The Colour Games

What's this with Keeping certain characters 'in closets' - until they're more acceptable? And racist book covers?

Whitewashed! It seems the lead in Justine Larbalestier's Liar is a
person of colour, but it seems not everybody thinks that's okay....

I remember all that online bawling over the coloured character in The Hunger Games - and the urge to take a rolled-up newspaper to some crybaby heads. Infantile, for sure, but is it because of the readers' inherent biases or the market's?

A young adult writer dug around and came up with some stats, which show that, in 2011, "...90% of [YA novel] covers featured a white character, 10% featured a character of ambiguous ethnicity, 1.4% featured a Latino/Latina character, 1.4% an Asian character, and 1.2% a black character."

Also, female characters appear over-represented in YA books, at 79%. A fair number of these models are either in fancy dress, have part of or all of their heads missing, or - maybe - both. Characters with disabilities? "Zero."

Do note that in some charts the total exceeds 100% "because many covers feature multiple characters," goes the fine print.

So it does look as though writers, book designers and publishers are going for the more recognisable Twilight-ish mould, and change doesn't appear to be coming to the genre quickly enough. And the reactions to Rue's appearance in The Hunger Games film doesn't inspire hope that ethnic diversity in literature will catch on faster.

Cover of Ursula K Le Guin's Powers: the whitewashed Spanish
edition (at left) next to the final (English) edition

But even in heterogeneous societies, writers tend to plumb shallower depths for material: times, places and cultures from home. This is more so for many first-time authors writing stuff about themselves and their cultures and upbringing. This approach saves time, less for research and more for writing, talking book covers and spamming Facebook with work-in-progress updates.

Also: In places where race and religion are hot-button topics, a writer can get flak for 'misrepresenting' another ethnic or religious group even if the necessary homework was done and verified, because the writer is not an 'authority'. Who wants that kind of stress?

So the writer falls back on the old and familiar, forsaking the chance to explore topics and spheres of thought outside his box, either out of expediency (or laziness) or genuine concerns over his career, reputation or even his life.

One can argue that readers today are more sophisticated, mature enough to accept literature that mirrors real life, one that's becoming more ethnically diverse. That depends on the writer and whether he's writing for a certain audience. Whatever ambitions a writer has for his work, publishers care most for the bottom line (and not having to deal with the censors). The resulting compromise may not be to everyone's liking - that's something audiences will have to swallow.

Besides: When I need a dose of reality, the last thing I'd turn to is a YA novel. And the current reality of YA novels is dispiriting enough.

Reading List Update

I think I may have skipped at least one reading list update, but only because I felt the books didn't need much talking about. I've already reviewed one of the books in that missed update, anyway. And I'm beginning to get tired of the tedium.

From the few pages I've glimpsed, however, these two look promising.

• Beautiful Ruins
  Jess Walter
  HarperCollins (June 2012)
  337 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-06-192812-3
• We Are Anonymous
  Parmy Olson
  Little, Brown (June 2012)
  498 pages
  Non-fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-316-22765-0

So many items on my growing list of (non-mandatory) reads have not been read or reviewed yet.

But I still hope that these updates are the kick-in-the-butt I need to go through it.

News: Banned Book, Barbed Pens, and Stupid Sugar

No liberty or love in bookstores
Irshad Manji's Allah, Liberty and Love is officially banned. Well, that was quick. ...Wait... no, they weren't...

"The English version of Irshad Manji's book, Allah, Liberty & Love, has been published since June 2011 and there has been no issue taken with the book... until we published a Malay translation of the book (Allah, Kebebasan & Cinta)," said Ezra Zaid, director and owner of ZI.

Of course, that's assuming that the book had been in the country since June 2011, something I'm not sure of.

Food critics speak out
At the Guardian, Jay Rayner wonders why people love bad reviews - except for the victims. Speaking of bad reviews: has therapy and fatherhood mellowed out Giles Coren? Short answer: Not really.

Other news

• Tales of a Taiwanese author's struggles with Chinese book piracy made me think: imagine what he'd have to endure if Taiwan was part of China - probably more of the same.
• Crushed Mexican Spiders from crowdfunded publisher Unbound makes Britain's 2012 Fiction Uncovered list.
• Sober up. The path to self-publishing is not paved with gold.
• An engrossing essay about William Alexander Morgan, Cuba's Yankee comandante.
• The question being asked here seems to be: Are authors writing bigger books - and padding them with research - for purpose and pennies?
• Walter Cronkite not so trustworthy after all, says this biography.
• "You wait 55 years for a film of On the Road ... and then they go and cast the girl from Twilight." Ha.
• Confirmed: Sugar (or more precisely, high-fructose corn syrup) makes you stupid. But omega-3s can, it seems, save your brain. Always good to know.

Family Business

This book was great. That surprised me. And I didn't have to read the previous novels. My liking for this book doesn't really show in this review, and I didn't plan on writing so much about it. Once I started, however, I couldn't stop.

---

A dying breed of crook

first published in The Star, 27 May 2012


Apparently, Paramount Pictures had "allowed" the release of The Godfather Returns in 2004, the sequel to the original Godfather novel. But the next sequel, said to have been released without Paramount's knowledge in 2006 by the estate of Mario Puzo, reportedly didn't do so well.

Perhaps that's why Paramount, which claims it has rights over the Godfather franchise, sued to keep The Family Corleone, the "unauthorised" third book and possible bomb, from publication. Anthony Puzo, son of the late Mario and executor of his dad's estate, responded with a countersuit. A deal has since been struck to allow the book to be published, but nobody can be sure if there will be lasting peace between the two parties.

That's another book – or movie – by itself, but I'm talking about The Family Corleone today. It's a fine book, and it made me wonder if this legal battle is really about protecting the "legacy" of the franchise.

Set in the years 1933 to 1935, the prequel to The Godfather charts the rise of Vito Corleone from olive oil tauke to godfather of the New York crime families. A lot of this book also tells how Santino "Sonny" Corleone, Vito's impatient and reckless eldest son, came to follow in his father's footsteps.

Said to be adapted from unpublished material written by Puzo, it is divided into two "books" or arcs. "Mostro" (Monster) explores a bit about Vito and Sonny's pasts and how the latter, as a kid, came to know about his dad's other business. Years later, he's head of his own gang and shows how he's unlike his old man by robbing the liquor shipments of a powerful mob boss and selling the fruits of one such heist to the monster of this arc, the violent psychopath Luca Brasi.

The "Guerra" (War) arc kicks off soon after Vito finds out about Sonny's extracurricular activities, and that's when things get bloody for the Corleones and everybody else.

(I know some of you reading this online probably have or are going to open an extra window or tab with Wikipedia on, so I won't be telling you anything else about the plot. But I got help for the two Italian words from the glossary at the back. Thing is, 'bout half of 'em are swear words.)

The novel has a cinematic feel to it. Even the narration occasionally lapses into the informal lingo many of the characters use, lending it a certain warmth and familiarity.

Sprinklings of Italian add flavour to the delightfully engaging dialogue, from the Corleones' dinner table conversations and the salty, profanity-peppered exchanges between Sonny's gang members to the tense gangster round table conferences and "interrogation" sessions.

These guys are witty, charming and friendly. They can also pop your kneecaps or lop off your hands one heartbeat after you answer, "Oh, mother's fine, and the kid brother's in school, thanks for askin'." That being said, reading these guys lob racial epithets at each other, even in jest, can make one uncomfortable.

It's the closest you'll ever get to "watch" it, at least until the film adaptation comes out, if at all. Any other style wouldn't do.

Being what it is, there are some uncanny moments. At one point, Vito pays Luca Brasi a visit, seemingly unarmed and alone, and comes away unscathed. Several other characters escape death because of some unwritten code of honour or character quirk and stuff like that. But that's the stuff gangster movies – and novels – are made of.

Kudos goes to Ed Falco for his work on this novel. Incidentally, he's the uncle of Edith "Edie" Falco, who acted in The Sopranos, the TV series about an Italian-American mobster and his family.

I find myself thinking, though, whether the Mafia is still good grist for the fiction mill in the 21st century. What's the deal with mobster-inspired crime fiction, anyway?

So I look up a former chef turned author, who suggested in an essay that "...for purposes of fiction, organised criminality offers plenty of drama, ... plenty of situations in which characters find themselves in extreme circumstances with presumably difficult choices to make." Chef-Turned-Author also said that "All the real gangsters have seen The Godfather, One, Two, and maybe Three. They've seen Goodfellas. And these films made a powerful impression." No better seal of approval than that.

I suppose the kind of drama associated with the old-time gangsters offer writers opportunities to paint convincing psychological portraits of what would be complex characters that audiences can connect with. Another appealing aspect of such works, goes another school of thought, is the notion of honour. One tends to believe that it's Vito Corleone's conduct that inspires his capos' loyalty to him, a valuable asset in the long run. Who wouldn't want to work for a boss like that? Or be a boss like that?

But the Corleones' era seems to be over. And there are more bad guys out there now: religious fanatics, computer hackers, evil scientists, ecoterrorists and maybe even rogue Wall Street elements, plus a new breed of gangster who's all about bling, turf and power, and not much else.

Though some may feel that the novel's release is just business for the Puzos, I'd like to think that it has emerged as one last encore by the titular family whose on-screen exploits will, perhaps, forever remain legend. And what an encore it is.

Viva i Corleone.

---

The Family Corleone

Ed Falco
Grand Central Publishing (May 2012)
436 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-4555-1616-2

Coming Soon To E-Readers?

The book trailer. Is it the next big book marketing tool?

Take a gander at these teasers for Amish Tripathi's Shiva Trilogy. And here are some teasers for The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer. How about this nifty video for Scott Westerfeld's Girl Genius-like Leviathan?

Compare these with the promotional videos for the next big sleep-killing app of the year. Aren't they all kind of ... elaborate for what are book previews? And don't you think Blizzard Entertainment should totally go into movies, instead of pretending to be a games company?

Author AJ Walkley, for one, appears to like the idea of a book trailer. For her, it's one more way of selling a book, and she can get her videographer and musician friends to help her make it, preferably at lower cost and, ideally, at much higher production values.

Walkley cites another author, Rex Pickett, who makes the case for book trailers with culture. Good short videos nab attention, as they should in an age where everything is getting more and more visual, and a book or series with its own trailers tend to stand out from the rest.


Showpiece or showboating?
Of course, there's a tendency to overproduce a book trailer, which in turn may foster unrealistic expectations for the book later on. And, well... book trailers don't quite showcase the actual product, which is mostly text. Many responses to some of the book trailer videos I've seen have called for a film adaptation to be made.

"Trailers for movies make sense — a visual medium for a visual product," Walkley says. "If you aim to read a book, why do you need anything more than the synopsis of the book before you know whether you want to read it?"

A commenter who claims to be "one of the pioneers of book trailer production" makes several good points about video as another medium on the Web and the proper approach to book trailers. I broke up the latter half into more paragraphs:

I understand your impulse to over produce your book trailer but in doing so you run the risk (as you learned) of misrepresenting the experience. My approach is generally — less is more.

As a producer I do not want to substitute my images for the images that the reader will conger themselves. I want to use video to suggest the experience that the book promises. The trailer should not interfere with the relationship between the author's words and the imagination of the reader. Whenever possible I like to draw from the book's cover and any illustrations the book might have. Beyond that the images should be suggestive and not explicit.

I don't think trailers can convince me to buy a book. It was, however, the visually arresting previews of Tripathi's books that got my attention. This was how I'd learnt of the trilogy's existence, though you'd need to watch each video to see that, oh, they're pitching a book and not a film or a video game.

But I think some parts need more research. From the trailer for the second book in Tripathi's Shiva trilogy, Secret of the Nagas, segment 0:23:

Is that a European-style longsword in ancient India? And what's the
Dark Wanderer from Diablo doing there?

With books going digital, a book trailer might make more sense if it's embedded in the e-book itself as a preview for an author's next book or, if the book is part of a series, the next volume. Not too different from the preview chapters at the back of printed books.


Let it be good
I can imagine the kinds of other video previews that could go into the last few 'pages' of an e-book: author notes, spoken by the author himself/herself; promotional skits, outtakes, maybe ads (though I wish there wouldn't be). Maybe a link somewhere where they can open a page and write an Amazon review and put it up, or post their thoughts immediately on Goodreads, Facebook or Twitter. Maybe, on some kind of Foursquare-ish app for books, an automatically updated status.

Collaborative efforts in producing book trailers, such as in Walkley's, would also mean more work for other indie film, digital animation and music sectors. The book trailer in this case becomes a showcase of the moviemaker and musician's respective talents.

But let's have creative, good-quality video content, please. Blurb- and back cover copy-writing may fade away with print, but the need for quality is a constant. And what matters most is the book itself.

More News: Sedaris, Screen Adaptations and Taliban Poetry

• Naked lies: David Sedaris, fabricator? Yes, I know it's The New Republic. I'm sorry.
• Can anyone still be optimistic about the future of "serious pubishing"?
• Two books are coming to the silver screen: Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot and Anthony Bourdain's Bone in the Throat.
• 25 famous rejections - perhaps you've heard of some of these before? I think rejections might have helped some - if not all - of these authors.
• Did the late Steve Jobs spook publishers into accepting the controversial agency model for selling e-books?
• NO, one book a year in the e-book era is not "slacking". One book a year is plenty.
• "Jackie the Ripper!" Could the infamous Whitechapel serial killer have been a woman? This book claims she may have been.
• Catholic Church "is not an institution for respectable people", says Hilary Mantel. Ow.
• Taliban poetry. Is surprisingly good.
• Phil "Sussudio" Collins, former Genesis drummer, singer, actor and ... expert on the Battle of the Alamo?
• The pleasure of being read to: the history of audio books.

News: Liberty And Love, And Other Pressing Matters

JAKIM's latest book promo
A big piece of book-related news last week was Uganda-born Canadian writer Irshad Manji's talk at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall last Saturday, which may or may not have anything to do with the Malay translation of her book, Allah, Liberty and Love, published by ZI Publications.

Manji is also known for another book, The Trouble with Islam. She's director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and founder and president of Project Ijthiad, a "charitable organization promoting a 'tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent' in Islam." Her presence here and her book have, naturally, raised some hackles.

I don't know about the book, but the reporting bums me out. Like, is it such a big deal that she's a "lesbian Muslim writer"? So it seems her books are not only "dangerous" but, oh, horrors, she's reportedly also a le-e-e-esbian. Like that is all you need to know.

Here, read some thoughts about this, because I don't think I can add to the debate.

Before JAKIM raised the alarm, I'd never even heard of Irshad Manji (bad books editor, bad!) Now, everybody does. And if her latest book is banned, say, nine months from today ... what's the point?

Censorship and sensibility
The Quote of the Week goes to Jessica Crispin at Bookslut: "Okay, it's nice and all that someone is fighting back against these stupid decisions to pull books off of library shelves, but does it have to be this book we're rallying around? They still yank To Kill a Mockingbird, you know."

Word.

Something else the West didn't invent
So Gutenberg, apparently, wasn't the first to invent the printing press or movable type. Gunpowder, the compass, paper money and now these. I'm getting a bit sick of experts unearthing Things That Came Out of China While Europe was in the Dark Ages but the Chinese Were Too Dumb to Perfect and Capitalise On. Today? They copy everything.

More writer tips
Reading the fine print: editing clauses in publishing contracts. It's a lot more comprehensive than what we have here, which is, "Make my manuscript SHINE!" And the raw material isn't always good. Also, here are 11 mistakes writers make when approaching literary agents.

Future career plan?
This infographic on the birth of a book is one of the more realistic representations of the book publishing process. Just so happens, I like mutton and goat's milk. And, like goats, I like coffee.

You know I will. And this pic needs to be on a t-shirt.
Original picture here.

Think I'll looking for a goat farm to buy when I'm too old to type shit. I might even plant coffee trees on the premises, too.