Late News: Amazon, Dandy Dudes, And Food-Related Reads

Mrs Jeff Bezos trashes Brad Stone's The Everything Store in a one-star Amazon review (where else?). Amazon and Mrs Bezos are not pleased with some of the things Stone had to say about the online retail behemoth in the book.

A former Amazon employee replies with a four-star review, and Stone has since responded as well.

"No matter how hard we strive for objectivity, writers are biased toward tension—those moments in which character is forged and revealed," Stone writes. "I set out to tell the incredible story of how Amazon grew from three people in a garage to a company that employs 100,000 people around the world. It wasn't an easy journey for the company, and for many Amazon employees, it wasn't always enjoyable. It's precisely that tension—between sacrifice and success—that makes Amazon and Bezos so compelling."

Across the pond at The Guardian, someone wonders if this is becoming part of a trend.

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The etymology of "dude", revealed. Why do we call dudes "dude"?

Evidence points to "doodle," as in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." He's the fellow who, as the song has it, "stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni." "Macaroni" became a term for a dandy in the 18th century after young British men returned from their adventures on the European continent sporting exaggerated high-fashion clothes and mannerisms (along with a taste for an exotic Italian dish called "macaroni").

Duuude.


Right. What else we got?

• The current war in Syria is only the latest problem publishers in the country have to face.
• Going into self-publishing? Know the jargon. Here are some acronyms to kickstart your foray into self-publishing.
• Vice interviews Irvine Welsh. Among other things, he recommends that writers avoid being "comfortable": be more socially engaged, take public transport, and "hang out with people who are a bit of a pain in the ass and all that, but are interesting rather than comfortable." Might be NSFW.
• Loaded question from the editor-in-chief of bananawriters.com: "Is the Western publishing industry institutionally racist?" Well, it is HuffPo.
• This Land Was Made for You and Me (but Mostly Me), one-percenter David Letterman's "selfish" endeavour with Bruce McCall.
• One of the longest forewords I've read: Anthony Lane's intro to The Big New Yorker Book of Cats.
• "Fire-eaters": Lauren Collins joins the search for the hottest chilli. Sounds like growing gut-melting chillies is as much a macho sport of one-upmanship as eating them.
• The best-selling genres: self-help, kid's books, and 'romance'. Kind of explains the manuscript submissions I've been reviewing. Received only one romance novel so far, and it's only two shades of grey.
• "Unpaid writers" of Yelp sue Yelp, call themselves employees. Will letter writers to The Star, Malay Mail, and New Straits Times want EPF and Socso?
• Just what we need: a "miracle tea" that apparently wards off colds, courtesy of Robyn Eckhardt aka @EatingAsia. This might be the solution to the bugs said to be making the rounds of late. The lemongrass is optional.

Masterclass In Session: Busy People's Fitness With Lyn

Pitches such as "You only need [an impossibly short time frame] a day!" pushes a lot of buttons for people on the go, go, go. Tim Ferriss says you can be a chef in four hours in his book The 4-Hour Chef. Before that, he'd written The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body.

And we have Jamie Oliver's so-called 15-minute meals, which cannot be pulled off by average Joes because, presumably, they didn't read Ferriss first.

Seemingly impossible time frames exist in the fitness world, too. Twenty minutes a day and you'll get a six pack Michelangelo would want to replicate. Twenty minutes a day and you'll shed those extra pounds, and so on. Until the next big thing comes along with an even more impossible time frame.

"You only need ten minutes a day!" says fitness instructor Lyn Kong, in the latest MPH Masterclass Series. Besides a series of exercises, Lyn Kong's Guide to Fitness for Busy People also comes with an exercise programme, as well as recommendations for equipment, exercise gear, diet, and some healthy habits to cultivate in lieu of all those moves that will move you closer to a fitter, healthier you. She also busts some myths about fitness and nutrition.

Live lean with Lyn Kong, courtesy of MPH

To help readers set up a fitness regime, she even provides a somewhat tweakable ten-minute training programme and a 30-day challenge - complete with scoresheet - for those who want to take it up.

And all the exercises can be done without the help of a trainer or a gym. Or sets of very expensive exercise gear made of space-age fabric that "breathes" even when you can't. One by one, all your excuses to not exercise, not eat proper, not go to bed early, and skip the warm-up and cool-down and stretching steps are methodically, ruthlessly stripped away.

She's particularly firm on not skipping warm-up exercises. "Warming up is an essential part of your training programme, whether you're a serious athlete or someone who's simply exercising at home. This is non-negotiable!"

It's not all about sweat, sweat, sweat (like Richard Simmons, OMG). Diet plays a huge role. With some old food myths being debunked left and right (butter, cheese, yoghurt and eggs may be good for you), Kong's endorsement of the Paleo diet, which is basically economy rice sans rice for some of us, seems timely.

We get a list of foods to eat and foods to avoid - most of the usual suspects, really. And lest we get carried away with the fried sweet-and-sour pork and sunny-side-up eggs, there's also a handy chart for estimating recommended portions of each food group in the Paleo diet.

To further motivate you, Kong also shares her personal story of how she got into the fitness industry, one she's been in for over 15 years.

"I've learned so much about fitness over the years, and just as I've shared this wealth of information with my clients, I'd now like to share them with you through this book," she writes. "Unless you're an elite athlete, it's unlikely that you are able to train full time or even have much time to train at all. That’s why I've specifically designed this book for busy people like you."

In the end, Kong's energy and sincerity win you over. Maybe ten minutes, three times a week is all you need.

But, uh ... do I have to do the warm-ups?

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Lyn Kong's Guide to Fitness for Busy People

Lyn Kong
MPH Group Publishing
175 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-967-415-155-3

Buy from MPHOnline.com

News: Writing, Publishing, And ... Internet Slavery?

Working for 'exposure' (not money) is only cool when you're young. As Tim Kreider puts it: "Not getting paid for things in your 20s is glumly expected, even sort of cool; not getting paid in your 40s, when your back is starting to hurt and you are still sleeping on a futon, considerably less so. Let's call the first 20 years of my career a gift. Now I am 46, and would like a bed."

When points like that are preceded by something like, "Slaves of the Internet, unite!", there are bound to be dissenters (such as people who want to write for free, for instance). At PaidContent, it's pointed out that "it's not slavery" and freebies have helped the writing multitudes break into the arena in a market where supply seems to have overtaken demand. "Writing hasn’t become free or cheap because no one wants it any more, it has become free or cheap because there is so much of it that its intrinsic value has eroded — and the advertising content that used to help pay the freight for that writing has eroded just as quickly."

Hookay, what else?

• The number of allowed submissions for the Man Booker Prize will be trimmed. Apparently, the growing number of published books is making things difficult for the judges. Also: "...this year's judges had complained that around two-thirds of the 151 entries for the prize were not up to standard, with only 40-50 worth reading for consideration and the others 'junk'." Booker non-winners should feel better.
• The authors of Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, published in 2011, have been accused of plagiarism by Argentine journalist and historian Abel Basti.
• Last year, Businessweek published an article on Larry Kirshbaum, picked to lead Amazon's charge into the book-publishing industry (which I bookmarked). Now, it seems Kirshbaum is leaving Amazon.
• An author wanted a suit done, but the tailor kept him waiting. So he wrote a bad review of the place on Yelp, a move which backfired when the tailor threatened to tsunami his upcoming book with negative reviews. Sounds like a cautionary tale against Yelp vengeance, but I can't help thinking that it's also about how online bullying (by said tailor) pays. No winners here.
• We need to talk about 21st-century publishing success: For Lionel Shriver, literary success isn't what it used to be. For one, looks like authors have to sell themselves more these days, leaving less time to, well, write. "Now that every village in the United Kingdom has its own literary festival, I could credibly spend my entire year, every year, flitting from Swindon to Peterborough to Aberdeen, jawing interminably about what I’ve already written—at the modest price of scalding self-disgust."
• Some of the Latino-related books that were banned by the administrators of the Tucson school district are now back in classrooms. What about the rest?
• Indian publishers who engaged the Chemical and Allied Export Promotion Council of India to help them set up booths at the Frankfurt Book Fair reportedly got a raw deal, no thanks in part to what sounds like a shady contractor.
• So you think you know King David, giant-slayer? Meet the historical David in a new book.
• Germaine Greer sells her lifetime archive to the University of Melbourne, the proceeds of which will go to rehabilitating Australia's rainforests.
• The New York Times's style guide says it's "e-book". And looks like style guides are more fluid than I thought.
• It seems that diet books lie. You think?

Seven Sleepless Nights To Tunku Halim's Midnight

One hazard in editing manuscripts is (proof)reading stuff you don't like: stuff that ticks you off, stuff that melts your brain, and stuff that keeps you awake at night.

I'd proofed a set of short horror stories and didn't want to do stuff like that again for the next five years. Then a new set came along, which is now this:

Open the pages and kiss your bedtimes goodbye

I believe this was meant to be only for digital publication in the beginning, but we decided to come up with a print edition as well.

Though not as meaty as his previous collections of sleep-robbing tales from the shadows, Tunku Halim's 7 Days to Midnight contains the same gory, bloody and scary material horror fans and readers have come to expect from our own Prince of Darkness. As the title suggests, the collection has seven short spine-chilling stories.

Among stories of lore and legend is one tale of the terrors of modern technology. Think those apps on your smartphone give you real nightmares? Think your gadgets are taking over your life? Tunku Halim's You Lite will literally do that - and more. Another reason not to upgrade to a smartphone.

Readers are also taken to a shrine deep in an abandoned plantation and taught that there are some shrines you do not ask favours from, because you never know what resides within. In a city, a man is haunted to the point of madness by visions of an employee who betrays his trust - or are they merely visions?

A maid encounters a were-tiger in the middle of the night and becomes the target of its hungers. What other secrets will she find out once she learns of the beast's true identity? And in another place, a son, puzzled over his mother's seemingly ageless looks, will learn why in the most shocking way possible.

All this and several more in 7 Days to Midnight, which rolled off the presses early this week and will soon be available at all major bookstores.

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7 Days to Midnight

Tunku Halim
MPH Group Publishing
153 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-967-415-136-2

Buy from MPHOnline.com

News: Banned Books, Naughty Books, And A Winning Book

A furore erupted over the presence of really disturbing e-books from Kobo being sold alongside children's books on the web site of UK books and stationery retailer WH Smith, which was blamed on "a select group of publishers and authors violating the self-publishing policies of our platform".

Kobo has stopped selling self-published books, while WH Smith temporarily suspended their web site while it was being scrubbed.

With reports of disruptions to bookselling in the wake of what Writer Beware calls "The Great Erotica Panic of 2013", independents and the self-publishing sector are crying foul over how their books were affected, even though they're not 'naughty'.

Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware, however, notes that the incident seems to have revealed how dependent these 'independent authors' are on the platforms they're published on. "Like it or not, your access to the tools of self-publishing--and, more crucially, to your published books--are controlled by your publishing platform's Terms and Conditions," she writes. "These typically allow the platform to yank books, close accounts, and enforce content policies at will, often without notification or explanation. When the platforms choose to exercise this power--appropriately or inappropriately--authors often have little recourse."

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On a related note: Not long after (or about the same time) Neil Gaiman's speech on "why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", his novel Neverwhere was banned over a tiny bit where the protagonist witnesses a couple getting frisky, and the F-word. Guess this means you can't dream some dreams, either.

Media outrage ensued. "'Burn down the forest!' you shout. 'There is a naked tree!" thundered someone at The Washington Post, who thinks all classics should likewise be banned over 'inappropriate content'. Gaiman himself helpfully points out the 'offending bit'.

In case you're interested, American Mensa made a list of top ten banned books. You might have seen some, if not all of the books in other similar lists.

Elsewhere:

• "In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime." Eleanor Catton, youngest winner of the Man Booker Prize so far, on how female writers are treated and why her book, The Luminaries, riled certain male critics.
• Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz, the Borders store manager who's being charged by the Syariah court for 'selling' a book someone else wrote and someone else neglected to ban until later.
• The future of digital publishing in Kenya.
• What goes on inside a book publishing house - not often talked about, I think.
• Forget "e-book" - call it a "codex". Because "e-books are so different from traditional reading that they need a new word."
• "Words are like little kids; you don't want to send them out of the house until they're dressed and have brushed their teeth." Words with Dwight Garner, New York Times book critic. By the end of it you'll know the difference between "book reviewers" and "book critics".
• To sell in China, some authors are letting Chinese censors have a go at their books. This includes Harvard professor Ezra F Vogel, whose book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, "sold 30,000 copies in the United States and 650,000 in China," according to The New York Times.
• Book publishing's doomsayers are wrong, and here's why.
• Is Simon & Schuster editor Jeremie Ruby-Strauss "The New King of Trash Publishing"? And do other editors have to walk his path to be commercially viable? Eww.
• Wanna write a business book? Some advice to ponder before putting pen to paper.
• The "little-known" history of Sriracha sauce, which was modified from the original Thai version by a Vietnamese immigrant to the US who had hot sauce withdrawal.

Another MPH Warehouse Sale 2013

It's back, from 31 October to 6 November, at this address:


MPH Distributors @ Bangunan TH,
No 5, Jalan Bersatu,
Section 13/4, Petaling Jaya
Call 03-7958 1688 for directions

Hours: 8am to 6pm

And here's a map:

If I remember correctly, there was another warehouse sale earlier this year. More books to dispose of this time? They already put up banners advertising the sale, so it should be happening.

And it'll be a bit different. For one, there's an Artisan Roast café nearby, in case you can't wait to get home and read your purchases.

Some Afterthoughts

The fevers are gone, but my blood pressure is lower than usual, leaving me with low energy levels. Still filling up on supplements, probiotics, herbal teas (mostly chrysanthemum, with or without ginseng strands), and Brand's Essence of Chicken, in lieu of adding more fruits and veggies to my diet.

And, a couple of days from now, I'll be coffee-free for a whole month. I don't miss the taste and aroma, which feel alien to by partially detoxified body.

I miss my old, more energetic self, though.

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Reviewing this book was a challenge, given how much exposure the press gave the author. It's not as if she won. And now some have started taking about burying hatchets (damn good time to forget where the links are) and how maybe, just maybe, critics shouldn't be too harsh with authors these days.

All things considered, I don't see myself as a 'serious' reviewer - not yet. There's still more of me rather than the book or author(s) in a review, mostly because it's easier to riff on one's emotions - did I like or dislike the book and why - rather than drilling down to the author's history, body of work and going off on possibly unrelated tangents.

One thing I believe some reviewers miss is - even though one may not be enough of an expert to critique instead of 'review' - asking why the author does what he does in a book or body of work. Apart from hitting the right spots with the hatchet and justifying that violence, anybody who reviews something should be curious enough to explore an author's motives where his work is concerned - and not inventing targets to attack.

At times, when I want to get a review out of the way, this becomes a blind spot. As it was when reviewing this book and several others.

"It's literature," I was told. "You can't simply judge it with your emotions."

Until I've read more books, my emotions are all I can go with.

So, no, I don't believe in burying the hatchet. There's still room for professional hatchet jobs, which can be fun to read.

I don't think I'll be writing those, however.