Ted Mahsun

I have a short short story up on Starlight's blog if anyone's interested.

The latest issue of Granta is about travel writing , and The Independent has a review of it: Where did travel writing go next? The answer, if this collection is anything to go by, is nowhere very fast. The destinations now seem too familiar - and, of course, in this age of lemming travel and shrinking planet, the contributors aren't to be blamed for that. Anyone know where I can buy this issue locally without resorting to buying online? I've seen some issues of Granta in Kinokuniya but I think those were quite old...

Erm. The Penguin Blog . I'm sorry. That was terrible.

I've got Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman !

The Guardian has up on its website an excerpt from Bruce Lawrence's book The Qur'an: A Biography , a book in the series Books That Shook The World : The Qur'an is a book unlike any other: it is an oral book that sounds better spoken than read silently, but it is an oral book that is also a scripture. More evocative in recitation than in writing, the Qur'an is only fully the Qur'an when it is recited. To hear the Qur'an recited is for Muslims unlike anything else. It is to experience the power of divine revelation as a shattering voice from the Unseen. It moves, it glides, it soars, it sings. It is in this world, yet not of it. Saw this on the display case at Kinokuniya last night, along with the other books in the series. Looks interesting.

Funny how coincidences happen. Last night, in a discussion regarding viewpoints, there was a call for examples of second-person point-of-view. I offered Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club ("You are not the contents of your wallet!") and Jay McInerny's Bright Lights, Big City . Sharon offered Calvino . This was a new author for me. The conversation continued and I didn't think I'd manage to retain that name in my inner consciousness or whatever. I certainly forgot about Calvino very soon after that. This morning however, via Scott Esposito , I came across an interview with William Weaver , a translator. Scott has this to say about interviews with translators : I'm surprised more people don't want to interview literary translators about their work. Translators have to be so incredibly attuned to the nuances of the texts they are translating, that I think they'd have amazing thoughts on style. And I found myself agreeing with him, because of late, I've...

Last night was the final session in my creative writing course in MPH 1Utama. Before the session started I browsed the fiction shelves, and I was surprised to find Murakami's " Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman " already available. And I, of course, didn't bring enough cash to buy the book! A bit disappointed though. It's in trade paperback format, and that's a bit big to read on the LRT (but still possible). Hmmm. Anyways, going back again tomorrow to pick it up, and perhaps a few other books too, like Paul Theroux's "Great Railway Bazaar" and Orhan Pamuk's "Istanbul". (Yes, I'm very much in a travel writing phase.)

I've finally had the occasion to start using the excellent LibraryThing . I was intimidated to use it before because I feared the amount of time I had to invest cataloguing all my books, and I dreaded making a mess of my house (well, more of a mess than usual) by dragging my books to and from my computer. But since I resolved to read 1000 books the other day, I now have the perfect excuse to start using LibraryThing . Instead of cataloguing ALL my books like what most of the other members are doing, I am adding my books, one by one, as I read them. That way, I can track what I've read and when, what my thoughts were, and I can even use those nifty zeitgeist tagcloud web2.0 thingamabobs on the site too. Hooray! View my list so far here . And you can even keep track of the latest books I've read here ( rss ). With my "1000 books list", I've decided to start from scratch. What I've read before doesn't count as being read. Unfortunately this means I'...

New James Bond author is a secret : A new James Bond novel by a mystery writer will be published next year to commemorate the 100 th anniversary of the birth of Bond creator Ian Fleming, the author’s family announced recently. The family-owned Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. announced it had struck a contract with a "very well-known and highly respected" author whose identity "will be a closely guarded secret until publication."

Things are a bit slow in the land of literature these past few days. Nevertheless, I have been interested in the plight of Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, who is to face trial for insulting "Turkishness": Shafak joins a roster of more than 60 writers and journalists to be charged under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code since its introduction last year. University professors, journalists and novelists such as Perihan Magden, Orhan Pamuk and now Shafak have been charged under legislation drawn so broadly as to criminalise a wide range of critical opinions. Writers not only face the prospect of a three-year jail term, but the prosecutions also lay them open to a campaign of intimidation and harassment waged by rightwing agitators. The interesting part here is that she argues that it is the character in her novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul" that insulted "Turkishness", not her. Sounds like a bunch of right-wingers taking something trivial a tiny bit too f...

Levi Asher feels that a book must have some copy on the back cover, like blurbs or review excerpts : I still feel strongly that back cover blurbs and review excerpts are essential to the "selection process" every reader goes through when looking at a new book. A publisher who presents a blank back cover on a novel by an unknown author, in my opinion, must not be thinking about how potential readers are going to look at this novel. The purist approach Chapman describes sounds admirable, but I don't think it translates into reality. I am simply not going to devote my time to reading a book without some idea why I should read it. A novel needs a road map, and to fail to provide some explanatory text when publishing a new author is, in my opinion, a fatal mistake. But Daniel Green from The Reading Experience disagrees : Frankly, I almost always ignore not only this back-cover material, but everything that's printed on a book jacket, including the flap copy. My curiosity a...

For my future reference, I: have recently finished Travels by Michael Crichton (enjoyed this) Dark City by Xeus (overall good read, a little disturbing at times) am currently reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro might be reading these afterwards The Darkness of Wallis Simpson by Rose Tremain ( shortlisted for this year's Frank O'Connor international short story award) His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (have read lots of nice reviews about it) The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil (first five pages were intriguing) am listening this in the car The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry (am currently stuck on how to compose verse in iambic pentametre while driving) Previous Reading List Update: 16 July 2006

Kristin Nelson reports on what J.A. Konrath said when he accepted his Bob Kellogg award: He said (and this is a loose paraphrase because I didn’t have a recording device or anything) that writers are not in competition for the elusive reader. If a reader is a fan of a certain type of book (in his case thrillers), they’ll pick up his book, a Barry Eisler book, and a Lee Child book (all folks who are in attendance at the conference) so there is no reason not to share information with other writers and there is no reason not to support each other. In fact, we should pay it forward to beginning writers if, as a writer, you’ve already found a measure of success.

Went again to the Big Bookshop Warehouse Clearance sale again. Previous visit documented here . (Though why I called it "Big Bookstore " is beyond me... oh well, my bad.) Bought more books. To those wondering how I managed to get these books even though I've said that I'm broke... well, all I can say is, "Thanks, dad!" I have no shame whatsoever when it comes to books. The spoils: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingreich I'll Go To Bed At Noon by Gerard Woodward My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey Bliss by Peter Carey Jack Maggs by Peter Carey Collected Stories by Peter Carey The Ode Less Travelled (book and audiobook) by Stephen Fry ( recommended by Sympozium and Sharon ) The Colour by Rose Tremain The Darkness of Wallis Simpson by Rose Tremain Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie (finally broke down and got it...) Good thing I went again. A lot of these books weren't there when I ...

Last night Sharon quoted Raman of having said to writers when they bring him their manuscripts for publishing, "How many books have you read? Have you read a thousand books? If not, get out and go read a thousand books, then come back with your manuscript." His point being, you've got to have read a lot if you want to be a writer. And I thought to myself, a thousand books isn't so bad. I've probably read more. Er...Wrong. After some quick calculations, we determined that if a person read a book per week, it would take around 20 years to reach a thousand. I'm a slow reader. I'm only 25. There's no way I've read 1000 books my whole life! When I got home I counted the books in my house. I estimate I own around 300 books, probably another 300 left at my parents's house. That's only around 600 books that I own... and a lot less that I've read! So with that number in mind, I have resolved to start keeping track of my book reading. I need to...

James Krasner, professor of English and British Victorian literature at the University of New Hampshire, says Harry won't die after all : “Whenever an author's books become very popular in his or her lifetime, as is the case with Rowling, a tug of war starts between the author and the fans about who the characters really belong to. Rowling, like Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes), is trying to assert her control. She’s reminding us that Harry is her character, not ours; she can kill him if she wants to. Doyle actually did kill off Sherlock Holmes, but Rowling won’t go that far because she cares about Harry. Conan Doyle was really sick of Holmes,” Krasner says. So now I hope Bibi won't be upset any longer.

The Guardian has a good obit for Mickey Spillane , author of the Mike Hammer novels.

Tobin alerts me to his old co-worker who makes bookshelves out of books (also mentioned earlier in this post ). Look at how beautifully witty they can be : (Click on image to enlarge) Buried alive... hah! Do check the website out. I found the process of " harvesting " the books for the shelves particularly interesting.

The Hadiah Sastera Kumpulan Utusan (Utusan Group Literature Prize) award-giving ceremony was held last night, and CEan, 3rd prize winner of the inaugural Novel Remaja Bahasa Inggeris (English Young Adult Novel) category, sent along these photos of the event. From left: CEan (3rd) Su Ann(2nd) and Chin Han (1st) Cean adds: Don't we look pleased as Punch. Hopefully we make the news tomorrow but there were so many winners. They are publishing the English novels around September. Yayyy! And apparently their novels aren't in the horror genre. :p UPDATE 1: More HSKU 2005 pics at Nisah's blog . UPDATE 2: Previous posts about HSKU: Hadiah Sastera Kumpulan Utusan Buy the Utusan Lit Books! Faisal Tehrani on English in HSKU

What do you do with those old, unwanted hardcover books? Make a bookshelf of course! ^_^ Via Boing Boing .

Just got word that the following books from the Utusan Group Literature Prize 2005 can now be pre-ordered from Ujana Ilmu : Young Adult Prize Category Kembara Amira by Amer Hmzah L. Kadir 6:20 by Siti Jasmina Ibrahim Beraraklah Awan Pilu by Abd Latip Talib Short Stories, Poems, Articles and Essays Kalau Kita Menjadi Kayu Young Adult Short Stories Pelangi, Kami Ingin Ke Sana There's a special offer if you pre-order before 31st July. If you buy all the above 5 books on one package, you get a RM5 rebate. No word on the English novels as yet.

Faisal Tehrani, prize-winning author of novels like " 1511H (Kombat) ", " Advencer Si Peniup Ney " and his most recent work, " Surat-surat Perempuan Johor ", spoke of his thoughts on the introduction of the English Novel category in the Utusan Group Literature Prize (HSKU) in the Sunday edition of Kosmo! recently: "Nilai tradisi bahasa dan sastera yang kita ada pada masa ini perlu terus dipelihara. Sudah 21 tahun Hadiah Sastera Utusan mengagungkan sastera Melayu dan ini suatu yang membanggakan dan patut dipertahankan," ujar [Faisal Tehrani]. Lantaran itu berhubung anugerah novel bahasa Inggeris dalam Hadiah Sastera Utusan yang baru diwujudkan mulai tahun ini, Faisal mencadangkan supaya ia diadakan secara berasingan, atau dengan kata lain, diwujudkan suatu majlis anugerah khas lain. "Saya bukan anti bahasa Inggeris, tetapi selama ini, Hadiah Sastera Utusan cukup dikenali sebagai anugerah sastera yang memartabatkan bahasa Melayu. Saya kira, ...

From Silverfish : Farish Noor will be, finally, back in Malaysia end of this month. Catch him at the launch of his latest book From Majapahit to Putrajaya at Silverfish Books, 67-1 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur on the 29th of July 2006, at 6.00pm. Farish Noor will be introduced by Sumit Mandal, after which Farish Noor will talk briefly about what he has been doing over the last two years travelling in India, Pakistan, Europe and various other parts of the world, and the state of Malaysian politics from his POV. Farish A Noor is, without a doubt, Malaysia's top public intellectual. Impassioned, controversial, courageous: Farish Noor's writings on religious extremism and 'moral panic', social conformity and the 'New Generation Post-modern Malay' makes him an indispensable voice in Malaysia. Clive Kessler, Emeritus Professor, School of Sociology and Anthropology, UNSW Sydney Admission is free, but do RSVP (Tel: 603-228 448 37 Usha/Phek Chin) as space i...

From my inbox: PAY LESS BOOKS Event Calendar for July - August 2006: 1. PESTA BUKU SELANGOR '06 Date : 25 - 31 July 2006 Time : 10:00am - 10:00pm Venue : PKNS COMPLEX, SHAH ALAM 2. ACADEMIC BOOKFEST 2006 Date : 27 - 30 July 2006 Time : 10:00am - 10:00pm Venue : MID VALLEY EXHIBITION CENTRE 3. BOOK EXPO 2006 Date : 29 August - 3 September 2006 Time : 10:00am - 10:00pm Venue : PUTRA WORLD TRADE CENTRE We have a great deal of discounts & promotions waiting for you. Hope to see you there!!! No! Stay back foul temptresses! Thou shalt not tempt me with more cheap books!

Aneeta Sundararaj interviews Dina Zaman . Dina on writing: I think Aneeta, for many writers in Malaysia, and for a lot of people for the matter, we have to put on many hats. I’d love to just write and be done with it, but let’s be realistic. We don’t have that kind of literary support here. So instead of bitching about it, we work in order to sustain our art. Sheesh. That sounds pretentious. How about, our creation? I see all this work I do as material for my writing, fiction and non-fiction. I hope one day all the money I make will tide me by and allow me to write fulltime. Dina Zaman had columns in the New Strait Times and Malaysiakini . She also has a blog, Gong Kapas Times . Aneeta Sundararaj is the author of "Banana Leaf Men" and is one of the writers for the recently published short-story compilation, " Snapshots! "

Thor Kah Hoong's back with a desultory article about... er... well, lots of random stuff. And a poem about Hemingway. Okay okay I admit it! I have no idea what he's on about half the time!

A year after his wife won the Naoki Prize, writer Takami Ito wins the prestigious Akutagawa Prize . He celebrates by having a beer. Mmmm! Ito is married to Mitsuyo Kakuta, winner of the 2005 Naoki Prize. It is the first instance where a husband has won an Akutagawa Prize and a wife the Naoki Prize, though novelist couple Mariko Koike and Yoshinaga Fujita have both won the Naoki. "My mind went blank," Ito said. "I didn't know whether to say 'thank you' or ask if it was true (when informed about winning the prize)." Kakuta was delighted for her husband. "It's great," she said. "Congratulations." (Via Elegant Variation ) But what is the Akutagawa Prize? It is arguably Japan's most prestigious literary award. From Wikipedia : Established in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan, the editor of Bungei Shunjū magazine, in memory of novelist Akutagawa Ryunosuke, it is sponsored by the Association for the Promotion of Japanese Literature (Nihon Bungaku ...

I would like to thank margin.notes for linking to my blog. It is very much appreciated! margin.notes is a blog that covers the "Japanese-popular-fiction-translated-into-English" scene. It's very good in keeping up with the books that comes out of Japan that's not by Murakami. Give it a visit.

For my future reference, I: have recently finished Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie am currently reading Travels by Michael Crichton might be reading these afterwards Dark City by Xeus Adik Datang by A. Samad Said Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Is it my imagination or am I getting some strange looks when I read Midnight's Children on the LRT? Hmmm...

My dad called me up and told me that there was a book sale by Big Bookstore in Atria that would last till the end of the month. He urged me to go because he saw hardcovers of Salman Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown" being sold for Rm18.90 and thought I'd be interested. I said, I would be interested if they were paperback, but I said I'd go anyway. Good thing I did... a lot of good novels available at RM10.00 each. Here is what I managed to escape with: Fiction The Double by Jose Saramago Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov; translated by Michael Glenny Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres Bird Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Where's My Cow by Terry Pratchett Non-Fiction To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite Cities by John Reader Visiting Mrs Nabokov (and other excursions) by Martin Amis Classic Railway Journeys of the West by Max Wade-Matthews I repurchased a cop...

Tips for those who read slow or lack the time to read.

Lev Grossman asks the question in Time magazine : It's quite possible that nobody wants to be the Voice anymore. It's "a great aggravation for anybody who has been selected," says Gary Fisketjon, vice president and editor at large at Knopf, who edits both Ellis and McInerney. "Writers are always speaking for themselves and not for a generation. I don't know if they want that responsibility. I think it's something that nobody would feel comfortable with unless the ego was completely untrammeled." At least one Voice emeritus has nothing but relief that his term is over. "I think the very idea is narcissistic," says Coupland, whose most recent novel (his 11th), JPod, is set at a video-game company. "I got stuck with the ridiculous label for a while because Generation X had the word generation in the title."

This posting at Miss Snark's made me burst coffee out of my nose. Take that as a beverage alert.

Kim Edwards and her debut novel, " The Memory Keeper's Daughter ", is selling much better in paperback form: The book sold about 30,000 copies in hardcover when it was published last year by Viking. But since it came out in paperback in late May, it has been climbing best-seller lists and enjoying rapid sales at places like K-Mart, Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores across the country, inspiring comparisons to previous paperback sensations like “The Kite Runner,” “The Secret Life of Bees ” and “Bel Canto.” Perhaps this reflects a trend of current readers's tastes? I, for one, prefer a nice, tasty paperback, as compared to a hard, heavy, tome. There will be people who disagree with me, of course, because they prefer the advantage of durability, and hardbacks simply exude a little more "class". I understand where they're coming from, but one of my criteria when purchasing a book is that it must be portable. I must be able to take the book anywh...

Choon Ean (aka Cean), third prize winner of the Utusan Group Literature Prize emailed me today to tell me about writing her story: I'm tickled you think my story is a horror story but on reflection the title does sound like one. It actually refers to the proverbial nine lives of a cat, compares the way teenagers live their lives as if they have 9 and also compares the lives of nine teeangers whose lives are linked together. I started out planning a horror story and then decided it wasn't my scene though it would have been easier to write because there is a degree of suspension of disbelief when you handle horror stories. The story that I finally wrote in 6 days of frantic typing and thinking at the keyboard is a transformational novel, a simple story of how a 15 year old in Malaysia copes with growing up, friends, life at home and in school. So the challenge was how to make it interesting and may the story speak for itself. More challenging to me if you realize I am 52 years o...

I'm a few days behind on this but the winners of the Hadiah Sastera Kumpulan Utusan (Utusan Group Literature Prize) 2005 have recently been announced . Of most interest to me are the winners for the newly-added English Novel category: First Prize (RM6,000) Fridge Horror (Ti Chin Han) Second Prize (RM4,000) The Curse (Lee Su Ann) Third Prize (RM3,000) Nine Lives (Teoh Choon Ean) The article doesn't mention if the winners got a publishing contract though. Why do all the stories sound like they're in the horror genre? Hmm... Anyways, congratulations to the winners! Via Nisah . UPDATE 1: She may not have had the scoop, but Sharon gets the human interest angle :) UPDATE 2: If you tried commenting on this post before and got an error saying "a blog administrator has blocked all comments on this post", try again. Have fixed that problem. What a nuisance Blogger can be sometimes.

There is an article in the Star today that says cheaper books will boost reading . And sure enough, in the article there are interviews with teachers and students who say they will buy more books if only they weren't so costly. I have no doubt about that. However--though I think it's great that there's a chance book prices will be coming down--I do not think it will be of much help in my case. I already buy 3 or 4 books a month. That makes the number around 48 books per year. (This does not include the purchases from warehouse sales.) I'm a very slow reader, so out of those 48, I'll probably be able to finish around, say, 15 books (and that's being optimistic!) per year. What I fear is, these soon-to-be book-buying fiends will face the same problem I am having--the lack of time for reading so many purchased books. So here I would like to also request that the government not only lower the price of books, but could they also please bend or stretch the time conti...

I love reading Xeus's blog posts--they're always full of neat info. The latest post is about her efforts to garner publicity for Dark City in newspapers and magazines: My main problem on doing publicity for my book is that I'm a pseudonym, and I refuse when they want a picture of me. For them, no picture = no interview. And so I strain myself coming up with angles on how they can feature me. For the press, it's all about the angle of the story, otherwise you'd have to contend with a book review. Do also read the comments section where Yvonne Lee ( The Sky Is Crazy ) and Lydia Teh ( Life's Like That ) chime in with their 2sen's worth.

Gather.com has a short story competition up, with the winners's stories having the opportunity to be featured and sold on Amazon.com: Today through Saturday, September 30, Gather members can submit 2,000- to 10,000-word original entries. Each month, the three highest-rated entries, along with a fourth entry selected by the Gather Editorial Team, will have the opportunity to be sold on Amazon.com ! These stories will be sold via the Amazon Shorts program . I think I shall be entering this contest. I may already have a suitable story for it!

First review I've seen anywhere for " Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman ": The more one reads of Murakami, the odder this becomes. Initially it can seem like a simple bad case of name-dropping, but there is an obsessiveness about it which has its own energy. Like Don DeLillo, Murakami is a writer whose characters often act out of character, functioning as voicepieces for the author's own passions; but unlike DeLillo, whose passions are homegrown, Murakami is forever looking elsewhere. He writes around his country as if he means to cut a hole the size of Japan in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The anticipation is unbearable! UPDATE 1: The Guardian may be the first review I've seen, but the Australians were much quicker . UPDATE 2: Gah! Barely past twenty-five and already becoming forgetful. I posted another review ages ago!

Andre Mayer writes about trailers for books for CBC.ca: The notion of promoting a book like a movie might seem anathema to readers who feel that literature is too refined to borrow the garish devices of the film industry. Judith Keenan may well be the originator of the practice. In 1994, U.S. publishing house Hyperion was preparing for the stateside release of Amnesia, the debut novel by Canadian writer Douglas Cooper. Keenan was working at a PR agency in New York City at the time, when she came up with a radical idea. Taking advantage of Cooper’s theatre training, Keenan shot a three-and-a-half-minute short film of Cooper reading the text — dramatically, of course — underscored by music from Canadian singer-songwriter Jane Siberry. The clip was included in electronic press kits for the book and even aired in television reports about Cooper.

Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing fame, discusses why authors should embrace the internet and start finding ways to start a conversation with their readers: I've discovered what many authors have also discovered: releasing electronic texts of books drives sales of the print editions. An SF writer's biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn't know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version.

There is a call to expand the literature component in the English language school syllabus in The Star . (Our Star, not the one in Dunedine. Nor am I referring to Proxima Centauri .) Quoth the owl : I suspect the whole problem lies in the English language school syllabus and the way it is taught. I think we would be able to make people write well if we expanded the Literature component and forgot about teaching grammar, comprehension, vocabulary, and the works. Just concentrate on Literature and writing. People are unable to write in English because they don’t think in the language. Lacking practice makes it very difficult to write. Once people start to read and write, everything will fall into place. They will understand sentence structure. No amount of grammar lessons will make people understand syntax. I don't totally agree with that no-grammar-vocab-comprehension thing, but this nocturnal mouse-eater does have a point.

Our very own John Ling, author of Fourteen Bullets , was interviewed recently by The Star in Dunedine, New Zealand. (Sorry, no direct link; they have no web presence apparently.) In the article the thriller author laments of being a writer in Malaysia: Ling says an English best seller there is only 1000 copies and to say you are a writer provokes questions of what are you doing with your life. “The first thing people ask you in Malaysia when they meet you is ‘how much money do you make?'” Ling said. “Here in New Zealand, you say you are a writer and they say 'that is great'. “The culture in Malaysia is so geared to career, no-one has time to read." John Ling also explains how he manages to write about such worldly events: Ling said he does a lot of research but all stories are about conflict, of one sort or another, and why people write is to readdress the conflicts in their own lives. He was chased by wild dogs when he was six on his grandfather's estate and tr...

So I assume you've heard that Raman of Silverfish Books is setting up the Malaysian International Literature Society (MILS. What? Stop that sniggering! At least it's not as bad as KLit ...) . Their objectives are to promote reading and writing, organising lit events, y'know, those sort of stuff. Their first task is to organise the 2nd Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival in 2007. The pro tem committee: President: Prof Lim Chee Seng Vice-president : Datin Kanagam Palanivel Secretary: Mr Raman Krishnan Asst Secretary: Ms Yeoh Phek Chin Treasurer : Mr Mathew Thomas Auditor1: Ms Nesa Sivagnanam Auditor2: Ms Sheila Rahman That's all well and great... but who are these people? Are they writers? Well, yes and no. Are they readers? Of course! Many will recognise Prof. Lim Chee Seng, a professor of literature at UM . He is a published writer but his work has mostly been academic text, such as "Challenges of Reading the New &...

Lydia Teh (author of Life's Like That ) guestblogs on Yang-May Ooi's blog, Fusion View . She shares with us how she writes and how to get published in Malaysia, as well as the experience of being read: It is gratifying to have perfect strangers tell me they enjoy reading my articles in the newspapers. It puts paid to the lonely hours spent in front of the computer, shaping a piece of writing into something that will entertain and inform in a way that will connect with readers.

I was updating the links on my blog today when the office network connection decided to hiccup, allowing Blogger to swallow half of my lovely cow template. Fortunately, I have a backup (an older version, but it'll have to do) at home which I can restore to. But that'll have to wait till later. In the meantime, I'll just go along with one of Blogger's default templates. What a nuisance! Moral of the story: Always keep a recent template backup in your Gmail account -_-" UPDATE: All okay now.

This story at Ludhiana Newsline reminds me a little of Chowrasta Bazaar in George Town, Penang: Five book sellers put up their wares for sale at Ghanta Ghar and Chaura Bazaar and if you are lucky you can get some priceless books just for peanuts. Scour a little through the piles and piles of these second-hand books and magazines and you can find J Krishnamurthy, Richard Bach, Nancy Friday, John Grishham, James Hardley Chase, Mario Puzo, Robert Ludlum and many others. And if still luckier you can get these novels for as less as Rs 10 to Rs 30.

In the comments section of this post, Lydia Teh asks how one would market a book online . I really can't say, because I have no experience on such matters. Perhaps Anthony Thornton, author of the book, " The Libertines: Bound Together " can shed us some light on the matter. The book is about the band, The Libertines, and they were pioneers among other musicians in the age of internet, releasing versions of their songs on the web and embraced communicating with their fans through email. In an article at the Times , Thornton tells us that he decided to market the book with this spirit in mind, and he started with the website of the book: Sure, other books have had webpages but often they are perfunctory. And as a former editor of the music website nme.com, I knew I had to do something different. Bound Together would have its own site: pages from the book showing Roger Sargent’s intimate photographs of the band; quotes that served as previews; and a countdown to its publica...

There's a feature on Marcel Theroux, eldest son of Paul Theroux, in today's Star (can't find the online link to that, but here's one from the Telegraph ), and there's an interesting bit about what the effects of his father's book, "My Secret History", had on him. The book is an account of Paul Theroux's extra-marital affairs and understandably, it didn't have a good reaction with his family: "Um… it was pretty tough. I don't think any account of one's parents having sex is something that a child would choose to read… Zero, frankly, is the amount you want to know about that… I did feel protective of my mother, but I didn't really resent it at the time because I bought my dad's line that it was fiction and nothing to do with his own life. However, I can't say I feel the same way now."

The New York Times has a review of Upamanyu Chatterjee's 1988 cult classic, "English, August", which has just reached US shores for the first time: Upamanyu Chatterjee's "English, August," was first published in India in 1988. The story of a young civil servant posted to a fictional rural town, it was hailed as the country's "Catcher in the Rye" — a novel that captured the zeitgeist of the 1980's, when India was uncertainly emerging from decades of economic isolation and ill-conceived socialism. Now, nearly two decades later, "English, August" is at last being published in America. The long wait, and the fact that, although Chatterjee writes in English, he still works and lives in India, confer a certain legitimacy upon his book. In a market dominated by cosmopolitan authors and fusion prose, "English, August" is being presented, in the words of one admirer, as "the 'Indianest' novel in English that I know ...

What is the importance of evil in plot? Do you believe in evil? Melly from All Kinds of Writing discusses : I do envy those who can imagine evil, pure evil, in any form - physical, mental, metaphysical etc. They have more options. I now know why I tend to stick with science-fiction (oh, I can certainly imagine scientific things, or future societies) and mainstream (I can also imagine different, quirky, "evil" human behaviour). At the same time, I have a hard time with horror/fantasy/religious concepts in my writing because of my very realistic, pragmatic world view. I believe in evil, but I also believe the definition of evil differs from individual to individual.

It's my lovely girlfriend's birthday today, and I bought for her one of those cute bookmarks with a nice (but admittedly corny) saying on it, along with a book for her to put the bookmark in. The book is entitled Frangipani , by Célestine Vaite, which is about a: ...proud "professional cleaner" Materena Mahi, one of the spunkiest, wisest, lovingest women on the island of Tahiti. With her combustible husband missing after a minor domestic squabble, Materena learns she's pregnant with a daughter. What will she do? Oh, I don't know, get on with her life, I suppose. Anyway, the book sounds like something my girl will like, which I hope she does. Happy birthday, sayang!

Had some free time so I dropped by the Borders at the Curve this afternoon. Browsing through the shelves and leafing through the books that catch my eye makes me go through a plethora of emotions: envy, because all these writers are good enough to be published; sadness, because I'm not at that level yet; determination, because I want to become as good as them; joy, because I often find gems while browsing; and anger, because the books are so expensive! Phew! It's so tiring! So I'm browsing through the shelves, going through each emotion in random order, when my father calls and tells me the news. Raja Ahmad says his editing committee have read my story (mentioned here , and here ), and they love it. Hooray! Apparently the story, about a couple's trip to Kuala Kangsar, is " a physical story, but has deep, inner meaning ". I have no idea what that means but it sounds great! Certainly more so, considering that I only had the time to hammer out a first draft. I ha...