Coffee Craving

I woke up from a daydream one day and thought, "I think I'll read some books about coffee."

Though a favourite beverage, my love for coffee never went beyond theory or the basic stuff I'd whip up in my kitchen which would reduce real coffee lovers to tears.

Somewhat random selection of coffee-related reads

But I figured one needs to start somewhere.

• The Devil's Cup
  A History of the World According to Coffee
  
  Stewart Lee Allen
  Ballantine Books (2003)
  240 pages
  Non-fiction
  ISBN: 9780345441492
  
  Stewart Lee Allen travels about 75 per cent the world on a caffeinated quest to find out whether the advent of coffee birthed an enlightened western civilisation, and if coffee is the substance that drives history. Yes, it did and yes, it is, says the author.
  
  
• The Coffee Book
  Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop
  
  Gregory Dicum, Nina Luttinger
  New Press (2006)
  232 pages
  Non-fiction
  ISBN: 9781595580603
  
  Completely revised and updated for 2006, this book explores production, the history of café society, dramatic tales of high-stakes international trade, health aspects, the industry’s major players, and the specialty coffee revolution - including the very latest developments in sustainable coffee. Full of facts, figures, cartoons, photos, and commentary. Personally, I prefer the 1999 cover.
  
  
• Uncommon Grounds
  The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
  
  Mark Pendergrast
  Basic Books (2010)
  424 pages
  Non-fiction
  ISBN: 9780465018369
  
  Caffeinated beverage enthusiast Pendergrast approaches this history of the green bean with the zeal of an addict. His wide-ranging narrative takes readers from the legends about coffee's discovery, to the corporatisation of the specialty cafe. His broad vision, meticulous research and colloquial delivery combine aromatically, and he even throws in advice on how to brew the perfect cup.

Of course, I could order all three from Amazon if I wanted to, but after registering with the site to write reviews and learning that I'd have to buy the books first, I abandoned the site. Now I can't remember the user name and password I used, and I no longer care.

...Just a few more books to look out for when I'm out browsing.

Price Of Courage

Though The Absolutist was a simple book to review, I'm rather embarrassed by the results, which was published today. Not because it was tucked into a corner of a page of cinema screening schedules.

But, oddly enough, because it's so short.

I couldn't see much to write about. To say too much would give away parts of the novel I'd rather let people read about. And people should give this novel a go. Then, they should probably watch Captain America: The First Avenger.

A novel about World War I soldiers (left) and a movie about
World War II soldiers. Coincidence?

Sure looks like they did a little homework before laying it out. Kind of clever.

---

Price of courage

first published in The Star, 29 July 2011


Renowned octogenarian author Tristan Sadler is at a prize-giving ceremony that also celebrates his long illustrious literary career.

The evening doesn't go so well, however. An exchange with a rude, callous, young and upcoming writer sours his mood, and he takes it out on a newbie reporter who didn't do his homework before interviewing him. Though the prize is prestigious and rarely given out, he thinks the thing is ugly.

After the ceremony, Tristan returns to his hotel where he finds an elderly woman waiting for him at the lounge. They know each other. She's Marian Bancroft and it appears she has unfinished business with him. This encounter is 60 years in the making and the story leading up to it is in the unpublished manuscript in Tristan's hotel room. Which you would be reading as John Boyne's novel, The Absolutist, if you picked it up.

It's 1919. A much younger Tristan Sadler is on the train from London to Norwich. He makes small talk with an aged female novelist of some renown. He himself is employed by a publisher, a possible foreshadowing of his future in publishing. But his business in Norwich is not with books but letters.

World War I has ended, and he brings letters from the front, presumably unsent, written by his friend Will Bancroft. The letters are addressed to his sister Marian, and there may be a reason why he's delivering the letters himself.

Tristan and Will met at the military town of Aldershot three years earlier, where they trained with other young men – boys, some of them – and formed a bond that strengthened as they faced death and desolation in the trenches during the war.

As the days on the battlefield wear on, they keep a depressing count of their comrades-at-arms who died, deserted or went mad. One day, Will lays down his arms and declares himself an "absolutist" – someone who refuses to contribute even an iota of effort to the war. To the rest of his comrades, he is just another coward. Will is executed as a traitor for his decision, shaming his family's name.

But of course, this isn't the whole story. Besides the letters, Tristan tells Marian why Will objected to the war, but not the circumstances surrounding his death. The letters say nothing; only Tristan knows. But will he find the courage Will had to reveal them?

The Absolutist is short, focused as it is on Tristan, Marian and his friendship with Will. The novel is also a sad, poignant tale of war, of what young men had to endure in the trenches and the shattered lives left in the wake of their deaths. It also sheds some light on Tristan's own sad story, how he came to know Will, and the burden of truth he has borne through the years.

Tightly-woven, straightforward and unpretentious, the writing is an example of fine storytelling and the plot is easy to follow. A nice read overall, even if the story sort of plods along in parts (such as Tristan's vignettes in sleepy Norwich as he struggles with whether to spill the whole bag of beans to Marian). You can imagine this as a full-length feature film as you read, but try not to press the imaginary fast-forward button – that will spoil the whole experience.

I'd say more but because of the brevity of this novel, I'm already treading the thin red line between review and spoiler. Suffice it to say this is definitely worth picking up.

---

The Absolutist

John Boyne
Doubleday (2011)
309 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-385-61605-8

Sassy Schoolmarm

I'd originally picked up Catherine Lim's Miss Seetoh in the World along with a bunch of books to be reviewed in The Star but it was dropped to accommodate an interview piece related to her next book (A Watershed Election: Singapore’s GE 2011, I think). But the paper graciously permitted me to blog it instead.

Miss Seetoh , which was published last November, is "a very special book for two reasons", Lim blogs. "Firstly, it came at the end of the longest break - 7 years! - in my writing career, and secondly, it is the first novel to have a strong political component which might just make it my most controversial work of fiction."

I took a deep breath, held my nose and dived in.

Singaporean schoolteacher Maria Seetoh was brought up under conventional circumstances - typical of the female leads in Lim's novels. Seetoh's English is also very powderful one. Somewhat precocious as a child, she's the type that might have despaired her teachers and the nuns at her school, prompting them during meetings to ask colleagues, "How do you solve a problem like Maria..."

No surprise then, that she ended up teaching English at a creative writing class in secondary school. Her students are a joy to teach, and the classes are her Wonderland. She also has two friends, both teachers.

However, against her desire to buck religious and social norms, she had married a conservative Christian guy who'd rather she stayed at home, cooked, cleaned and made his children. Of course theirs was a loveless marriage, which ended when the guy died of an illness.

Seetoh's widowed mom disapproves of her newly liberated daughter's affair. Her ne'er-do-well stepbrother has gambled his way to loan shark hell and eventually takes his family and mother away to a new life in Malaysia.

And Seetoh sees stories everywhere, like how the Sixth Sense kid sees dead people.

She sees the story of her marriage in nine words coined by a student. She sees a story in the shared life of her two friends. She has a mind to respond to an anti-Singlish campaign by writing a story in Singlish. Musings on the Singaporean obsession with the GCE O-Level cert pulled odd bits of ideas in her head into a story.

The sad tale of her grandmother's life? She'd love to write about that; it'll be a short story, in the passive voice. When down on her luck one day, she thought she'd write a funny book. The love lives of her family's women? Write-worthy! Everything, it seems, can be put to paper.

Thing is, writing and telling stories is what this sassy Singaporean schoolmarm has been doing throughout the 480-odd pages of Miss Seetoh, and it soon dawns on the reader that the protagonist may be Lim's in-novel persona. The outspoken, unconventional Lim was once a teacher and apparently loves to write; her portfolio includes seven novels, a bunch of short story collections and two poetry books.

This hoagie of a novel looks like an attempt to make up for lost time. Snippets of Seetoh's life, from her childhood to her eventual liberation from the shackles of tradition, marriage and career are spliced with childhood recollections, socio-political commentary, existentialistic and introspective ponderings, questions, and musings, peppered and punctuated with pseudo-aphorisms and non sequiturs with tenuous ties to the storyline.

While talking about so-and-so, suddenly Seetoh recalls some mahjong quartet from a distant memory. Then, laments over the Singaporean obsession with "the five Cs" and stellar exam results and the island nation's barren pool of creativity. At least four pages on the conditional mood. Over five pages on love and the nature of things.

A chapter set in the botanical gardens sees her imagination take flight. On religion: "Someone had once said that those who abandoned God were left with a God-shaped hole that nothing could fill. Hers was being richly filled with all manner of things that did not even have names."

Of the gardens' visitors and inhabitants: "The great chain of happiness-seeking could be extended downwards to include the tiniest organisms inside each of [their] bodies, for surely even these primordial forms of life sought their own kind of happiness, and upwards to include the deities of Providence residing in those huge ageless trees, for surely even gods needed to be happy."

Various elements in the book don't segue well from one to the other. The reader is dragged out of a chapter of her life and then plunged into her thoughts or given a peek into the workings of a nanny state (as she sees it), before being yanked by the wrist towards the next chapter of her or someone else's life. It is one rough theme park ride that tries to pack too much into one circuit.

A huge pity, because Lim can really write. But here, she makes the reader work to uncover the rare displays of wit and wordcraft among the platitudes and flowery prose. The well-worn use of an author's avatar in this novel is unnecessary, as Lim is more than capable of social commentary without the need for literary stand-ins.

And the stepbrother going to Malaysia to escape from loan sharks says something about what Seetoh/the Malaysian-born Lim thinks about her adopted homeland.

When all of Seetoh's personal troubles are behind her and the political one looms - not a big one, as her contribution to the "earth-shattering political revelation" is but a footnote - the suspense and the political thriller parts kick in, but exits the stage a bit too soon, leaving us with barely a taste of what else the author can do.

Miss Seetoh is not a bad book, and none should doubt Lim's command of the language. It could be an even better book if she didn't work so hard to make it an all-in-one package.


Also published in The Malaysian Insider, 10 April 2013.

---

Miss Seetoh in the World

Catherine Lim
Marshall Cavendish Editions (2011)
487 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-981-4328-36-4

Winds Of Change

I'd forgotten about submitting this review. Nor did I expect it to be out today.

It's been a while since I wrote this and things in Burma don't appear to be improving as fast as hoped. So Aung San Suu Kyi is allowed to tour the country - but no politics, please, says its "civilian" government.

Big deal. They kicked out Michelle Yeoh, allegedly, for her role in the Suu Kyi biopic. Might it have been something she said about the film?

Change. It's in my pocket but not, it seems, in Burma. Not yet.

---

Winds of change

For years one of the world's last remaining military dictatorships, Burma is now under a civilian government. But it remains to be seen whether the country can move on from the bleak days chronicled in this book

first published in The Star, 22 July 2011


After ruling the country for over 30 years, the Burmese junta was dissolved and replaced by an elected civilian government early this year. Naysayers can perhaps be forgiven for their scepticism, though: the junta has historically been seen as a fickle, paranoid entity that relies on spin and brute force to cling to power.

The elections that paved the way for the junta's dissolution is widely believed to have been a sham, an attempt to rebrand old lamps as new.

The collapse of the ancient Danok pagoda in 2009 could have been an influencing factor in the rebranding exercise. In Everything Is Broken, American journalist and author Emma Larkin describes the event as a possible ill omen for the junta, a divine rejection of its legitimacy.

The pagoda's collapse was particularly significant in the light of the fact that the wife of a junta official, Senior General Than Shwe (now retired), had performed a religious ceremony there mere weeks before the collapse.

Wishful thinkers would probably have seen this incident as one in a series of heavenly wake-up calls for the junta, a follow-up to the last one in May 2008. That year, cyclone Nargis wreaked havoc and destruction in Burma's Irrawady Delta. In their attempts to control and, as usual, spin the situation, the junta placed numerous stumbling blocks in front of mostly foreign aid agencies trying to enter the country to help.

The state-run media was virtually blowing sunshine and scattering flower petals everywhere to mask the scale of the destruction, decrying foreign press coverage of the disaster as a "skyful of lies".

Larkin was one of the few foreign journalists who managed to sneak in as part of an aid group's entourage.

"Emma Larkin" is a nom de plume, and there's a good reason why. This bleak, cheerless chronicle of the cyclone's aftermath has little good to say about the Burmese junta and their handling of what is said to be the worst natural disaster in the country's recorded history.

Broken families, broken bodies, broken bridges, broken chains of command, broken everything. The title comes from an oft-heard phrase during Larkin's interviews with affected locals.

It is hard to read this painfully one-sided, unflattering, monochromatic portrait of the junta and its key figures. It is, after all, The Untold Story Of Disaster Under Burma's Military Regime.

Burma's military rulers, Than Shwe in particular, are cast as a hermitic, paranoid, superstitious and xenophobic lot who are scared stiff of the big wide world and rely on astrology and religious and magical rituals to bring good luck, accrue merit and ward off enemies.

The reader feels despair, pity and rage at the victims' plight, at the scenes of horror in the disaster zones, and at the darkly comic cruelty of the regime's clumsy efforts to maintain control of the situation. The collapse of the Danok pagoda is perhaps the only bright spot among the pages.

Larkin says her pseudonym protects the locals who spoke to her; talking to the foreign press is dicey business for the Burmese.

"The worst thing that would happen to me is that I would get deported," she said in an online interview.

She also implies that it is the regime's control of the country and all public discourse within that drives writers like herself to dig deep and chronicle events in countries such as Burma.

"As a result of the regime's actions, stories are vanishing, history is being rewritten, memories are being eroded and stories lost."

However, her efforts to hide her identity and assure her return to Burma later works against her in that this work can be seen as an attack on the Burmese junta by someone hiding behind a false name, rather than a true-to-life account of events after Nargis.

Larkin's storytelling, however, makes her sound more credible than Burma's state media. Or is it because she paints the kind of picture some of us want to see?

Maybe it all depends on what happens in Burma in the coming months. Any change for the better in the country is good news for everyone. After decades of rule by a schizophrenic military regime, however, one can only hope that not everything there is broken, and that there will be fewer pieces to pick up when the real healing begins.

---

Everything is Broken

The Untold Story of Disaster Under Burma's Military Regime

Emma Larkin
Granta Publications (2010)
265 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-84708-180-3

Ping!

Days ago, a note sent by an e-reader appeared on Facebook and Twitter, announcing to all that so-and-so finished a certain book.

Thing is, he'd finished it long ago. But his e-reader, fearing that some will not be informed of this development, duly tweeted the news. "He finished reading this book on Kindle! Huzzah!"

Not that it's the first time I've seen tweets of this ilk. Who's familiar with Foursquare?

I never really saw the lure of an app that broadcasts your location, but I've since learnt it's a bit more than that. Foursquare is said to allow users more interaction with their environments. Its "superusers", for instance, can correct or update information about "check-in venues". Places can be reviewed in the same way as books, and annotations made to existing venue profiles.

The badges, which you get just by going to places, are a devious kind of incentive that gets users to go out more and collect them the same way scouts or adventurers collect their badges. It gives Foursquare the feel of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

So will there be a Foursquare-type app for e-readers? Or does something like that already exist? Or has Foursquare come up with a version for e-readers?

Such an app will definitely be invented, and if not, it should. As books go digital, there will be ways get people to buy the devices and download books. A Foursquare for e-books may get people, particularly the gadget-crazy Gen-Yers, to actually read the books they download instead of just hoarding them in their e-readers or iWhatChaMaCallIts.

What would such an app offer, and how can they get people reading? Badges, certainly, but I'm thinking, bookstores can also tap into this by making themselves more trendy for the hip and wired. Discounts and freebies in exchange for badges, perhaps - who needs loyalty cards?

Maybe have secret badge combo promotions: users who manage to collect a secret set of badges, for instance, get bigger, more exclusive goodies, such as attendances at author appearances, book talks or readings, in lieu of the obligatory signed copy and related merchandise.

Bookstores of the near future could be places where e-books can be purchased or downloaded; cash registers could also show buyers their "Booksquare" (I'm groping for app names here) statuses or whatever they've won, after their purchases. The whole scheme will make for an interesting tie-up among publishers, sellers, authors and app and device makers.

A bookclub app can be another possibility. A mini-Facebook page with threads, related and recommended reads, updates and individual user sections to track who bought the book, who read it and their reading progress. It's a good gauge of how well a book is being received and may help spread the reading bug.

That's some good sides. One example of a not-so-good side is the autopinging of the guy's book status. Was there a way to turn it off? I think there should be. Maybe the switch was hard to find. Maybe there isn't a switch at all. Horrors! Imagine some of the pings that might go out.

But this data is important to certain quarters. Just like the GPS that helps people and guided munitions find their way home, your preferences: albums, books, restaurants and hangouts, will help them sell their products or services more effectively. It's how that data will ultimately be used.

Perhaps the fuss over privacy settings in this wired and dangerous world is warranted. As long as there are irresponsible parties out there who covet this data for sinister aims, many of us would think thrice before going "e". Something makers of e-readers and e-book apps should think about.

Bleeding Raw

At a low point in his career, a chef wrote a crime fiction novel, incorporating characters and settings from real life: drug-addicted chefs, Italian-American mobsters, Feds, informers, sleazy restaurant operators, et al. It didn't do so well.

However, his memoir, an expanded, non-fiction version of his first and failed crime novel, was a different story. "Inexplicably," the chef wrote in a sequel to this book, "it flew off the shelves." Now more famous for his writing and TV appearances, the chef has left his former grimier and sometimes larcenous life and settled down with a wife - his second - and a kid. He'd given up drugs, and later, even tobacco.

That book was how I got to know this chef. Or was it his faux food/travel TV shows? I forgot. Dude's a real raconteur. Unashamedly frank, open, and unbridled. You believe every single word. Coming from a culture that represses freedom of expression, it was like a breath of fresh air.

I speak, of course, of Anthony Michael Bourdain, the American chef, author, TV host and French export with a desire to be Italian-American. The Book, which shall henceforth be known as The Book, is his best-selling memoir Kitchen Confidential.

With all the non-fiction stuff he's written since The Book, only die-hard stalkerish followers of the Brash B know of his other works of (mainly) crime fiction, which feature the archetypes in the world of the American mobster and the kitchens he'd worked in.

I found Bone in the Throat in an unlikely place: Cziplee in Bangsar, months ago. First published in 1995 by Random House imprint Villard, Canongate released this edition in 2008 with an updated author's bio. Obviously, cashing in on his fame, but time will tell if readers and fans will take a shine to his earlier works.

Bone is a slice of the life of Tommy Pagano, sous chef of the Dreadnaught. A mobster's son, Tommy wants nothing to do with the life that ruined his father, so he took up what he likes - cooking. But there's no getting away from his mobster uncle and guardian, Salvatore Pitera aka "Sally Wig", who has always been around since he was a kid, helping him out whenever he could.

So when his uncle calls in a favour one day, Tommy couldn't refuse. Sally wants the Dreadnaught's kitchen for a while for some business. Tommy finds out too late that the "business" was a mob hit, which he witnesses. This was exactly the kind of crap he'd been trying to avoid.

Not long after, the FBI manages to snag the Dreadnaught's chef, a skinny guy with a drug habit, and offer him a chance out of trouble by getting him to persuade Tommy to squeal on his uncle. Tommy's got girlfriend problems too, but that's sauce on the side.

Many characters will sound familiar to those who've read The Book, particularly the chapters on his early career and encounters with mob figures. The character inspired by real-life mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante makes an appearance about halfway through and turns out to be more than expected. And... now where have I seen the Dreadnaught's chef before?

Bone take some time to appreciate because of the writing. It's violent, profane (to say the least), and dripping with testosterone, a chaotic compilation of restaurant terms and recipes, mob lingo and to-and-fros between cops and robbers stitched together with an overkill of F-bombs.

The pace is like a speeding subway train, fast and cacophonous, the images outside the window blurred by the speed. Characters come and go, but few of them stick: Tommy, Sally Wig, Harvey the Dreadnaught's owner, Al the federal agent, and the wacky mob boss. The mob and the kitchen are brought to life, warts and all.

Bourdain has come a long way since Bone in the Throat, though his style is still discernible. Compared to his latest, Medium Raw, this book is just bleeding raw, the Brash B at his brashest, unpolished and unrestrained, if that's your kind of thing. Not too sure if it's mine, though after a while, the cursing and swearing becomes immaterial. The character's flaws no longer shock.

All that's left is yes, this is the story of Tommy Pagano, a guy who just wants to take his life into his hands, and it is good. And that, yes, Bourdain is a damn good storyteller.

---

Bone in the Throat

Anthony Bourdain
Canongate (2008)
340 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-84767-054-0

MPH Quill Issue 31, Jul-Sep 2011

Heaps of stories and good stuff coming your way in the latest issue of Quill. New books. Book news. And what is perhaps the longest letter to the editor ever received.

Among the highlights: Eric Forbes talks to Tan Twan Eng, author of The Gift of Rain and Dave Nuku of The Biggest Loser Asia about their favourite books and writers and thoughts on e-books.

Interviews with Tan Twan Eng (left) and Conor Grennan

Janet Tay speaks to Conor Grennan, author of Little Princes, about the life-changing experience that inspired the book and the charity Next Generation Nepal.

Read an excerpt from Chinese Women: Their Malaysian Journey about nyonya brides, maidens and matriarchs. Starting this issue, we'll be featuring excerpts of books we think readers may be interested in.

Features on David TK Wong, author of such books as Chinese Stories in Times of Change and The Embrace of Harlots and Wan A Hulaimi aka Awang Goneng (Growing Up in Trengganu and A Map of Trengganu).

Kenny Mah's nasi kandar memories (left) and Alexandra Wong's
Mysore melancholy

After a soliloquy on sequels, Ellen Whyte takes us on a whirlwind tour of terrific Toledo. Kenny Mah, meanwhile, serves up a sweet tale about his nasi kandar memories.

It's melancholy at Mysore when Alexandra Wong hops into an autorickshaw and gets to know the young fellow behind the handlebars.

...And more!

An additional issue of Quill will be out in conjunction with MPH's 105th anniversary, with more goodies we couldn't fit into this issue.