Muireann also expressed frustration with fantasy authors who "use minority languages to exoticize their fantasy without care."
• At the Sharjah International Book Fair, Tamil publishers make their presence known. "Universal Publishers has guided the lives of tens of thousands of readers by publishing the first self-reliance books in Tamil in 1948 itself," S.S. Sajahan, owner of Universal Publishers based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, told Gulf Today. "We have published more than 1500 titles till date, out of which over 1000 books have seen many editions."
• The author of a new book on the last empress consort of Vietnam, Queen Nam Phương, "hopes the book will give historians a chance to reassess certain perceptions about the royal couple." Speaking to VietnamNet Global, Phạm Hy Tùng said, "It aims to shed light on and clarify any misconceptions or negative assumptions that have been made about Queen Nam Phương in the past, thereby contributing a small part to illuminating the true character of this historical figure."
• Considering the size and scope of the infamous Books3 data set, that the works of Singaporean authors would also be found in it is unsurprising. The Singapore Straits Times reported: "Poet Daryl Lim Wei Jie posted on Facebook recently that he had found several authors’ works in the database, which is used as a reference to train artificial intelligence (AI). Prominent names like Balli Kaur Jaswal, Ovidia Yu and Rachel Heng were on the list, which also included the late Lee Kuan Yew."
• "Starting a book lending library is a fantastic way to build a sense of community, promote literacy, and provide access to books for those who may not have the means to purchase them. Whether you’re creating a library in your neighborhood, at a community center, or even at your workplace, the process is both exciting and rewarding." If you're interested in setting up a book-lending library, Robots.net has a framework laid out.
• Is ghostwriting ruining literature? Probably not, as Book Riot posits. "Since ghostwriting has existed for so long, it feels futile to argue that it's suddenly ruining literature. The effects of modern celebrity ghostwriting, however, can be felt throughout the publishing industry as up-and-coming authors still have to fight to even have their book proposals read."
• "The foundational decades of modern Māori writing in English are defined largely by a sequence of milestone publications ... Yet these markers are complicated by the existence of David Ballantyne, a writer belonging to both Ngāti Uenukukōpako and Ngāti Hinepare of Te Arawa, who published four novels and a collection of short stories prior to the release of [Witi] Ihimaera and his earliest works of fiction." At Newsroom, Jordan Tricklebank has some thoughts about David Ballantyne, arguably the first Māori author.
• "These days, it seems the only way for a full-time novelist to ensure financial stability and a comfortable life is to write a Big Book—a reality that’s almost entirely outside their control." Esquire explores how difficult it is to make a living as an author. TL;DR: it's still tough, don't quit your day job. Even writers who started writing after retirement and found success don't do it for the money.
• "Book challenges and bans may be dominating school board meetings and headlines in the U.S. media, but America is far from the only country that has and continues to wrestle with issues of censorship and book access. Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Republic of Ireland has grappled with issues of book bans and government-led censorship over the last hundred years." Lo, a brief history of book bans in Ireland.
• A dark romance novel about a Ku Klux Klan member and the daughter of a Mexican cartel boss has come under scrutiny by TikTok creators for its racist and antisemitic language, on top of the apparent fetishisation of Mexican women and culture. Zooming out, Centennial highlights "an issue that has plagued BookTok since its inception: the underrepresentation of authors of colour and novels that meaningfully capture the lived experience of racial minorities." Thanks to TikTok's algorithms and biases in publishing, minority authors find it harder to break through in BookTok.
• "Despite the impressive writing of authors such as [Raven] Leilani, [Ottessa] Moshfegh and [Lisa] Taddeo, too many of these stories fail to keep up with their own ideas. Trauma is sensationalised, damaged characters are diminished and complicated, and challenging situations are compressed into marketable entertainment. Sometimes this is alarming, but mostly it's just disappointing. It also means the Sad Bad Girl was a trope from the outset." Liz Evans seems to have had enough of Sad Bad Girl novels.

Book Marks: Writing Novels, Flower Moon, Scholastic U-Turn

"Salman Rushdie has said that if authors are only allowed to write characters that mirror themselves and their own experiences, 'the art of the novel ceases to exist'," the Guardian reports. "If we're in a world where only women can write about women and only people from India can write about people from India and only straight people can write about straight people ... then that's the death of the art."

The report doesn't elaborate further on this, and Rushdie may have more to say on the matter. "Write what you know" emerged in part from the backlash against works by authors who didn't seem to know what they're writing about because of cultural distance or sloppy research. If writers wish to explore realms beyond their lived experiences, they had better do the work or get called out. Confining what writers can write about is unrealistic and inhibits their growth.

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"Martin Scorsese's career-capping Killers of the Flower Moon likely never would have happened without David Grann, the New Yorker writer with a preternatural knack for unearthing astonishing, dramatic stories from history. But in the journey from book to film, Scorsese and Eric Roth’s script underwent dramatic changes—including a major shift in focus from an FBI investigation to the Osage of 1920s Oklahoma and the white prospectors and landowners who exploited them."

Dan Kois speaks with Grann about those changes and the film. May I suggest checking out the book as well? I reviewed it and it's great. If this isn't enough, Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's next project will be another adaptation of Grann's book, that of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, which I have yet to get my hands on.

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"I am highly perturbed by this news with the bookfair opt-in. I don't get to opt in to be Black. I'm Black 365 days a year, 366 days when it's a leap year, and extra Black in February. So I don't get to turn on and off my Blackness." Author Tanisia Moore voices her displeasure with Scholastic's decision to sequester its book fair titles that revolve around race, sexuality, and gender into a separate catalog. Her book, I Am My Ancestors' Wildest Dream, was part of the Scholastic book fair and also included in this catalog.

Well, the backlash has compelled a U-turn by Scholastic on that policy, reports CBS News. "The 'Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice' collection will not be offered with our next season in January. As we reconsider how to make our book fairs available to all kids, we will keep in mind the needs of our educators facing local content restrictions and the children we serve."


Glad that's over with. Now...

• "In my novels, walls are real walls," author Haruki Murakami told Associated Press in an interview before receiving Spain's Princess of Asturias prize for literature in the Spanish city of Oviedo. "But of course they are also metaphoric walls at the same time. For me, walls are very meaningful things. I'm a bit claustrophobic. If I'm locked up in a cramped space I may have a mild panic. So I often think about walls." He also spoke of his theory of "novelistic intelligence", AI, and the Israel-Hamas war.
• "Unlike mega bookstore chains stocked with mainstream titles, these shops curate selections from indie presses, serving both as havens for authors and vital distribution channels. Initially, the indie publishing scene was mostly comprised of young innovators producing visually centric content like posters and postcards. Today, a diverse array of creators contributes novels, essays and travelogues, increasingly blurring the line between indie and mainstream." Indie bookstores appear to be thriving in South Korea, but there might be more to it.
• "[Toni Morrison's] situation as a black woman at a very white press ... was fraught. It was fraught within the house, where she had to contest entrenched white supremacy. It was also fraught outside the house, where her black peers might see her as a sellout. Some did." A bit about Toni Morrison's career as a trade editor at what was then Random House.
• Responding to the shelving of the award ceremony for Palestinian author Adania Shibli's Minor Detail at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, Shibli's publisher Fitzcarraldo made the e-book version of Minor Detail free to download during the fair's duration. The Bookseller also reported that BookTok creator Hana Aisha launched "a readathon on the platform to encourage users to read the novel."
• "I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous." On the 66th publication anniversary of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Literary Hub presents a review of the novel by American writer and former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers that was published in the National Review in December 1957.
• "Without attempting to be comprehensive or authoritative—a fool's errand if there ever was one—I thought I would suggest just a few of my own favorites. At the very least, I prescribe these titles as antidotes to the quick and dirty ways people are communicating about the war on social media." Gal Beckerman at The Atlantic recommends some reads as a distraction from the daily doomscrolling of updates on the latest war in Gaza.
• "I was intrigued by the fact [W. Somerset Maugham] based the story on a murder trial which had taken place in Kuala Lumpur, where I was living. The trial happened more than 100 years ago today, and I just found it interesting that nobody I knew seemed to know about it." How Tan Twan Eng reimagined a century-old scandal in his novel, The House of Doors.
• British artist David Shrigley collected 6,000 copies of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, had them pulped, and turned them into copies of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Learn the reason behind the project, dubbed "Pulped Fiction" He tells CNN, "War is presented as peace. Enemies are invented for us. We're invited to think that black is white, and white is black. Day is night, and night is day. This is a book that people should read. It's still really relevant."
• "It was a sight unlike any as bibliophiles jostled their way to endless stacks and shelves of books and came out with bundles of books and perhaps one last piece of memory from the famed bookstore once described by the New York Times as 'the cosiest bookshop in the country'." After about half a century K.D. Singh's The Bookshop at 13/7 Jor Bagh Market in Delhi closes its doors for good.
• Another case of plagiarism has returned the spotlight to how publishers vet manuscripts (or not). The Financial Times "revealed that the UK shadow chancellor's new book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, contains more than 20 examples of text that appears to be taken from other works without acknowledgment."

Book Marks: Frankfurt, Sensitivity, Scholastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Also:

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

Book Marks: Books3, Boey, And Bornean Folk Tales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

What a shame.

Book Marks: Young SEA Authors, Authorship Is Tough

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow. All the best, Cuba.


Elsewhere:

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

Moviemaking Magic And Madness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

I Should Say Something

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Let it stop with the ban.