News: DoJ, A-OK, And Deary Deary Me

Is it me, or did this year's Chinese New Year holidays pass by much quicker than the previous ones?

Anyhoo, I've not been monitoring the Webs for book-related news during the break, which was probably what I needed. But some interesting things did happen during that time.

• Macmillan settles with the US Department of Justice, leaving Apple the sole defendant of the e-book price-fixing suit. The DoJ was also nice enough to approve the Penguin-Random House merger.
• 'Horrible historian' Terry Deary's comments on libraries have got tongues wagging. "Because it's been 150 years, we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers," he said. Quite a few people have disagreed, including one Foz Meadows and Julia Donaldson, Children's Laureate and author of such books as The Gruffalo. This libraries thing is kind of hot in the UK right now.
• While you're waiting for your favourite novelists' next books, Chuck Palahniuk has apparently finished three, making every other writer on Earth feel as if they're hibernating. If your favourite is Chuck, well, lucky you. Just that he won't be releasing them all at once.
• "...a brittle little dominatrix and peerless narcissist who exploits her husband and her marriage with relish." Camilla Long's takedown of Rachel Cusk's memoir Aftermath is the 2013 Hatchet Job of the Year, edging out my personal favourites Ron Charles and Zoë Heller.
• Publishing may be growing in India, but is it really the opposite in the West? And is India's bootleg book industry helping or hindering this growth?
• It seems, like Germany and some parts of Europe, conservative attitudes towards e-books are slowing down e-book adoption in Japan.
• Brace for impact! The Submissive trilogy, a Fifty Shades clone by one Tara Sue Me (to which EL James might say, "Gladly!") will be released in mid-2013. At least we'll see this coming, unlike that Russian meteor.
• "I am a misogynist according to the Swiftians, and I should die." After Taylor Swift fans flayed Rick Moody for criticising their idol, Moddy responds and asks why "serious critics swoon for her narcissistic, hackneyed pap".
• Inkling wades into digital book publishing with Habitat, taking on Apple and Amazon.
• Is start-up funding for book publishing driven by passion rather than business sense?

Also: In case you didn't get the memo, Tash Aw (The Harmony Silk Factory and Map of the Invisible World) will be in town in conjunction with the release of his latest, Five-star Billionaire. This Saturday, 23 February, he'll be appearing in Silverfish Books at 1:30pm and Readings at Seksan's at 3:30pm.

Also reading at Seksan's will be Kris Williamson (Son Complex, Fixi Novo),
"New Age bookstore owner/director" Melizarani Selvakkumar, Zafar Anjum (The Singapore Decalogue, Red Wheelbarrow Books) and Ksatriya, a Penang-based urban poet and songwriter. The Satay Trio, headed by Az Samad, will provide the half-time entertainment.

Snakes Selling Snakes

This review threatened to go on and on, so I tried keeping it within the scope of the book. I thought the release of this was timely, considering the apparent fever for snake pets during the Year of the Snake. But did those reports have to use pictures of the albino Burmese python?

It's been over two years, but Bryan Christy's NGM article still riles me up. But I guess it's understandable why these people get away with what they did. Given the world's nations' track record in enforcing and strengthening laws that govern human beings, who'd be convinced they can do anything to help protect wildlife from the likes of these 'lizard kings'?

So the trade continues, in both legally and illegally obtained animals for the pet trade and other reasons. Differentiating between 'captive-bred' and poached animals when they've arrived at their destinations is hard, if not impossible, which means poachers and buyers have to be caught red-handed - a slightly less difficult task.

And Bryan Christy is still making people angry. Right now, he's riled up the clergy in the Philippines with his article on the ivory trade and the aftermath of its publication. Crime novels are made of this stuff.

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Serpent smugglers

Tales of the illegal trade in cold-blooded animals can make one's blood boil

first published in The Malaysian Insider, 17 February 2013


Investigative journalist and author Bryan Christy made me angry on January 2010 with his National Geographic article on the Asian wildlife trade and one of its alleged kingpins, and how wildlife protection laws and enforcement have largely failed to address issues of wildlife trafficking.

The central figure in this bit of reportage was said alleged kingpin Anson Wong (no relation), who is featured in Christy's book, The Lizard King.

Fancy a scaly, slithery pet for the Year of the Snake?
You might want to think twice

Wong had been caught trying to smuggle over 90 reptiles out of Malaysia in 2010. He was released from prison in 2012 when his five-year jail sentence was reduced to 17 months.

Both the book and the National Geographic article hints at a cosy relationship between Anson and some officers in the Malaysian Wildlife and National Parks Department (Jabatan Perhilitan). Perhilitan, naturally, said the book was "simply fiction".


Reptile rustlers
The Lizard King traces the beginnings of the illegal animal trade in the US, when zoos practically fought to have the most exotic animal species on display. This was during the Sixties, and nobody cared how the exhibits were obtained. We are also given a glimpse into the backgrounds of the enforcement agents who stalked and prosecuted these smugglers.

If I read this book right, it all began with love.

Two figures in this book: Ray Van Nostrand and Henry A Molt, Jr were fond of reptiles and eventually turned their passion into a business. Both would also do time in jail; Van Nostrand would venture into drugs and was snared in a drug bust, while Molt would set up an international animal smuggling network.

When Ray Van Nostrand went to jail, his son Mike took over the reins and expanded his father's reptile-selling business into a major smuggling outfit that could have rivalled Molt's.

Other key plots in this book include the cat-and-mouse chase between Mike Van Nostrand and Chip Bepler, an agent with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS); the beginnings of Henry Molt Jr's reptile racket; and how an undercover USFWS agent helped apprehend Anson Wong in 1998.

This gripping account of the US authorities' pursuit of wildlife smugglers, albeit one that feels roughly sketched out, is short but well-paced. The exact magnitude and enormity of the illegal wildlife trade is conveyed by the behaviours of the smugglers; facts and figures appear only sporadically.

But there is enough bad behaviour to make you angry. A famous quote belongs, of course, to our very own Anson. "I could sell a panda and nothing," he once boasted to the undercover USFWS agent who'd got him arrested. "As long as I'm still [in Malaysia] I'm safe."

Another annoying aspect is carelessness, especially by those who should know better. Two tragic tales illustrate how love can make one stupid. A man considered "the dean of American herpetologists" in the 1950s died days after a venomous African boomslang bit him.

A surprising mention is snake expert Joseph B Slowinski. Deep in the Myanmar interior on 9/11, Slowinski showed no concern when a snake bit him, thinking it was a harmless "mimic" of the more deadly krait. Sadly, it turned out to be a real krait.

Love makes one do funny things, I guess.


Long live the (lizard) kings?
There is no fairy-tale ending in The Lizard King - no ending, for that matter. Not long after Mike Van Nostrand went to jail, Chip Bepler died of a brain tumour.

According to a syndicated article in The Star in December 2010, Bepler's quarry has returned to the trade. It also underscored the difficulty in regulating the ongoing wildlife trade, which also sells illegally acquired animals and endangered species.

No one has pinned down how much the trade's worth; estimates have gone up to billions in US dollars. Demand is high and all sorts of arguments were made for the trade. Jobs. Inspiring kids to learn about the environment.

How does one learn enough about the environment or help conserve it by keeping a Burmese python in a glass tank? Will this 'love' of the environment or the cute little snake remain after said animal outgrows its enclosure and starts threatening the family dog or cat, or when owners don't 'love' their pets any more?

Didn't they learn anything from the Burmese pythons in the Everglades or the extermination of over forty animals on a private farm in Muskingum County, Ohio, some of which were endangered big cats?

"No no no, we didn't poach these from the wild - they are captive bred!" Really? Then what about this little nugget from a local news portal (emphasis mine)?

The green tree python (Morelia viridis) is a popular snake in the global pet trade. It is one of Indonesia’s top exports, and stocks are declared as captive breds. In 2011, however, scientists Jessica Lyons and Daniel Natusch from the University of New South Wales found that at least 80% of Indonesia’s green tree python exports were poached from the wild.

All this, plus Christy's book, leaves one to believe that the pet trade is mostly about profit and prestige. Rare exotic specimens being marketed like the latest Louis-Vuitton bag (as opposed to being used to make Louis-Vuitton bags), Nike sneakers, or some action figure.

Such a demand, fuelled by hubris and naivete, only helps the likes of those 'lizard kings' more than the environment or the animals.

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The Lizard King

The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers

Bryan Christy
Twelve (2008)
239 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-446-69975-4

Relationshiplympics

Mental exercises for building and mending bridges


The news lately has been depressing, whether it's paper or online. Team As versus Team Bs, dirty laundry aired in public, lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, and the seemingly endless string of celebrity infidelities. It probably won't be out of place to wonder if these people should work out their differences in a "mind gym" instead of the media.

Turns out there is a "mind gym" out there, and they did publish a book. The Mind Gym: Relationships is the third book by this UK outfit called the Mind Gym, for those who can't attend (or afford) its £1,500 (around RM7,325), 20-member training sessions. The founders assure us that their Mind Gym training is great for relationships in and out of the office; "from boardroom to bedroom", goes one blurb.

And there's still more to come – possibly books for "prisons, cruises, second lifers and who knows what." From the witty, upbeat, and offbeat tone of the writing however, it's hard to tell whether it's a joke.

While some people sweated over the Y2K bug, Octavius Black and Sebastian Bailey came up with the idea of "bite-sized" 90-minute corporate training sessions or "workouts", each packed with tips, techniques and activities, which can be packaged into different programmes. Training is not a two-way street; the tools and techniques continue to evolve from the insights uncovered by the Gym's team of psychologists, and the real-life experiences of other Mind Gym-goers. The Mind Gym appears to be popular, if not effective, concept. Just ask its clients, a who's-who of recognisable brand names.

A password to the Facebook-like Mind Gym community web portal in www.themindgym.com comes with each copy of the book. Unless a basic online profile is complete, some features will not be available to try. Exclusive goodies for book buyer include back issues of Mind Gym "magazines", and a forum where other users discuss tips and share their own.

In Relationships, the workout programme's structure and content – both online and offline – are similar. Chapters in the book are grouped into four fundamental sections in the following order: "Relationship ready" (prepping yourself), "Coming together" (building a relationship), "Tough love" (resolving conflict), and "A different relationship" (whether to salvage or end a relationship). At the end of some chapters exercises marked "I Spy" (observation) and "I Try" (self-explanatory) await.

Readers will have to endure the tedium of filling out questionnaires, making lists and totalling up points. The results can be surprising, depending on your honesty or whether the questions and answers are correctly interpreted. The first questionnaire determines a reader's workout plan, namely the areas he or she should work on; the more lazy can refer to one of several default plans in the book. Read only what you need – a great option for the increasingly time-starved. On the other hand, it says a lot about a reader who needs to go through the whole book.

Of course, no book of this ilk would be complete without affirming quotes from the famous, and anecdotal evidence of "why it works": examples from pop culture, history, and results of research, which, unfortunately, aren't annotated with their corresponding sources (a bibliography is available, if one is curious).

Overall, Relationships is a relatively small self-help book that tries hard not to be boring. There aren't a lot of page-cluttering visuals; most anecdotal inserts are short and snappy, and each chapter is small and feels modular enough to stand on its own.

Relationships however, don't build themselves. As a young man Albert Ellis (1913 - 2007) overcame his shyness towards women by chatting up over a hundred ladies at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Though it didn't get him a date, it might have prepared him for his future career as a psychologist; in 1982 he was ranked above Sigmund Freud among history's most influential psychotherapists. ...No reward without effort, right?

---

The Mind Gym: Relationships

The Mind Gym
Sphere (2009)
304 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1847440631

Eager, Erudite, Eponymous

Copies of the graphical version of Lydia Teh's Do You Wear Suspenders? The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim reached the office about two weeks ago, but I was too busy to post it earlier. Besides, what else could I write about it after this announcement?

The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim #1: Big Bertha Meets Eh Poh Nim.
We're hoping for a #2 and perhaps a #3

The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim chronicles the everyday life of Eh Poh Nim, a loquacious woman who can't resist explaining the meanings of English words and phrases - the more obscure, the better - to anyone who'd listen.

Samples from chapters "Hatter-somethings" (left) and "Do you
wear suspenders" - or something like that

In his volume, Eh Poh Nim show off her eponyms when meeting a Big Bertha at the airport. She also devises language puzzles for a friend in distress, gets into a heteronym face-off with an equally showy colleague, dispenses bits of kibitz to a fellow bibliobibuli, and more. We also take a trip back in time for a little Manglish lesson Down Under.

Lots of hairy expressions for your entertainment

Rediscover the excitement of learning the stories behind some English idioms, metaphors and other figures of speech in this illustrated, delightfully re-imagined series that brings the humour in the anecdotes to life.


Lydia Teh hung up her apron after seventeen years as a homemaker and is now managing an English-language centre. She wrote Life's Like That: Scenes from Malaysian Life, Honk! If You're Malaysian and Do You Wear Suspenders? The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim.

Diana HND (aka Diana Chan) is an accounts associate by day and a comic artist by night. She lives with her family and a hyperactive beagle in a quiet neighbourhood far from the Klang Valley.

The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim #1: Big Bertha Meets Eh Poh Nim is priced at RM12.90. It should be on sale at all major bookstores and is available through MPHOnline.com.

News: Events And Stuff, Because It's Spring

Because it's close to the Chinese New Year holidays I'm taking a break like the rest of you, so nothing of much substance for the time being. But there'll be some events to look forward to when you all return.


16 February  Newly opened indie hangout Merdekarya is hosting "Saya Selaku Perdana Menteri..." ("I, as Prime Minister..."), a piece of stand-up (or sit-down) entertainment at 8pm where four writers: Zara Kahan, Amir Hafizi, Hafidz Baharom and Umapagan Ampikaipakan will present their 'inauguration speeches' should they become Prime Minister of Malaysia. Check the Facebook page for details.


17 February  Artisan Roast TTDI will be hosting a Blind Date with a Book event organised by book columnist Daphne Lee starting at 10:30am; this post describes one example of such an event. Basically, pick a book, wrap it up, give it a really catchy label, leave it there for others to pick and 'blind-pick' a book yourself. More details on this Facebook page.


23 February  Author Tash Aw, who wrote The Harmony Silk Factory and Map of the Invisible World, is scheduled to be in Kuala Lumpur in conjunction with the release of his latest work, Five-star Billionaire. He'll be appearing in Silverfish Books at 1:30pm and Readings at Seksan's at 3:30pm.


Meanwhile:

• RIP Barry Wain, author of Malaysian Maverick.
• How (female) bloggers became the latest chick lit heroines.
• How to let go of books you won't read and cut down on the clutter.
• Israeli and Palestinian textbooks "largely present one-sided narratives", but do not demonise. But wouldn't people fed on a steady long-term diet of one-sided narratives tend to become more, well, biased?
• Of these nine writing mistakes you're probably making, you probably know six or seven already. You probably just don't care.
• That thing about print being better for reading than digital? It's wrong, apparently. Who knew the Germans were prejudiced against digital media?
• Sales of sci-fi/fantasy artist and author MCA Hogarth's self-published book on Amazon was blocked after makers of the Warhammer 40,000 series of games, complained that the title of her book violated their trademark over the (already widely used, like, everywhere) term "space marines". What are these guys, Apple?
• Anne Ishii talks c*ck in her review of Eddie Huang's Fresh Off the Boat. Oh, like you could resist.
• William Faulkner thinks living in a whorehouse (as its landlord) helps you be a writer. Is that why Wei Xiaobao, the anti-hero in Louis Cha's Deer and the Cauldron, was such a storyteller?
• Chuck Wendig's 25 jumbled thoughts on book piracy.
• After Going Clear, here comes Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill. It seems that, even in this 'church', the one percent are treated different.

And, something unrelated to books: Slate's prime Explainer sheds light on the apparently skinflint pastor who refused to leave a tip on 'religious grounds'.

He also thinks "...it’s possible that Christians think their devotion to the next life exempts them from such social niceties as tipping in this one. That confidence in their ultimate salvation may also diminish their sense of financial obligation to God."

Does this "confidence in their ultimate salvation" also explain why some religious people are so dickish to those who aren't?

Something to ponder over the lunar new year.

News: Jumping The Gun, NYT Reviews And Gulag Humour

The literary world shed sweatdrops of dread when news came out that a library holding ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu was torched by Islamists fleeing from French forces. After all, it wasn't too long ago since a library in Egypt was torched destroying many valuable papers. Timbuktu locals claim, however, that some of the more important manuscripts were saved.

Back home: Is Pak Lah taking on Dr M in a tell-all to be released after CNY? No, he's not, it seems. The authors, Bridget Welsh and James Chin, have apparently denied the book's "tell-all" nature and called the report "an overly-sensational shoddy piece of journalism". A correction has since been added to the original report.

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"He's Anthony Bourdain with a side of pickled radish." Eddie Huang's memoir, Fresh Off The Boat, reviewed in The New York Times.

Huang may be chuffed at by the rather positive review. William Stadiem, however, feels he has to defend himself against a NYT book reviewer's alleged accusations of Jew-baiting in a critique of his novel Moneywood.

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Not long after Google Earth exposed the locations of some of North Korea's gulags, the 'reviews' start coming in, from "Great cuisine" and "Will visit again" to Meh".

But is it appropriate? Not if it focuses attention on these camps, apparently. "Smart-aleck awareness is better than ignorance." I'm kind of two minds about that.

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Elsewhere:

• Bells continue to toll for B&N and the mega-bookstore. B&N is planning to close up to a third of its brick-and-mortars over ten years, but states that it is "fully committed to the retail concept for the long term." The response is one you might expect.
• Hilary Mantel brings up the accolades again, this time winning the Costa Book of the Year award for Bring Up The Bodies, and she's not apologising for that. Why should she?
• Talk about embracing trolls: Writer Brian Allen Carr is seeking the best one-star review in exchange for his books. Am I missing something?
• In the wake of the Lance Armstrong confession, somebody ponders the reasons we read memoirs.
• In the annals of weaponised reviews: Milanese opera house La Scala has blacklisted a newspaper's music critic after some of his reviews were said to have crossed the line. Calling Luciano Pavarotti a "musical illiterate" takes some balls, but can he back it up? Just asking.
• The next time you publish a book, please don't name it after a terrorist organisation.
• Some of the best arguments for and against the Oxford comma.
• Was that famous short story written by Ernest Hemingway? Perhaps not.
• Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis is awarded the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He's the first Indian recipient of the prize.

Card-Carrying Reviewers? Yelp!

Brad Newman thinks that online reviewers don't get enough respect. So he came up with a card that a reviewer can flash at rude waiters or uppity maitre'ds for near instant R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Of course, not everybody can get a shiny black ReviewerCard. Prospective cardholders will be screened for eligibility. For one, a cardholder must have written lots of reviews.

The idea came to Newman in France when he was brushed off by a waiter when he asked for green tea instead of normal tea during breakfast. When Newman hinted that this would mean a negative review on TripAdvisor, the manager of the place paid for his breakfast.

A thought hit him like Mjölnir from above. "Why can't waiters, hotel workers, concierges know that people are reviewers? If that French waiter had known at the beginning that I write a lot of reviews, he'd have treated me like Brad Pitt." I don't know whether he got his green tea, though.

Newman also cited a time when he got a hotel room in Geneva for about half price a night after waving his little black card. He doesn't call it what some people might see it as: extortion. "I see it as letting the restaurant know that they should treat me good because I'm going to be writing a review."

Unless you're Jay Rayner, A A Gill, Pete Wells, or some motormouth from Ipoh, I don't feel like paying attention to anything you say. Nor do I think anything you have to say matters all that much. However, this is the Internet we're talking about.

I've read some of the 'reviews' on sites such as Yelp. I've also read some of the horror stories about 'reviews' and 'reviewers' from sites such as Yelp. So I can say that giving this kind of people something like the ReviewerCard is akin to arming them with AR-15s. Both require a certain degree of faith in the integrity, maturity and intelligence of those entrusted with such power - faith that is at times misplaced.

Even before the Internet, complaints tend to travel faster than praise. Thanks to feedback sites such as Yelp, grouses gained warp drives. Some groups of Yelpers have begun acquiring an unsavoury reputation for shaking down restaurants and being free with lone-star rants. Thus, the means to help players in the hotel and food businesses improve via crowdsourced feedback is slowly becoming an instrument of terror where F&B players are concerned.

Which is why anything that empowers hordes of uninformed freeloaders and discount whores in this manner is just many kinds of wrong.

There are reasons why all these 'reviewers' are online and not in, say, The New York Times or The Observer. How much to they know about the businesses they're writing about and the cultures of where they're based? Do they know what is and is not available at the establishments being reviewed? Are they magnanimous enough to allow for days when the floor staff or kitchen staff may be having a bad day?

Do they really care about their readers, or is it just about the power trip from all the freebies and bragging rights?

Newman got miffed because the French waiter turned up his nose at his request for green tea. If this gentleman is correct, French waiters are known to be rude or snobbish. And does this establishment have any green tea to serve? Did his sense of entitlement just so happened to kick in at a particularly busy time in that place?

We don't know. But it's what he doesn't say in the LA Times article that rings louder in my head.

For whatever reason they're written, reviews are essentially a kind of service, and sites that collect these are supposed to help consumers with their decisions. If written well, reviews can be entertaining as well as informative and, most of all, reliable, as it describes a normal situation at an establishment that people are more likely to encounter.

When you declare your reviewer status at the table, you are never going to get that.

One can argue that food critics with a face also get preferential treatment, but that's because (one hopes) they earned it and, writing for a news agency and all, they're also bound by a journalist's code of conduct. Also, because there's the impression that food critics are relatively more stable and reliable than Yelpers.

"The food critic is definitely a reference because Yelp is basically full of people complaining," said chef Eric Ripert of the famed New York restaurant Le Bernardin. "We have to take into consideration some of the comments, but very often it's not even rational what they say."

The rise of what I call 'raviews' - overly glowing praise that is bought, faked or written in exchange for freebies or discounts - and the growing number of 'reviews' that are nothing more than complaints are bringing into question the helpfulness of crowdsourced customer feedback. Though Yelp and others have tried to rein in the insanity, the struggle seems to be an uphill one.

The F&B business is already fraught with pitfalls: competition, staff and customer turnover, logistics, and red tape. The nature of the business means that good restaurants and hotels generally prosper, while the bad ones will fold under the weight of their own screw-ups. The drive-by review business is changing things, but is it for the better or the worse? We don't know yet.

But the last thing it - and the rest of us - needs is a bunch of whiny entitled know-nothings waving cards that says, "I'm a reviewer. Treat me right - or else."