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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News: Franzen, Coelho And An Endangered Publishing Ecosystem

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

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

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

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

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

A Nearly Fulfilled Prophecy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

The Beruas Prophecy

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

Franzen's Freedom Fries

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

However, some points are worth pondering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read, Read, Read Some More

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

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

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

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

News: Post-CNY, Book Bans and E-Publishing Hijinks

This year's Chinese New Year holidays saw me totally disconnected from the Internet, but perpetually plugged into the food and learning channels on Astro B.yond.

Didn't drive home by myself, so I hitched a ride with an uncle and got snared in that awful five-plus-hour traffic jam at the Tanjung Malim rest stop. The snarl in human and vehicular traffic combined the Saturday balik kampung rush for the long weekend and the annual CNY exodus. People were taking pictures of the mayhem with their phones.

For the ride home, I hitched a ride with my sister and brother-in-law. The whole trip took about four hours. My poor heart shrivelled several times as he floored it. I'm treating my car better so it'll be fit for next year's CNY holiday. I drive slower, but it's better for my nerves.

Hey, we all age.

---

So I went home and saw my review of Luis Urrea's book in the papers. In it, I wondered if the book would be banned in Arizona, which is gaining a reputation for becoming increasingly hostile to Hispanics.

Turns out that several of his non-fiction works have been affected by the plan to end allegedly biased and politically charged ethnic studies in the US state. As I see it, critics see it as an attempt to stamp out Mexican-American culture in Arizona, which has a sizeable Hispanic population. Urrea had some choice words about the issue.

"Wait a minute", this guy appears to be saying. "Nothing's set in stone yet. And it's only in Tucson." Unless the air clears over the issue, Mexican-American writers are likely to continue voicing their displeasure over the matter.

• iBooks Author, a free, downloadable Mac OS X application for creating e-books has landed. Though the simplicity of the app is appealing, the folks at Writers Beware are urging (would-be) users to read the fine print before trying it out and submitting the output to iBooks.
  
  One reason is Apple's alleged attempt to fix the e-book file format used by the app. Ed Bott at ZDNet is crying foul, saying that Apple's move will hamper the application of an open standard for e-books.
  
  Meanwhile, the big fruit appears to be in trouble over e-book price fixing.
• The Chicago Tribune introduces Printers Row, a new Sunday books section that the paper's subscribers can purchase at an additional US$99 per year. Featuring 24 pages of book reviews, author interviews, Chicago-focused literary news and a weekly bonus book of short fiction, the "journal" will be delivered with the Sunday paper and online beginning 26 February. Bonuses include access to member-only book events, such as the Tribune series of author conversations and discussion groups.
  
  Not a Trib subscriber? Buy single copies of Printers Row from Amazon at US$2.99 each.
• E-readers and tablets spur growth in sales of children's books. Meanwhile, it's been reported that there are 21 Academy Award nominations this year for films based on kids' books. Hugo, based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, has 11 nominations, followed by War Horse with six nominations. Both films are fighting for the Best Picture category. Just what we need: another boost for the YA genre.
• From what I can read about this bit of news, Amazon's New York book-publishing arm is getting publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to sell its books under an imprint called New Harvest. The writer seems flabbergasted, partly because the books are Amazon publications, which some retailers have sworn to avoid.
• Digital comic book startup Graphicly plans to fills a void amidst the hubbub over e-book publishing. They estimate that over 300,000 self-published creators will start selling their own comic books and graphic novels this year.
• The story of Larry Kirshbaum, the guy fronting Amazon's publishing land grab (I'm being dramatic). And here's someone wondering if Amazon is killing or improving the book business.
• Banned books are hot in Vietnam. At some point, these censor-happy governments should just throw their hands up and sigh, "Why bother?"
• Book publisher Harlequin has bought Heartsong Presents Book Club, which provides its members with Christian romance novels. ...Christian romance novels? How does that even work?
• As Nigerian authors look west for fame and recognition, they'll probably have to deal with the continent's apparent reluctance in the shift to e-books. ...No, no jokes about Nigerian e-book publishing scams, please.
• How do those best-seller lists work? Says Paul Takushi, UC Davis Store's book promotions and marketing manager: "The creation of a best-seller list is the most nebulous thing you will ever encounter. No one really knows how it's done." There you go.
• The Hocking-esque tale of an Oak Harbor graduate who made self-publishing magic with Wattpad.com, a "YouTube for writers". Seems the web site helped her book get 15 million reads - before self-publishing it through Amazon.com's CreateSpace.
• University e-presses are, it seems, not lightweight affairs.
• A book reviewer's thoughts after reading a digital copy of John Burdett's Vulture Peak from online book review service NetGalley. Basically, the future is coming and there's no stopping it.
• Next: interactive e-books, ala Steve Jackson. What if you could choose your own ending? ...No, don't think that applies to non-fiction...
• Author and self-publishing guru Stephanie Chandler talks about "the numerous advantages of writing, self-publishing and how it can enhance one's business".

Sweeping, Colourful Yarn

It took a while, but it's finally out: the review of Luis Alberto Urrea's Queen of America. I was bummed at first to learn that it was another of those "sequel novels" but it turned out all right, even without reading the first book.

The way I wrote about the descriptions of food in the novel is a reference to the author's vivid, evocative storytelling, not about the topic. This is not a food book.

I don't know if they've modified or kept the standfirst in the print version, but I'm putting it in here.

...wait, did they uncensor the "b*****d" in my submitted copy?

---

Sweeping, colourful yarn

The "hummingbird's daughter" grows up and finds hope and heartbreak in a new country

first published in The Star, 29 January 2012


A controversial bill of law signed last year in the US state of Arizona, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, "bans schools from teaching classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group, promote resentment or advocate ethnic solidarity over treating pupils as individuals." As a result, schools in Tucson, Arizona also banned such titles as Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years and William Shakespeare's The Tempest from classrooms.

And this book I'd just finished reading, would they ban this, too? I wonder.

Queen Of America is about Teresa Urrea (1873-1906), who was revered as the "Saint of Cabora" by Mexico's indigenous Mayo and Yaqui populations.

Her popularity with the Indians and the poor made the Mexican Government nervous and, after her exile, she came to the United States and briefly stayed in Clifton, Arizona, before embarking on a managed tour across some major US cities.

After a quarrel with her minders, Urrea (known as Teresita) cancelled her tour and went home to Clifton. She reportedly died of an illness in 1906 and is buried there.

This book is the sequel to The Hummingbird's Daughter, which chronicles Teresita's early life up to the moment she was exiled from Mexico.

Both were written by Luis Alberto Urrea, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for non-fiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame. Teresita, it seems, was the author's great-aunt.

In Queen Of America, Teresita and her father have fled to the United States. Trailing them are assassins, possibly hired by the Mexican regime at the time, as well as multitudes of pilgrims and people seeking healing. And reporters.

Her father, the now jobless and purposeless Tomás Urrea, is often drunk and depressed but Teresita, besieged by the sick and poor, has no patience for her dad's mood swings. Adopting a neutral position, the US Government won't accept the Urreas as citizens.

Tomas eventually puts down roots in Clifton. However, Teresita longs for more. She marries a stranger who turns out to be a bit – it was said – bonkers. Unable to go back home, she accepts an offer of a lift to San Francisco.

After healing someone there, her tour around America begins. She faces much of the same: needy people, curious Yanquis, doubting reporters, and strident critics – and finds a new love interest.

In this fictionalised retelling of her life, it's hinted that Teresita's powers are real.

The fictionalised story of Teresa Urrea, the "Saint of Cabora",
is told in these two books - the results of a total of over 20
years of research

Urrea blends history with fiction so well it's hard to tell whether an event is authentic or apocryphal.

You want to believe the salty correspondence between paper man Lauro Aguirre ("My Beloved Companion, You Degenerate Wretch, Tomás: Things are excellent in El Paso! Even a dissolute drunkard like yourself could be happy here.") and Tomás ("[Spanish bad word] Aguirre ... How it darkens my day whenever another letter from you arrives, you pretentious bastard.") actually happened. Spanish words in the narrative add flavour and Spanish swear words add spice. I chuckled upon spotting several of the latter – thank you, Anthony Bourdain.

Speaking of that celebrity chef, Bourdain of the descriptive prose: oh, the vivid, mouthwatering descriptions of food, of chillies rellenos "searing on the flame"; fried tortillas "awash in pico de gallo salsa and crushed avocado wedges with lime"; new things such as "los pancakes"; and even more tortillas, "lying like tawny magic carpets beneath the drooling eggs" along with "diced nopal cactus, melons, oranges, coffee, and watery milk". Don't read when hungry.

Urrea's painstakingly researched novel (six years worth; The Hummingbird's Daughter took 20) also explores Teresita's emotional tug of war between home and the heart.

Readers' hearts will break, little by little, as her hopes are dashed, raised a little, and dashed again in the rollercoaster of a life away from her father: her failed first marriage, the US tour, becoming a mother, and her father's passing.

Eventually, the novelty of her US roadshow wears off.

After the birth of her daughter, her second pregnancy and her father's death, the "queen of America" realises that she's the queen of nothing, and that everything she really wanted is everything she'd left behind. She returns home but not long afterwards, symptoms of her illness appear....

What a sweeping, frank and colourful yarn. Urrea's latest is a brave yet delicate effort that weaves his great-aunt's history into an entertaining yet touching non-hagiographic work that honours her life and times.

The new Arizona law might keep this book out of the state's schools, but at least one copy should find itself into everybody's hands.

At the risk of sounding stupid, through the flawed magic of Google Translate: Gracias por esta hermosa historia (thank you for this beautiful tale), Señor Urrea.

---

Queen of America

Luis Alberto Urrea
Little, Brown (2011)
491 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-316-18764-0