Book Marks: Fixing Goodreads, Jarhead Ban

Has Goodreads "poisoned literature", as this article in The Telegraph claims? Using the case of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book as a springboard, the writer dives into the reliability of Goodreads' rating system, which has been weaponised by blackmailers and review-bombers, most of whom may have never read the books they target.

How can the website remedy this? The writer suggests that "Goodreads and other online review sites could surely vet more carefully the reviews they host, or at least nip in the bud campaigns launched against a book before it’s even been published – after all, few authors can afford simply to chuck a book in the bin as blithely as Elizabeth Gilbert has. As a gatekeeper, Goodreads, as it stands, hardly seems fit for purpose."

The New York Times highlights some cases of review-bombing, and while it argues that, "As a social platform, part of what Goodreads is offering is conversation and user engagement, and controversies and debate can drive more comments and time spent on the platform," there's room for improvement.

However, author Gretchen Felker-Martin, speaking to the NYT, does not think "Goodreads has an economic incentive to be any better. It would be just a gargantuan job to significantly monitor the kinds of abuse that’s being heaped onto people every single day, but there’s certainly some middle ground between breaking your back trying to deal with all of it, and dealing with none of it.”

Kara Alaimo, an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University who writes about issues affecting women and social media, is optimistic that Goodreads can fix itself, even as its reviews "are quickly becoming unreliable." Good for authors, "but it would be all the more so for readers, because it would ensure we keep some of the power to determine which books break out."

The Washington Post, however, wonders if Goodreads will be able to fix itself, calling it a site "built on outdated technological infrastructure" that isn't worth the money and effort to overhaul by its owner, online retail giant Amazon, which seems to have other priorities. "Former employees said Amazon seemed happy to mine Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp along with limited resources."

Nor does Amazon seem keen on radically revamping the site, to avoid driving away Goodreads diehards. "One former employee compared Goodreads to Reddit, an 18-year-old internet forum where users are revolting because of modifications to the site," goes the WaPo report.

The outlook is kind of bleak, and I'm reminded of what is happening to Twitter. Goodreads is a great resource for books and opinions on books and at this stage, a stable, functioning online portal gives many comfort. If it ain't broke...

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In Ottawa County, Michigan, the Board of Education for Hudsonville Public Schools voted to ban Jarhead from a high school library. The 2003 memoir of a marine during the First Gulf War was branded an “extremely violent, vulgar, pornographic diatribe”.

Considering the types of books subjected to such scrutiny and restriction, the author never thought that his book would be targeted. And now that the U.S. is in a proxy war with Russia, "it seems like a good time to ensure student access to all points of view concerning warfare," the author writes in The Daily Beast.

His closing remarks is an echo of what critics of the bans have been trying to get across: "Make no mistake, they are banning books, but really they are restricting access to ideas. And when one small group of people ban a larger group of people access to ideas, we are in for a closing of the American mind."

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ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is launching a publishing company to take advantage of TikTok's ability to make books viral. But will 8th Note Press end up marginalising other authors, favouring only those it wants to promote? Some authors are enthusiastic about the new imprint, because #BookTok is one hell of a soapbox right now. However, as The New York Times notes: "...ByteDance will likely face the same challenges as traditional publishers: Readers are fickle, and ultimately, viral videos won’t automatically create a blockbuster if the books themselves aren’t appealing."

And should a video platform be publishing books just because it helps to sell books? There are few doubts about the latter, as in the case of Shawn M. Warner, whose poorly attended book-signing event was spotted and later posted onto the platform by a TikToker. The video went viral and sent Warner's novel, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, up the charts on Amazon.


Other news:

• Novelist Ken Liu responds to a short story by Jeff Hewitt about a court case involving publishers and an AI author. There's a fair bit to unpack: can AI reach a stage where a machine can out-write humans in terms of output AND quality? Are human writers and LLMs more similar than different?
• The Libri Group, home of Hungary’s largest publishing house and bookstore chain, have been taken over by a private foundation closely associated with the country’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), "has been likened to a training ground for future cadres of Orbán’s hard-right, populist Fidesz party," the Guardian reports. As a result, some of the writers published under Libri have bailed, while others have voiced concerns that this move is another step in the government's bid to exert more control over speech in Hungary. Eszter Kováts, an assistant professor in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Vienna, looks into this in detail.
• ELLE profiles several women in publishing, from authors to literary agents, who are taking the industry "in new and compelling directions.
• Richard Charkin asks ChatGPT what are the principal megatrends affecting the publishing world, and then sets it straight.
• While a librarian was away from a school library in New Zealand, a couple of books by a controversial publisher said to contain racist propaganda found their way onto the shelves. According to Stuff, "The books in question were printed by ... a Kiwi company that has produced three books on New Zealand history in the past year. None of the authors appear to have relevant qualifications as historians."
• Here it comes: Bloomberg reports that ChatGPT creator OpenAI is being sued for violating privacy laws by scraping material from the Internet, including books, articles, websites and posts. Another suit against OpenAI by two authors, Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, alleges that their books were used to train ChatGPT because of the chatbot's "very accurate summaries" of the works. Will more suits follow?
• Want to read reviews of a book? Do it after you've read the book: "Reviews are not recommendations (or anti-recommendations) so let’s stop treating them that way. Let’s take the pressure off and stop expecting to love or hate a book because of what someone else says about it."
• Book cover model Fabio dismissed the emergence of the "cinnamon roll" male lead in romance novels as a "trend" and called the idea of male characters showing their sensitive sides "hogwash." The Messenger shoots back: "The genre now better reflects the diverse range of men who exist in the real world — men who exceed traditional gender roles by broadening the behaviors that define masculinity. There's nothing hogwash about that."

Surviving Workplace Jerks

Three years after the first COVID-19 lockdowns, almost every business is fully opened up and getting its workforce back into the office. Many have surely bid farewell to their sweet, sweet work-from-home days with a little sadness as they ironed their work clothes, even if WFH is still allowed in a limited capacity.

For some, however, "returning to work" may feel daunting at most if theirs is a toxic work environment. With more and more eyes opened to the benefits of a better work-life balance and other possibilities beyond the office, the urge to leave such an environment is great.

Not to say workplace toxicity in your neck of the woods is bad, but in many countries it has become a source of concern. Revelatory articles and thinkpieces about toxic work environments and the need for work-life balance have emerged in the wake of the push for "business as usual". More and more self-help books are sporting in-your-face titles, not a few with harsh language, perhaps to emphasise the urgency of doing something NOW.

One of those books is The A**hole Survival Guide by Robert I. Sutton, an organisational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University who studies leadership, innovation, organisational change, and workplace dynamics.

Sutton had written two other books. The No Asshole Rule is touted as a guide for working with and surviving all manner of assholes out to make your life at work a nightmare. The follow-up, Good Boss, Bad Boss, highlights actions by the best bosses and the mistakes of the worst to guide readers to become "the great boss most people dream of having." This book completes what could be called Sutton's a**hole triptych.

After writing The No A**hole Rule, Sutton was apparently inundated by thousands of requests for tips to survive a**holes from a range of people: from professionals, members of the clergy, students, and CEOs to "my barber Woody, and even my mother."

Rough language in a title is not for mere shock value. That so many, by his account, reached out to him in the wake of the book's release, is telling. Though one can look up reports of awful workplace hijinks, the litany of bad behaviours Sutton presents on one page is gasp-inducing.

Ear flicking.

...Smiling warmly as she whispers in his ear, "You are a loser. I am going to bring you down."

...Writes an employee up for arriving to work fifteen minutes EARLY.

...Flies into a rage over a late water delivery for the office cooler.

...Tosses a lit cigarette at him.

...Grabs her and bites her on the arm "leaving a bruise."

Makes you wonder whether some of the emails Sutton received are made up. Then again, we now know practices such as bullying, sexual harassment, and discriminatory practices against women and minorities are rife in some businesses, to the extent where it's considered part of the corporate culture internally – until the backlash that inevitably ensues after such practices are uncovered.

Sutton builds a good case for why workplace toxicity is bad, and offers some insight into why some at work are such jerks. Machiavellian maneouvres in some workplaces are perhaps inevitable when one climbs to the top, but at some point people's perceptions of what powerful people should be like are warped, and toxic behaviours are seen as hallmarks of a survivor or "player" in office politics.

He cites an article in The Atlantic that lays out why one should be a jerk at work. He then cautions against such a culture, writing that "my reading of that big pile of research indicates that pundits and professors who celebrate bullies, takers, and narcissists are exaggerating the spoils and downplaying the harm that assholes inflict upon themselves (especially in the long run)."

...treating others like dirt is contagious—so if you work with a jerk (or, worse, a bunch of them), you are likely to become one too. A 2012 study documented how such shit rolled downhill: abusive senior leaders were prone to selecting or breeding abusive team leaders, who in turn, ignited destructive conflict in their teams, which stifled team members' creativity.

After walking you through some diagnostics (how serious is your a**hole problem?) Sutton volunteers "field-tested, evidence-based, and sometimes surprising strategies for dealing with a**holes" – ways to help you avoid, outwit, disarm, and develop psychological defences against jerks who endeavour to make life hell for you at work.

When one can't evade, outmaneouvre, befriend or reform one's workplace tormentors, there's a chapter on "fighting back": confront the jerks, or find ways to expel them from the company – risky last-ditch steps when things have gone too far. Mental reframing of one's situation can also end up encouraging one's tormentors or lull one into complacency.

While Sutton draws on research, his experience, and the correspondence he receives from people about the subject, he's not touting The A**hole Survival Guide as the definitive guide on surviving toxic people. "A**hole survival remains more of a craft or skill than a science," he writes. From some of the examples he gives about confronting a**holes, readers should consider themselves cautioned.

Airport staff, for one, shouldn't retaliate against a rude client by sending his baggage to a faraway location, and one should be careful when retorting against and then slamming the door in the face of a CEO's right-hand man. With people, everything is situational, and test cases will not predict what happens in real life.

If you think of yourself as a civilized person but seem to run into assholes everywhere you go, look in the mirror—you could be staring at the culprit. Remember, treating others like dirt goads people to bully you back.

Another thing to note about Sutton's book is how US-centric the examples, test cases and research are. Self-help books from abroad, particularly the United States, don't juxtapose their theories and arguments against scenarios in other non-Anglo cultures (here's one such book, which, incidentally, was blurbed by Sutton). Talking back to your superiors is even more of a career-killer around these parts, even if one is right.

Some of Sutton's strategies, especially those on "fighting back" against one's tormentors, may not yield the desired results in environments where some toxicity in workplaces is accepted as the norm. And good luck fighting sexual harassment and gender discrimination in extremely patriarchal societies.

Nevertheless, workplace toxicity and how to deal with it is a universal problem, and this guide is anything but useless. At the very least, audiences outside the US and the white Anglosphere in general can gain some insight into how things are in Sutton's neck of the woods. And the research he quotes legit warns of the hazards of a toxic workplace culture.

...although we humans sometimes express it in strange ways, we all want a life where we encounter and are damaged by as few assholes as possible, we want the same thing for those we care about, and we don't want to behave like or be known as assholes.

He does address the possibility that the reader's environment and situation would make some of his advice ineffective or redundant: "The studies, stories, and techniques here provide fodder for crafting your custom survival strategy (after all, there are no surefire, one-size-fits-all solutions)." So it's up to the reader's to create, implement, and refine their a**hole survival plan, taking into account the limits imposed by the laws, the culture, and societal norms in where they are.

We are all responsible for taking care of ourselves, Sutton adds, but we also rely on others for physical and emotional sustenance. In the process, he appears to argue, we end up expecting too much from the other person and offence is caused. Hence, the a**hole problem.

So it falls upon us to manage those expectations while being mindful of others and, where possible, being kind while staving off attempts to fight negativity with more of the same. If everyone strives to do that, perhaps the a**hole problem will finally go away.

Until workplaces the world over wakes up to the fact that a toxic work environment does more harm than good, we'll have to do what we can.

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The Asshole Survival Guide
How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt

Robert I. Sutton
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
214 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-328-69591-8

Book Marks: More Book Ban News, And A Thriller Trial

While the state of Illinois in the United States has barred the banning of books, the Governor of Texas has signed a bill that bans "sexually explicit" books from schools and "mandates that book vendors rate the content of the books they sell and compile it into a document for review by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)."

The now-codified READER Act — Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act — the law means that school librarians have to follow new standards when it comes to purchasing materials for their library.

The writer of the article argues that this bill empowers the Texas governor to determine what gets read in schools, according to what he deems fit. "Let’s not mince words here: this is about Greg Abbott, Jared Patterson, Matt Krause, and other right-wing conservatives determining the lessons allowed in public education and pulling anything that does not align with their repressive, cishet, white male worldview."

And it seems such a worldview has no room for acceptance of diversity. For reading Australian author Scott Stuart's My Shadow is Purple to her class of elementary schoolchildren, schoolteacher Katie Rinderle was terminated by the Cobb County School District in Georgia. Someone complained about the book she had read and though the censorship laws passed last year in the state restricts material deemed harmful to children, nobody seems to be sure what's harmful about the book.

Meanwhile, the Dayton Metro Library is making itself a sanctuary for endangered books "joining more than 2,400 libraries across the United States that seek out books that have been subject to bans or attempted bans, making them available for patrons to check out," according to Dayton Daily News, which also reported that the library's Executive Director Jeffrey Trzeciak said, among other things, "If you don’t like a book, don't read it. It doesn't give you the right to tell others what to read."

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I had opined on Richard North Patterson's problem getting New York publishers to take on his legal thriller The Trial. While an author's race or should not disqualify him from writing about certain topics, Laura Miller over at Slate, who has read the book, thinks race might be less of a factor than the possibility that the book ... might not be great.

Edward Segal over at Forbes sees the controversy over Patterson's book as an opportunity to learn some crisis-management lessons. While I wouldn't call it a controversy, the tips Segal shares would be a good starting point for crafting one's own strategy to deal with being unfairly cancelled.


Elsewhere:

• Children's books featuring neurodiverse protagonists seem to be the latest publishing trend, the Guardian reports. "Publishers, which were previously reluctant to approach the subject, are increasingly seeking out realistic and explicitly neurodiverse protagonists, often by authors who are themselves neurodivergent." One such work might be Free Verse by Sarah Dooley, whose protagonist also has a penchant for poetry.
• Tracy Buchanan at The Bookseller tells people to stop being scared of AI and embrace it, saying that AI can, among other things, help free up time for writers, improve their writing, and aid in the fight against book piracy. Buchanan, like many who believe that the use of AI in writing and publishing is an eventuality, thinks all the negativity in the AI debate is keeping people from writing "bloody good books."
• Some might remember Judy Garland for her role in The Wizard of Oz, but that she published a book of her own poems? "It was 10 pages long and contained eight poems. It first published in 1940 with only a select few copies given out to close friends. Jack Chitgian Bookbinding Service in Beverly Hills, who manufactured the book, reprinted an unknown amount of copies in the early 1970s after Garland’s death."
• A curriculum rationalisation exercise, which also involved edits to school textbooks in India is stirring a pot because of deletions of chapters that make the current Indian government ... uncomfortable. "Among dropped topics are paragraphs on attempts by extreme Hindu nationalists to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi and chapters on federalism and diversity," the BBC reports. Some of the academics who helped develop the existing textbooks are objecting to the changes and want nothing to do with the new curriculum.
• My Kolkata speaks with publisher, poet, photographer and author Naveen Kishore about his book, Mother Muse Quintet, his photography exhibition, and more. "Writing is an independent exercise from publishing. I have been writing for the past 12 years — every day. So, it is a practice, like we do riyaz (systematic practice of an art form, usually under a teacher's guidance) for music."
• The translation of North Korean author Paek Nam Ryong's award-winning novel, Friend, was published in the United States in 2020 by Columbia University Press. But it seems the author was unaware of this, nor did he receive any royalties from sales of this edition.
• The Other Black Girl and the erasure of Black women in publishing: even as publishers ramp up the hiring of BIPOC personnel to boost diversity in the industry, this Electric Literature article argues that such initiatives don't mean that things will get better for BIPOC authors and employees in publishing, not when the same old prejudices persist.
• Out in Kampung Pulau Duyung in Terengganu is a small public library run by 80-year-old Frenchwoman Christine Rohani Longuet, converted from an abandoned village house. Seems running a library has been a dream "of having a cultural centre for young children and explorers". Sounds cool. Wonder if the state government might help out with maintenance and promotion.
• This glimpse into what's going on with the book culture in Uzbekistan suggests things are loooking up after a change of government. But can the momentum be sustained? Can the country shrug off the baggage of its past to allow its reading culture to blossom and thrive?
• A survey of about 2,200 adults in the United Kingdom by the Publishers Association, a UK trade association of publishers, "showed that a third (33%) of people think that books offer them the best form of escapism when they’re having a bad day, coming second only to watching television (54%)." The poll also found that "found that 41% of people keep books for themselves, while 34% pass them on to friends and family members."
• Here's a review of God the Bestseller by Stephen Prothero, a biography of Eugene Exman, an editor of a publishing company that would later be known as HarperCollins. The reviewer calls the book "engrossing", painting a picture of a man who knew that "the dual identities of religious books—as commodities in the market and conduits of the Spirit—are less oppositional than purists of either commerce or ministry might guess."

Holding Onto Hope For Books And Bookselling

I didn't set out to follow the development of AI in publishing, but I seemed to have fallen into a rabbit hole while researching for a couple of AI-related pieces. And it seems the debate is still raging and developments in the field keep coming in.

This article highlights the changes AI will cause to parts of the publishing sector. Expect AI to take over a lot of human involvement in marketing, promotions and publicity; translation; and audiobook narration in particular. More and more writers are using large-language models to draft books, with some employing AI to conceptualise and create book covers.

And check this blast from the past about a guy who used tech to harvest bits from the web to write tons of books and publish them on Amazon. This reminded me of "blogs" made with content reaped from other websites by bots; at least one of my posts was harvested this way. Was this the precursor of the large-language models behind the likes of ChatGPT? Who'd have thought.

Will AI eventually replace humans entirely? A lot of doomsaying is clouding the fact that the technology isn't perfect, and that it is only as good as the material it is being trained with. Visual artists have more to fear than writers, perhaps, but the article offers some hope...

Ebooks did not kill print. Audiobooks are not destroying print, either. Amazon may have forever changed the industry, but the format that makes publishing truly publishing is not going away anytime soon. Perhaps the industry will weather the AI storm as well.

What might not "weather the storm" is the physical bookselling industry. Borders Malaysia is shutting down operations and will fully exit on, of all days, this Merdeka Day. Once considered MPH's rival, apart from Popular, Borders Malaysia was an offshoot of the now-defunct Borders Group Inc. in the United States, which shuttered in 2011. Prices of books have shot up along with costs within the book supply chain, and print appears to be increasingly unsustainable.

In the US, bookstores are still around, though they're apparently not the place to work if you want a living wage. The piece about independent bookstores goes on to disabuse readers of the long-held romantic notions about working at such places: "Much as the fringe benefit of access to review copies might be nice, it does not pay the bills, whether you’re in New York City, Seattle, or a smaller community in the Midwest."

Numbers are tossed, figures are bandied about. Sobering numbers that underscore a fact that having a bookstore or library, or being able to run or work in either, is a privilege...

These jobs, so often seen as dreamy or as a calling, are coded in language that undermines their reality: you need to have another job, several other jobs, no debt, no bills, and no other obligations to survive in any place in the country to take one.

Indeed, in times of peace and plenty, such institutions can exist and even thrive as long as all the basics are taken care of and the boat is sailing smoothly. However, economic wobbles wrought by climate change, COVID-19, and conflicts in several fronts worldwide have shorn our spending power, forcing us to prioritise other things. Some TBR piles have started growing slowly or not at all.

Books have always been luxuries in the past, democratised by the printing press and later, digital technology. Good books take a lot of resources to make, especially limited-edition hardcopies with fancy covers and special paper. For those simply looking for a read or a dozen, going digital would be the way.

Like books, timepieces too were a luxury, only affordable by the rich and powerful, because of their intricate engineering. At some point the wristwatch industry re-embraced its gilded past after it was almost wiped out by the proliferation of digital watches, touting a return to tradition and craftsmanship.

Books might take a similar path, though masterpieces like Dave Eggers' artsy edition of The Eyes & The Impossible may never leave the house with their masters for a long flight with nothing to read. That's one possible path, though one also has hopes that paper books will remain viable within one's lifetime. And diehard bookworms can find succour in that, among other benefits, one retains more reading from physical books rather than digital copies on screen.

I can't bring myself to bid adieu to physical books and bookstores within my lifetime. They've been part of my life for so long, even as I have and will say goodbye to other things and people. I feel somehow, like in the US, indie bookstores that are small, cosy and offer more personalised service, will become more the norm than emporium-sized mega bookstores that have diluted their brands by offering more non-book items. Air-fryers in a Popular outlet? Alamak! And not a recipe book to go with them.

The meditative experience of walking along and perusing shelf after shelf of books will probably overcome our attachment to digital media, likewise the lure of finding the unexpected among rows and rows of tomes. Each book is like a treasure chest of words, forming images, vistas, and lived experiences – and one is never sure whether it's a keeper until it is read, cover to cover. And one eventually has to venture beyond the four walls of one's room, cosy as it may be.

So yes, I believe that books and bookstores have a future, even as machines evolve – or are made to – become closer to us. Even if books eventually retreat into private spaces beyond public reach, as in days of old, at least they will be there, waiting for their day in the sun again.

Romantic, much? Perhaps. Some bookworms tend to be hopelessly so.

Fundamentally Frightening

What is the link between the docuseries Shiny Happy People and the book-banning movement in the United States?

The series is about the Duggar family, the star of a TLC channel reality-TV series 19 Kids and Counting (19 being the latest count before the show's cancellation; the number changed as a new child is born). They're devout Independent Baptists, and have links to the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), both founded by American Christian minister, speaker, and writer Bill Gothard.

Writing in Book Riot, Kelly Jensen describes the IBLP as "one of the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist movements" in the United States, and that the homeschool curriculum the IBLP developed via the ATI "showcases the talking points being spewed by right-wing bigots bent on banning books." Also...

[Bill] Gothard’s teachings note that women remain subservient to men, that children be subservient to their parents, and that physical punishment is not only acceptable but expected in order to train obedience. These are but the tip of the iceberg.

I was reminded of this article after reading about some politician reportedly stating that "Western understanding on human rights concepts should not be accepted in Malaysia as its proponents are believers in Darwin’s theory of evolution, which goes against Islamic theories on creationism."

Local religious fundamentalists share a fair bit with their counterparts in the West. Like the Duggars, not a few parents also eschew family planning and believe that G*d alone dictates how many children they'll have. So one shouldn't be surprised that they don't subscribe to Darwin's theory of evolution. The Malay edition of The Origin of Species is banned here.

Perhaps suspicious of the curriculum in US schools, some Christian fundamentalist parents homeschool their offspring, often using curricula fashioned by organisations such as Gothard's ATI. Jensen highlights an example of what it contains...

...Take for example the “Christian Mom” who decided that her kids could no longer watch Ms. Rachel, a YouTube star whose show for toddlers teaches music, colors, shapes, and more. Why did she have a problem with such a straightforward show?

She and her family do not believe in dinosaurs and they do not believe in pronouns (Ms. Rachel has a regularly appearing and deeply beloved guest on the show, Jules, who uses they/them pronouns).

Jensen goes on to state that "Homeschool programs like these promote isolation, promote dependence on white male authority figures, and create such a culture of fear that indoctrinates do not speak up for fear of retaliation and excommunication." Who the heck benefits from the creation of such a society?

Eventually, this sort of fundametalism will bleed into other aspects of people's lives. The US abortion fight is the result of this encroachment, as is the ban on alcohol sales in coffee shops, supermarkets and convenience stores here, plus the imposition of a "modest" dress code in some public places.

Not only are book bans here "archaic", as reportedly described by the Penang Institute, but ineffective and seemingly arbitrary. Ban something and everyone rushes out to get a copy to see what the fuss is about. There is no deep, honest, mature and meaningful engagement with or discussion of the material.

We're losing the ability to think for ourselves because people in power cannot trust us to come to proper conclusions – or conclusions they want us to reach? – about what we see, hear, or encounter, so they're deciding that for us. Could there be something else other than an authoritarian bent behind this impulse?

Are some of the ways we react to things also to blame, especially with how we consume media like fast food and junk food: obsessively, with little pause and little heed for our health? Or how we argue the talking points about certain topics?

Regardless, trust is a two-way street, and there can be no way to move forward if bad-faith actors dictate what or who we should and should not read, listen to, watch, consume, or be offended by.

Book Marks: Hold That Ban, Cancelling Cancel Culture

As the book-banning movement marches on in the United States, the state of Illinois is putting a stop to such efforts. In a press release, Governor J.B. Pritzker said, "Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world; I want them to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next. Everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the books they read, the art they see, the history they learn."

So far, it's only one state, but I hope more will follow suit. The movement to control what gets read in schools, libraries and everywhere else is dangerous overreaching by elements out to impose a "cruel, rigid, unforgiving and smugly self-righteous" (David Eddings was on the money about religious demagogues) doctrine everywhere, not just the US. If people stopped thinking for themselves, some smart alecks will step in and do our thinking for us, and that's the last thing we need.

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Has cancel culture gone too far?

Elizabeth Gilbert was forced to shelve her new novel, set in Russia, after it was review-bombed by people protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There has been some pushback to this, in favour of Gilbert; her book does not appear to be pro-Russian propaganda, and I personally deplore the tactic employed against it because most review-bombers never read the book they attack.

Some may feel the urge to strike back at an oppressor, but projecting all that is bad about a rogue nation onto a piece of literature and then smashing it is pointless. Have review-bombs ever stopped a war, ended oppression? The power and reach seemingly granted by social media has made us lose all sense of proportion. And equating writing about Russia to tacit support for its policies is a bit of a stretch.

Bestselling author Richard North Patterson, meanwhile, can't get New York publishers to take on Trial, a legal thriller focusing on racism, Black voter suppression, and an interracial love affair in America set in 2022. If I read correctly, he was told that as a white male author, the story was probably not his to write.

While there has been debate over whether white authors should even attempt writing the stuff Patterson did in Trial when BIPOC voices are being suppressed, is it fair to excessively gatekeep or pigeonhole authors by race and what they should and should not write about? And even if there have been white authors who fumbled when writing about other cultures and lives, surely some of them do get it (mostly) right.

If an author is found to have not treated their subjects well in their book, then let the piling-on begin. Otherwise, why kill a book before it even has a chance to be read and judged?

Knowing Myself (Again)

Though things have started changing career-wise, I seem to be stuck in the same existential rut I descended into when I started having sleeping troubles about six years ago. I can't muster the same energy and vibe for work. I've had to rely on dictionaries and thesauruses more. I look at my old work and it looks like someone else wrote it.

Nor do I feel the security and comfort of belonging to a certain tribe. I've ghosted almost all of the connections I made during my forays into writing and publishing while I sorted myself out, and I don't miss the vibe any more. I didn't feel a thing when people recounted their time at a recent literary festival I used to attend.

Divorcing the alienation from the world of letters and the lingering resentment from a failed relationship is hard. Perhaps it's because they're linked. Did I want to write because I wanted to or because I was dragged into it? Instead of a slow, gradual surgical removal, I abruptly ripped out that part of my life in rage. It hurt bad, healed ugly, and evoked phantom pains when I encountered certain triggers. Even now, those pains still lurk beneath the surface.

Whenever these feelings emerge, I remind myself that joy and despair take their turns in life and nothing is constant, so there's no point resenting others for having what I don't have. The things they have come with other things, which I am not yet prepared to shoulder or accommodate. I may not know what I want to be now, but I can distract myself with tiny side projects. Until then, I'll grit my teeth, bear it out and work on those projects, whatever they may be. Seen that way, my world shrinking may not be such a bad thing after all.

An epiphany while watching Accented Cinema's take on why China cared "so much" about Kung Fu Panda slapped me like the thrashing tail of a trout: "Kung Fu Panda loves China more than China loves itself." AC believes that the first KFP film is essentially an American love letter to Chinese culture; though some parts are not culturally accurate, it's an homage so heartfelt that Chinese started asking themselves why they couldn't make something similar.

Perhaps it's that outside-looking-in thing. We seldom recognise our own strengths and unique selling points because we internalise so much of ourselves that it's become second nature, only standing out when seen by others, under certain circumstances. That might be why many creators seek validation from others on social media. Over time, some eventually get addicted to the feedback and adulation – and are devastated when it all comes crashing down.

(Also, China takes itself way too seriously and has too much pride to ever do stuff like KFP, which also pokes fun at itself. They should really lighten up.)

Maybe I stopped writing because I (also) got tired of wondering whether my writing is worth this much or that price. And constantly asking "is it good enough" or "did I get this right" after hitting "Send" can be nerve-wracking. I don't think that will ever change.

I understand better now how self-love requires learning to accept your limits and recognising your strengths, then build upon the latter to mitigate your shortcomings. The process feels arduous because it is. Introspection involves scouring the familiar for the rare, like trying to spot the gem among rows of shops in the neighbourhood you barely glance at usually. Fine-tune your senses and what you'd notice afterwards might surprise you.

Once this becomes natural, you (probably) don't need anyone to boost your morale, but let your inner circle kick you in the butt should you start becoming an asshole. As AC pointed out, China's current animation boom is proof that the nation is learning to love itself Dreamworks-style, so you can, too. "There's no secret ingredient. It's just you."

So I'm starting to write again, and though listicles almost every week with an occasional post in between isn't what some call progress, it's a whole lot better than leaving massive, yawning gaps in the blog publishing schedule. What's important is to "show up", as dictated by the author of the book, Atomic Habits.

And showing up every week has borne fruit. Writing these days is much easier than it was for the past three to four years, even if there was no pandemic. For a long time, I wondered whether anything was worth writing about any more. No longer. So I'm keeping my listicles; reading up for them has helped me find things to write about, and several bullet points eventually became full-fledged posts.

To think, the answer to my writing block was the thing I used to do without too much thought, to keep the blog from stagnating.

Returning to reviews, albeit on a personal level, might take a little longer. But thanks to a few new books, I can start reading without being (too) critical again. It'll be an expensive hobby now that books cost more, and I can't cover the additional costs, but I'd like to think I'm investing in myself.

Man, I'd like things to stay this way for a while longer.