Skip to main content

Readings@Seksan's January 2008.

This month's edition of Readings was special because it was its third birthday since Bernice Chauly started the first session at NoBlackTie.

First to read was Shih-Li Kow, reading the title story in Silverfish's latest short story compilation, News From Home.

Then Tunku Halim took the mic and read a story from The Gravedigger's Kiss and Other Stories. Notice how he looks creepy in the photo below. Look at how Sharon Bakar shivers at his very presence! (And he wasn't even wearing his fedora!)

Bernice Chauly read several poems from her latest book, Book of Sins, which incidentally was launched at the same event.

During the break, Sharon and Bernice blew the candles on the birthday cake. Happy Birthday, Readings! Lepas itu, kita makan kek sesama diri!

After the break, Chuah Kok Yee proceeded to read his version of "The Three Little Pigs" which was also published in News From Home.

Chuah Guat Eng read excerpts from three of her short stories, which are featured in her also newly released book, The Old House and Other Stories. One of the things that clued me in that I was listening to a very experienced writer was the way she read. Very impressive! I look forward to reading her book, which I have now added to my TBR pile.

The final reader of the day was Gerald Chuah who shared with the audience his love for the Rocky movie series and his undoubtedly Rocky-like moments on getting his book In the Eye of the Tiger published. In the Eye of the Tiger sounds interesting; it seems to be a sort of a self-help book which gleans inspirational life lessons from Sylvester Stallone's movies. I found the cover a little odd though, but I guess it fits with the book's theme?

And this is Tunku Halim in a fedora! Argh! Scary!

Also! Who is that strapping young man in that yellow shirt? Swoon!

More pics in my flickr.
Labels:

Comments

  1. bibliobibuli29/1/08 11:11 pm

    great pictures, ted!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun30/1/08 10:48 am

    Thanks sharon!

    ReplyDelete
  3. sudin31/1/08 11:56 pm

    Hi Ted, thank you for the review of my talk, and the great "frontal" pix. You and your readers can download the first chapter of IN THE EYE OF THE TIGER at www.stallonism.com.
    Thank you for your support.

    Gerald
    gchuah@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted Mahsun1/2/08 12:03 am

    Hey Gerald, thanks for dropping by! I'll add a link to my sidebar to help you out. Good luck with your book!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm going to Clarion West!

So yeah! I'm going to Clarion West this year! If you didn't know, Clarion West is a really awesome science fiction and fantasy writing workshop that runs for six weeks in summer every year at Seattle and is usually taught by a faculty of award-winning authors and editors. Many students who attend this workshop also go on to have illustrious writing careers of their own too. I've been meaning to attend this workshop (or its sister workshop, Clarion UCSD, which is the original Clarion workshop but runs in San Diego around the same time) for years now but never had the courage to apply. Many reasons as to why: didn't think I'd have money for the most part, didn't think I was good enough, didn't think I could leave work long enough, didn't think I could leave family behind, etc. But something sparked inside of me late last year. I felt I should at least give it a go this time round. So I did. They requested a sample of my best work and an applicatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dedicated by Burgess.

I've been wanting to blog this for ages, but I've never managed to make the scanner work properly... that is till now. Some years back, my dad was browsing the shelves of NovelHut, Ipoh's best second-hand bookstore, and found a copy of Anthony Burgess's Time for a Tiger . Price? RM2. (That would be approximately USD$0.60 or GBP£0.30). Did I mention it was a hardcover first edition? Here's the dedication page, with the famous dedication written in Jawi. Jawi is the Malay language written in Arab script, a norm early last century. Nowadays, Malay is written in Romanised form. The dedication says: " Kepada sahabat-sahabat saya di Tanah Melayu " which translates into "To my friends in Malaya." On the opposite page, proof this is the first edition. A first edition is probably valuable by itself. But this copy has something extra that makes it even more special--a personal dedication by Burgess himself to a friend: If you can't make the writing out...
15 comments
Read more

REVIEW: Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami.

UPDATE: My Wind/Pinball review can be found here . ISBN: n/a Publisher: n/a Paperback: 160 pages In Murakami fan circles, simply owning a copy of Pinball, 1973 is a mark of hardcore-ness. Like Hear the Wind Sing before it, Haruki Murakami does not allow English translations of Pinball, 1973 to be published outside of Japan. Back in the 80s, Alfred Birnbaum translated it into English and Kodansha published it as a novel for Japanese students who wanted to improve their English. While the English edition of Hear the Wind Sing continues to be reprinted and sold in Japan (and available for a moderate sum via eBay, see my review ), Kodansha stopped its reprint runs of the English edition of Pinball, 1973 and has now become a collector's item, fetching vast amounts of money on auction sites and reseller stores. Last time I checked, the cheapest copy went for USD$2500. Of course, Murakami addicts or the curious can always download a less than legal PDF of the book, painst...
18 comments
Read more