Ted Mahsun

From Galleycat comes word that the Royal Mail issued Roald Dahl stamps featuring Quentin Blake's artwork . They're beautiful. The stamps were issued on 10th January though and I guess that means I missed out on buying the First Day Cover. *sadface* And in case you didn't know, I've blogged quite a bit about Roald Dahl in the past, do check out my older posts . P/S Also can somebody tell me why my rant post about commemorative covers suddenly became the second most popular post? Did someone on a philatelic forum say I was being dumb on the internet or something?

Okay, so I'm in The Star again ! Not as a book reviewer though, but in a Roald Dahl profile written by Rouwen Lin. As evident in the article, I am a dork. Seriously. Look at this photo: Haha! Anyways, thanks Rouwen, for giving me my fifteen minutes of fame.

It's Roald Dahl Day again and this year I haven't forgotten! (Thanks to Blogger's scheduled publishing feature.) So last Roald Dahl Day, I showed you pictures of my autographed first edition copy of Rhyme Stew and the previous year I told you my experience at the book signing . This year let me show you a photo of the book signing. Look at that! My glasses are the same colour as Roald Dahl's! So this Roald Dahl fellow? What's so awesome about him anyway? Let me tell you! Roald Dahl's works appeal to me because there's always a sense of childish craftiness or mischievousness in the writing, as if he's letting the reader in on a secret joke. It's like Roald Dahl was this good-hearted prankster who never really grew up, and he threw all his good ideas for pranks into the books he wrote. Add to that his silly and funny made-up words, is it any wonder he won many a child's heart? In a way, he never really did grow up. I remember watchi...

Just in time for Roald Dahl Day on the 13th, Puffin has published an "extended" version of Roald Dahl's boyhood memoir, Boy , called More About Boy . From the Amazon UK page : What were Roald Dahl's first words? Read his account of going to football matches with Joss Spivvis, the gardener. This new edition of a favourite book contains a wealth of new photos, facts and writings about Roald Dahl and his childhood, together with the original text and illustrations from his much-loved memoir. With lots of little-known details, this is a must-have for all Dahl fans! I checked with Kinokuniya but they don't have it yet. Faster, Kino! I guess we can expect More About Going Solo in the future? And then it won't take long before they start releasing More About Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator or More About The Magic Finger or More About The Vicar of Nibbleswicke or... okay, I'll stop here.

From The Guardian : Roald Dahl never won a children's book prize in his lifetime, but today he has gone one better, as the shortlists for a literary prize bearing his name are announced. Founded by the children's laureate Michael Rosen, the Roald Dahl Funny prize celebrates honours the most hilarious children's authors. The inaugural winners will receive £2,500 - a slightly more serious prize than the Gloucester Old Spot pig handed over to winners of the Wodehouse prize for adult comic fiction. Rosen founded the prize to boost the profile of humorous books as part of his campaign to put the fun back into children's reading. "I have sat on judging panels before and what happens is that the funny books get squeezed out, because somehow or other they don't tackle big issues in the proper way," he explained. "They'll get through to the last four or five books, and then historical fiction, or something about death or slavery or new technology ...

I've always known Dahl was a ladies' man (and even called upon his talents for writing his stories) and I knew he was somewhat of a spy (as we learn in Going Solo ) but I never knew he used his manly charms in his work as a spy : Drawing on previously unpublished letters and other documents, American journalist Jennet Conant has written about Dahl's numerous sexual conquests. They include Millicent Rogers, the heiress to a Standard Oil fortune, and Clare Boothe Luce, a right-wing congresswoman and the wife of the publisher of Time magazine. Boothe Luce proved so frisky, Dahl later claimed to have begged his superiors to take him off the assignment, only to be told to get back into the bedroom. Conant writes: "Dahl's superiors watched his rake's progress with grudging admiration. "A certain amount of hank-panky was condoned, especially when it was for a good cause." Such a rogue!

So the literary corner of the interwebs is abuzz with the latest news that the number one of the 50 best-loved authors is Enid Blyton. And people have since come out to say that they too like Enid Blyton, warts and all. To say I'm dismayed is an understatement. I hate Blyton. Always have, always will. This may have happened because I was introduced to Roald Dahl first and only to Enid Blyton a few years later. If that have happened the other way round maybe my feelings for her books would be a lot different. But since we do not have the benefit of a time machine or a device capable of peeking into parallel worlds, who knows? But I'm not here to complain about people liking Enid Blyton. For what it's worth, she was responsible for instilling the love of reading into at least a couple of generations so that's okay by me. Also, if it weren't for Enid Blyton, I would have never known what a Gollywog is. Ho ho! As for the rest of the list, I think it's spi...

The Times recently announced their list of 50 greatest British writers since 1945 . I'm putting the list here to check how many I've read, heard of, or have their books lying around but not read. Key: Read: In Bold Heard of: In Italic Own their books, but unread: In Red 1. Philip Larkin 2. George Orwell 3. William Golding 4. Ted Hughes 5. Doris Lessing 6. J. R. R. Tolkien 7. V. S. Naipaul 8. Muriel Spark 9. Kingsley Amis 10. Angela Carter 11. C. S. Lewis 12. Iris Murdoch 13. Salman Rusdie 14. Ian Fleming 15. Jan Morris 16. Roald Dahl 17. Anthony Burgess 18. Mervyn Peake 19. Martin Amis 20. Anthony Powell 21. Alan Sillitoe 22. John Le Carré 23. Penelope Fitzgerald 24. Philippa Pearce 25. Barbara Pym 26. Beryl Bainbridge 27. J. G. Ballard 28. Alan Garner 29. Alasdair Gray 30. John Fowles 31. Derek Walcott 32. Kazuo Ishiguro 33. Anita Brookner 34. A. S. Byatt 35. Ian McEwan 36. Geoffrey Hill 37. Hanif Kureshi 38. Iain Banks 39. George Mackay Brown 40. A. J. P. Taylor 41. Isaiah Be...

Anyone who's grown up with Roald Dahl would know Quentin Blake's wonderful illustrations. The Guardian interviews him : Is there anything he can't draw? "I stay away from motor cars. And I can't do architectural drawings, really. What I want to convey is movement and gesture and atmosphere. I like drawing anything that is doing something. Dragons are good because you can arrange them in interesting ways across the page, get people to ride on them. I can't seem to keep birds out of my books." You can see them not only in his edition of Aristophanes' The Birds and his book with John Yeoman called Featherbrains, but in a grinning self-portrait featuring him dangling from a ceiling fan, pencils stuffed in his pockets, papers and birds flapping round. His grin is the still centre to the chaos.

Gah! I actually missed Roald Dahl Day yesterday! I think it's high time I got around to using Google Calendar... or any calendar for that matter. Anyway! To mark Roald Dahl Day this year, I thought I'd show you a book of his which has special meaning to me-- Rhyme Stew . Long-time readers of my blog would know why this particular Roald Dahl book is special (though of course all Dahl books are equally special to me, Rhyme Stew being a little more equal than the others); I have a first edition of the book which was personally signed by the man himself, as detailed in last year's Roald Dahl Day post . Here is the state of the cover as it is now: And if you take a peek inside, you'll see Roald Dahl's scrawl in black marker pen: He almost misspelled my name!

What are the watershed novels that changed and shaped your life? These are the novels that made you take a different direction in your life, that gave you a different perspective on things around you, that inspired you to new and exciting things. Here are the books that I think were my watershed novels: Roald Dahl's children's books I was introduced to Roald Dahl by my first year teacher. I'm not quite sure which exact book it was but I think it was the Magic Finger . (Ah, the days of innocence, long before the word "finger" had dirty connotations...) Thanks to Roald Dahl, I discovered that reading was actually a fun activity! I swiftly consumed the rest of his children's books. James and the Giant Peach , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Matilda , The Witches , et al. I miss him. Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis Which child didn't wish to discover a secret door to another world? Like Roald Dahl, my visits to Narnia encouraged a healthy dose of imagin...

I can't believe it! Of the many children's books Roald Dahl has written, only the rare Gremlins remain as the only one I have unread. So when I was reading my feeds for today, it was with surprised delight when I read this in The Guardian : ...the Gremlins Project, has led to a release of the original text by the publishers Dark Horse, and a full marketing campaign is planned for 2007. A series of collectable toys based on the characters have been promised, while the text of an early limited edition with Disney illustrations is available on the internet. Oh Dark Horse! My saviours! I shall purchase your wonderful digitally restored and reissued hardcover book once I find it in stores. For those wondering what the fuss is all about (or you're too damned cheap to buy it yourself), maybe you would like to check out the complete text of The Gremlins at Roald Dahl Fans.com .

So yesterday I went to Lydia Teh's launching of her latest book , Honk! If You're Malaysian . This probably ranks as the grandest book launch I've ever attended. Even that Roald Dahl launch for Rhyme Stew I went to when I was a kid couldn't beat this. Congratulations, Lydia, for being able to launch your book with much fanfare. I should also state here that the book is a really wonderful read, just like her previous collection, Life's Like That . Having already had a chance to read it in public, I can now tag it "Laugh-out-loud-funny". It also certainly benefits from having Hassan Bahri's illustrations accompanying the text. The illustrated cover he did for the book is one of the best covers I've seen on a locally published book. (One that comes close that I can think of right now is Cinta Ubi dan Laksa , a Malay young adult novel-comic hybrid). Having Adibah Amin write the intro is a huge plus too... though I thought it was a little insubstantial...

Wow! They finally upgraded my Blogger account to the new Beta version! Yay! Since some of us are posting up our "to-be-read" 2007 list , I'm gonna go the other way round and post what I will be reading again next year. The following list is not in any particular order: 1. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell Not as influential to me as it was when I was in Form 4, but still relevant. After all, as Malaysians, aren't we all under the gazing eye of Big Brother ? 2. Animal Farm by George Orwell For years I couldn't find this book in bookstores (ah... the days before Kinokuniya KLCC), until my second year in university. I made friends with a guy from the studying management and he was complaining about this "boring" book he had to study for his English class. When I found out it was Animal Farm, I asked if I could borrow the book. He said I could have it and he didn't want to see the damn book ever in his life. He must really hate socialism. 3. V...

The sequel to the best-selling Dark City by Xeus will be different. Well, only slightly. For one thing, the stories will no longer be written only by Xeus, but will be contributed by other writers and selected by Xeus herself: For the Dark City sequel, which is scheduled to be published in April 2007, author Xeus is calling for short story submissions. Dark City 2 will be an anthology of dark and twisted Malaysian tales much in the tone of the first book. The submission criteria are: Each short story should contain around 3000 - 8,000 words. Please use double spacing and Microsoft Word. Each plot must be in the same vein as Dark City 1, which are stories about the darker side of Malaysian life. The short story genres can be contemporary, horror, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, romance, Roald Dahl-style ironic etc. The stories must meet the English and storytelling standards of the first book. (In other words, the editor will only select only what is publishable) Each short story ...

Between the ages of 5 and 10, I lived with my parents in the city of Bath . I was sent to a school called Moorlands Infant School (later Junior), which claimed to be built on the grounds of the house where Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty , lived. The school logo was a stylised black horse, preparing to jump. It was here I first discovered Roald Dahl. I don't remember which teacher read it to us in class; perhaps it was Ms. Telliere with her impossible to spell French name, or was it Mr. Peak, who always got angry at me for not wanting to write my weekend diary? I'm not even sure which Roald Dahl story was read, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was The Magic Finger . I must have told my dad about it when I came home that day because the next thing I knew Dad came home with more Roald Dahl books - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox, BFG, The Witches . In school we were thought to love reading, and I learned to love reading Roald Dahl. My most impo...

13th September is Roald Dahl's birthday , and tomorrow he would have celebrated his 90th birthday. Plans are afoot for a worldwide celebration and MPH is thankfully joining in on the fun: Roald Dahl’s Birthday Celebration Celebrate the birthday of the infamous Roald Dahl, author of various bestselling books including Charlie and The Chocolate Factory , Matilda , BFG and Fantastic Mr. Fox . There will be lots of children activities such as story telling, colouring contest, quizzes, word games and most importantly lots of prizes to be won! So make sure you bring your friends along that day! MPH MidValley: 16 September, 2.00-3.00pm MPH 1Utama: 23 September, 2.00-3.00pm Parents can sit at ease that I won't be jumping out of the shelves and guerrilla-reading stories from Switch Bitch or excerpts from Uncle Oswald's diary. Perhaps on his 100th birthday.

For my future reference, I: am currently reading The Darkness of Wallis Simpson by Rose Tremain Started reading this last night. Was hoping the LRT ride this morning would last longer than usual so I could find out what happens in the title story (the first short story in this compilation). I hope the rest of the stories are of the same quality as this one. have recently finished Aug 14, 2006: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami Brilliant and enjoyable collection of short stories. Proof that Murakami is indeed master of the surreal as well as the unreal. Aug 2, 2006: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Melancholic and nostalgic. Though written in simple language, the story is engaging till the end. Jul 30, 2006: Roald Dahl and His Chocolate Factory by Andrew Donkin Found this book lying around in my parents's house and gave it a read. Finished it in a few hours. It was okaaaaay. Some things I didn't know about Dahl were in the book, but I think those factoids c...

My introduction to To Kill a Mockingbird was in an English Literature class I took in university. Most people come to hate the books they had to read in class (I had started to hate a Roald Dahl short story in a class discussion once, and he's my favourite author!), but that certainly didn't happen with me and To Kill a Mockingbird. And how could I not? It was brilliant. Now I'm toying around with the idea of buying the recently released Mockingbird : A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields, but it's only available in hard cover for now, and I can't afford to buy hard covers nowadays. (And besides, I love paperbacks, they're much easier to transport.) The book promises a glimpse into the life of Nelle Harper Lee and her family, and how her life and experiences led to her writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Information in the book was compiled from interviews with over 500 people who knew Harper Lee. In fact, there were so mu...