Leadership Lessons From The Kampung For The Global Village

When it was first published in 206, Boonsiri Somchit's When the Chicken Dies, Everyone Cries promised "authentic leadership and life lessons from the heart of the kampung" because textbook leadership skills aren't bridging the gap between management and people. Was the author aware of how much that chasm would grow since then?

A finance and operations professional with over three decades of experience, Somchit spent nearly 20 years in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and established AMD's Global Business Services, the US-based chipmaker's first accounting and financial shared services organisation. She also co-founded the Penang-based training and consultation firm Xtrategize.


Read the full review.

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When the Chicken Dies, Everyone Cries
Authentic Leadership and Life Lessons from
the Heart of the Kampung

Boonsiri omchit
Clarity Publishing
256 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 9786299812203

Can't Read? Take Up These Reading Challenges

Who doesn't love reading challenges? Well, some of us have days where picking a book feels like a pain already, never mind sitting down to read for a couple of hours. That to-be-read pile, however, is not going to read itself. Nor will you be doing anything to jump-start your reading habits by staying away from books. But where to start?

Well, we humbly suggest...


Full article here.

Book Marks: Emerging From The Cave (Again) With More Updates

Whew! I didn't expect my new job scope to keep me away from this space for this long but slowly, I'm figuring out how to balance a full plate. While a lot has come to pass, I'll just highlight some of the more recent happenings...

TODAY reported Singaporean writers stating that their literary scene is "healthy" and "energetic", citing the emergence of new writers and the abundance of content being published".

Speaking to the media, The Singapore Book Publishers Association added that the launch of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015 "was a 'meaningful turning point' that created a substantial increase in the number of novels published" in Singapore. "At the same time, more Singaporean authors (based here and overseas) are being published by UK and US publishers, either directly or after growing their career locally."

From the sound of it, Singapore's lit scene looks lit. Hoping this lead to more eyes on writing from this region.


In other news:

• Under the slogan "Baca Jap" (Read for a While), Silent Book Club JB, an offshoot of the US-founded Silent Book Club, aims to create "a space where book lovers can gather and engage in literary activities at local cafes and recreational parks". Do have a look when you're in the neighbourhood.
• "Our inspiration to set up Sunda Shelves was actually from a bookshop named 'The Borneo Shop' in Kota Kinabalu (Sabah) which also specialises in natural history." If you're in Damansara Kim, Petaling Jaya, find your way to The Sunda Shelves, a nature-themed bookstore specialising in "books relating to the environment, nature, natural history, culture and travelling in South-East Asia."
• "Some people tend to wave off comedic writing, saying 'Oh, it's just light fiction or chick lit', like it doesn’t take much effort, but honestly, it takes a lot of skill to write it well." Lauren Ho on writing comedy in her fiction and exploring new genres.
• "I started self-studying Korean when I was 18. At the time, Korean wasn't a very popular language to learn, so I had to be very resourceful. I used anything I could get my hands on, be it from the library or online." Translator Shanna Tan – who recently shared the spotlight with author Hwang Bo-reum in KL – shares some parts of her job and experience translating Hwang's Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.
• James Queally was on a flight to a sibling's wedding when he received news that his publisher, Jersey-based indie crime publisher Polis Books, may be shut down. Not an enviable position to be in, but it's (fingers crossed) not the end of the world. To help others in the same situation, Queally "chatted up a few other writers whose works were previously marooned by industry collapse to put together a survival guide on what to do when your publisher dies."
• The number of titles from authors of colour is increasing. We're getting stories from cultures beyond the nominally white anglosphere, which is great. But is there a tendency to lock these authors into strictly writing about their own cultures? And if they attempt to step out of their pigeonholes, are they being not true to themselves? Sreedhevi Iyer, a lecturer in creative writing at RMIT University, explores the question of authors and authenticity in The Conversation.
• Now that JK Rowling has pretty much fallen from grace, what else can kids look to as an alternative? Perhaps they can have a go at what Katherine Rundell has written? "'Impossible Creatures,' Rundell's sixth novel for middle grade readers, became an instant best seller in her native Britain when it was published last year and has garnered numerous awards, including the Waterstones Book of the Year."
• Speaking about books for kids (or not): I only vaguely recall how unsuspecting parents were misled into buying "explicit" novels for their tweens and kids because of the cartoonish covers, such as the one for Hannah Grace's Icebreaker. But is it intentional? A book designer dishes on how these covers work.
• In the New Yorker, a brief history (as brief as a New Yorker article can manage) of bookstores in the US and where it can go from here. The writer appears to be arguing for bookstores to become "community-building spaces" – warm, welcoming, and not necessarily stocked with or offering every title under the sun.
• Several professionals in Ukraine's publishing industry ponder the future of contemporary Ukranian literature – a heavy topic while the war over there rages on and some of their compatriots are out on the front lines. Every now and then, one hopes for the end to the war so that they can rebuild what they've lost and grow again.
• Occasionally, you will encounter a book you can't bear to finish. What to do then? Like Sophie Vershbow in The Atlantic, Maya Chung says it's okay to DNF a book you don't like, with some caveats. "Of course, if I want to recommend a book widely or rave about it on the internet, I need to complete it, in case the story takes an unexpected turn or something happens in the last few pages that changes my perspective. The same rule applies if I feel like hating."
• "It has been a peculiar and exasperating five years. I'm a writer. I do other things but writing feels like my main reason for being on the planet. Thanks to a triple heart bypass, some underperforming psychiatric medication and long Covid, however, I've been unable to write for most of that period. Much of the time it's been impossible to read as well." As someone who writes but not as often, walking down author Mark Haddon's five-year journey towards recovery is unimaginable.
• "We have this problem in our culture," says Solène Marchand, the female lead in Robinne Lee's The Idea of You "We take art that appeals to women—film, books, music—and we undervalue it. We assume it can't be high art. Especially if it's not dark and tortured and wailing. And it follows that much of that art is created by other women, and so we undervalue them as well. We wrap it up in a pretty pink package and resist calling it art." The same seems to be happening to The Idea of You and Lee has something to say about that and about art for women.
• How many of you have learnt by now of a would-be burglar in Rome who was caught because he was engrossed in a book he found in the place he broke into? "The 38-year-old reportedly gained access to a flat in the Italian capital's Prati district via the balcony but became distracted after picking up a book about Homer's Iliad on a bedside table." The book, by the way, is Giovanni Nucci's The Gods at Six O'Clock – now probably known as the tome that was so good, it stopped a crime. Who needs an ocean of positive reviews on Goodreads?

Surviving A Seedy Underbelly

Hades was a tough read, so when one is finally done, relief comes like a tidal wave. Though the copy of Ipoh-based teacher Aishah Zainal's debut novel lies on the desk, some of the words still echo and one's fingers still ache at the memory of its weight.

"At its core, Hades is the tale of the underdogs – of those living in poverty and what it does to people, especially women," Aishah told local English daily The Star, which reported on the novel being nominated for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award. Even this does not prepare readers for their descent into its murky depths.


Full review here.

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Hades

Aishah Zainal
Gerakbudaya Enterprise
200 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 9789670076102

Book Marks: Books In Wartime, Authors And Self-Promotion

"Books remain powerful. Amid all the offerings of digital media – from bingeable shows to news blogs and funny videos – reading still has a place for many of us," writes Beth Driscoll, Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne, in The Conversation. "Adaptable and enduring, books have not been replaced by new media, but sit alongside them: they circulate not only in print form, but as audiobooks and online serials; they are adapted for other media."

In times of crisis, one might turn to books for clarity, if not an escape. A much harder activity for those in Ukraine, where Russian bombardments also target the book publishing industry. According to Voice of America:

"According to the Ukrainian Book Institute, Russian strikes and other aggressive actions have destroyed 174 libraries and almost 2 million books. "The Smithsonian Institution, located in Washington, has also documented the massive destruction of Ukraine's book publishing facilities, some of which are designated as cultural heritage sites, as well as libraries and archives."

Which is perhaps why there's a book boom in the besieged country at the moment. Shelled by an aggressor, Ukrainians have been turning to books for an escape, and perhaps some hope of peace.

Anastasia Yehorova, an IT project manager whose husband is in the military, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that she has bought "five times more books than she used to before Russia's full-scale invasion." However, "the real reason I buy more than I can read is because I am afraid that the Russians will force us to flee again ... and that we won't be there anymore – and neither will Ukrainian books."

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With myriad ways authors can promote their books – often because they HAVE TO – they are increasingly turning to marketers so that they can concentrate (more) on writing than the other stuff. But is what they're paying worth it? Shouldn't their publishers do all that work?

This isn't new, as Maris Kreizman notes. "There are lots of independent publicists who've been working with authors to supplement the work of their in-house teams for years." But she provides some points to ponder when considering shelling out extra for promotions and coverage.


Elsewhere:

• "Even for a writer who has made a specialism of slim, succinct books, this one is short," writes Claire Armitstead at The Guardian about Raja Shehadeh's book, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? "Why, he asked in 2016, did Israel not take inspiration from South Africa's journey towards the abolition of apartheid? His conclusion, eight years later, is damning. 'The very high human and material cost of the war in Gaza proves that what Israel fears from Palestine is Palestine's very existence.'"
• "What does the world miss when a beloved author's work is left incomplete? Does the possible loss justify the risk that the finished product isn't what it might have been? ... What does it mean for an author's work to be released into the world without that author's blessing?" Posthumous publications may never go out of style, nor be free of controversy. Somewhere out there though, someone may be happy to read such a publication.
• "I just wanted to 'Cuti-cuti Malaysia' at that time, but later I decided I to write about it. I have a very good memory and so when I look through my photos and FB posts, it is easy for me to write about the things I saw and did then, even though a lot of time has passed in between." Lam Ching Fu returns with the second instalment of My Journey By Bus, which features Pahang, Terengganu, and Kelantan.
• Debut Singaporean author Lee Wen-yi's novel, The Dark We Know, has been picked up by Gillian Flynn Books – yes, that Gillian Flynn – and is expected to be released on 13 August. Like some, she started writing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The young adult novel follows a teenage art student as she unites with an estranged childhood friend and battles a supernatural evil in her small town.
• In an interactive session on 15 June at The Red Bari coffee shop in Kolkata, editors Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri and Maitreyee B. Chowdhury fielded questions from the audience about books, writing, and publishing. Both speak from their experience in India, but their advice may also apply regardless of where you're from or who you're submitting to.
• "Both [Edgar Allan] Poe and the novice printer Calvin F.W. Thomas were just eighteen when the poet handed over his manuscript, presumably at Thomas's shop at 70 Washington Street in Boston, and paid him to make it into a book. The result was forty pages of unevenly printed verse bound in drab tan wrappers the shade of a faded tea stain." The startling story of Tamerlane and Other Poems, Poe's debut collection, which is now a much-sought-after item by bibliophiles.
• Here's an incredible story about a public library in the United Kingdom that's become more than a place to read and borrow books. When you learn of how social safety nets are being gutted here and there, it's no surprise some turn to public libraries for certain essentials.
• During a book event, Librairie Gouraya, a bookshop in the Algerian city of Bejaia, was raided by police who detained an author, the publisher, and several others. No explanation was given, but The New Arab suggests it might have to do with the Koukou publishing house, which "has been subject to censorship in recent years."
• Free online library Internet Archive had to take down half a million titles after a clutch of book publishers sued them for copyright infringement. "To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court's decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA's controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law," reports Ars Technica.
• Like an ouroboros: "Ban This Book, a children's book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month," reports The Guardian. Of course it happened in the US state of Florida, and it was because a parent challenged the book. The children's book is about a kid who couldn't borrow a book from a library because it was challenged by, yes, a parent, prompting her to start a library of banned books.

Literature, In Trouble?

"...I don't mean that literature has to always have a meditative and philosophical slant, but when writing descends to levels of serving only the senses and not the spirit, it becomes debauched and demeaning, "goes an op-ed in Khaleej Times. When people write cookie-cut books with the sole intention of adding the suffix of 'author' to their names to fuel their professional lives or to boost their egos, literature falls from grace."

While I agree with this op-ed somewhat, I don't know how writers alone can shift the needle in this when I feel publishers and audiences play a bigger role in what comes out. Is the writer taking aim at books by celebrities or influencers?

The piece seems to exhibit a longing for a time that may not have existed and a dread of an encroaching literary apocalypse that may not be. I recognise bits of my old self in some of these outpourings. Going into writing, one has – and will develop – certain ideas about what the craft is and what purposes it serves, which will be worn down by time and exposure to all sorts of material.

My early takes on certain genres and writing styles have been whittled down in this manner over the years, which is why nowadays I wince when I read takes like this:

I wonder what significance modern writing (I hesitate to categorise today's frivolous bookly endeavours as literature) will have for mankind and its future. Is the era of writing for change, to positively influence societies, to impart courage, to reflect the good and denounce the bad and to comfort a deeply wounded global civilisation over? Is literature now turning into mere candy floss with little gains for the reader except satisfying the senses?

I wonder what kind of "candy floss" literature is the writer referring to. No examples are provided. However, Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, and Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning were cited as examples of works that "shine a torch on the resilient nature of human beings in the face of hardships" and offer readers hope that they too can prevail, with "the will and mindset."

While there is acknowledgement of the need for chick lit and the like, "but as along as the written word does not bring perspective to our everyday struggles and give us an opportunity for emotional catharsis and empathetic considerations, no writer has done justice to this glorious craft."

It's 2024 and this sort of thinking still exists, steady as a rock in rough seas. I shouldn't be amazed. Silos are meant to be impervious. Either that or it's a slow op-ed day and they're fishing for engagement.


Lit is lit
I doubt there was ever a golden age of literature. Then and now, publishing has been a free-for-all since the masses were taught to write. Institutions can gatekeep but it's futile. Bawdy rhymes, gory horror, spicy smut and the like were the rage back then as they are today, and not all of it polished. Ever heard of the penny dreadful?

Now, it's Fifty Shades of Grey. The Secret. Partisan political punditry. Steamy yet toxic Wattpad romances. All existing side by side with the classics, scholarly works, investigative journalism, memoirs, and other bestsellers. And does "cookie-cut" refer to the slew of Instapoetry tomes in the wake of successes by the likes of Rupi Kaur and Lang Leav?

Authorship carries a certain cachet, so of course some would find it appealing. That aside, writing unserious stuff can be as fun as reading it, so it wouldn't surprise me if the genesis of some "serious" writers involved forays in spheres of mass-consumption such as fan fiction. And if more people are seeking escapes in such stuff, why? If more are writing material that serve "only the senses and not the spirit", why?

And who's to say that "fluff" doesn't "bring perspective to our everyday struggles and give us an opportunity for emotional catharsis and empathetic considerations"? Maybe the authors wrote it into the "fluff", or it's what readers feel after spending an afternoon with some. Surely there are other reasons for their popularity other than the nature of the contents.

For every score of "fluffy" titles that come out, there could be a handful of painstakingly crafted, well-thought-out works of some literary merit. Just about every writer writes for some degree of personal gratification – the most vital being able to eat – regardless of aim or what they tell themselves and interviewers. That their works somehow achieve an altruistic goal is at best happenstance.


Right words, right time
Les mots justes, to paraphrase Gustave Flaubert. When a reader chances upon a title, they could be in some sort of pickle. So if reading that title happens to open a door towards the solution to their woes or solve it outright, all well and good. The merits of such titles or whether they should be written can be discussed, but why toll the bell for something that isn't dying but thriving?

Writing "for change, to positively influence societies, to impart courage, to reflect the good and denounce the bad and to comfort a deeply wounded global civilisation" is a pursuit for the privileged. Who can think big if one is worried about food, shelter, and healthcare? If the highbrow goals of the craft need to be carried, that responsibility should fall to writers who can – noblesse oblige and all that.

In literature, fluff has always co-existed with serious. One does not have to thrive at the expense of another. The amount of fluff doesn't cancel the existence of other works, so they'll always be available. All one has to do is seek.

Book Marks: Power Readers, Being Happy, Middle-Grade Books

"A few weeks back, The Washington Post ran a piece spotlighting 'super readers,' a self-selecting class of book nerds who pride themselves on reading very, very fast. ... Why, I asked the author, who could not hear me in Washington—Why pedestal the reader who goes to books like a buffet, craving quantity? Why is our culture so intent on praising folks for reading not wider or more deeply, but faster and more?"

A Washington Post article about power readers, which I also bookmarked, prompted some questions and a bit of soul-searching. While some books take a long time to create and consume, titles that could have been designed for mass-consumption, like pulp novels, have been produced for a long time and seem to be popular among a chunk of readers.

But what the LitHub piece rails against is the need to devour books by the ton to establish some kind of identity or fulfil a certain life metric, because that's not what books and reading are about. Why do you read? Answer that question – AFTER some thought, please – and your approach to books may change.


Also:

• "Happiness is not something grand. Aren't you happy when you do what you want to do? But people are creating this mirage by making happiness too grandiose. Happiness is when something small that you want comes true." Eighty-eight-year-old Rhee Kun-hoo, author of "If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy", has advice on attaining happiness for everyone. The book is shceduled for release this month.
• "...there's one sector of publishing that is in free fall. At least among one audience, books are dying. Alarmingly, it's the exact audience whose departure from reading might actually presage a catastrophe for the publishing industry—and for the entire concept of pleasure reading as a common pursuit." Sales of middle-grade books are declining in the US, along with the number of children aged eight to 12 who are reading for fun. How to get kids back to books?
• "Beyond selling books and dabbling in freelance editing jobs, [Ahmad Luqman Zahari] also runs Pipit Press, which translates and publishes classics in Bahasa Malaysia." An indie publisher and bookseller operating out of an old kampung house in Melaka is bringing classic works in English to local audiences.
• "I think it's important for them to know they can have a book of their own, and it not to be a used book because we're all used to hand-me-downs," Jesse Marez, owner of the Libros Lincoln Heights bookstore in Los Angeles, tells the LA Times. "I think in a neighborhood like this, people need to know that they can get a new book, especially at an early age." Not just a neighbourhood bookstore, Libros is also publishing local stories besides selling books that aren't considered mainstream.
• "I felt a great sense of duty and responsibility to be able to talk about a fictional version of my own lived experience as a Tongan Australian because there are no fiction books written by Tongans in this country." Winnie Dunn, the Tongan Australian author of Dirt Poor Islanders, on her "unapologetically", "fearlessly" autobiographical book, writing, and being an Australian-born Tongan.
• In light of the revelations coming out of South Dakota governor Kristi Noem's book, No Going Back, a reminder that even the big publishers do not fact-check their non-fiction releases. Why not? "From the publisher's perspective, hiring a team of checkers is 'a huge expense,' [journalist Jane] Friedman said—it would 'destroy the profitability' of some books. And there are logistical challenges: Fact-checking memoirs, for example, can be difficult, because you're dealing with people's memories."
• If nine-year-old Lashika Poneswaran, who wrote The Waffle Truffle Adventure, is not Malaysia's youngest book author, then she is one of the youngest. The self-published book "is about a group of friends who enter a waffle competition. The protagonist, Rose, wants to seek out the old woman in the forest, rumoured to make the best waffles," reports Free Malaysia Today.
• "Writing advice is always a little funny because everyone's journey is different and there are really no right or wrong answers. For every piece of advice someone gives, you can find someone who did the opposite and thrived. So below I'm just going to include some subjective tidbits that have worked for me during my four years and three books as a mid-list author." Author Anna Dorn shares some writing advice in Literary Hub.
• Publishing books in Egypt can be like navigating a minefield because you never know what might set the authorities off. This report by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy is a harrowing read. "Book publishing is a very dangerous profession in this country. Publishers can find themselves at the wrong side of the equation at any given moment because nobody knows for a fact what would anger the censoring and security bodies."