Friday, September 28, 2007

Silverfish New Writing 7

This has taken quite a while and we apologise for that. Anyway the editors, Dr Asraf Jamal and Dr Shanti Moorthy have battled it out and produced the final list for inclusion into Silverfish New Writing 7 out of 165 stories we sent them. (We have notified all the successful writers by email, but if perchance you have not received them please check the list below.)

The final list:

  1. Departing Ways - Yvonne Tham
  2. A Geography Lesson - Chang Shih Yen
  3. The Vortex - Helen Yeo
  4. Sitting on the Fence - Nurul Ikhlas Abdul Hadi
  5. That Smile - Jane Downing
  6. The Morning After - Jocelyn Chua Lay Hong
  7. The Good Lieutenant - Yusuf Martin Bradley
  8. A writers monologue - Parveen Sikkandar
  9. The Last Deejay - Peter G. Brown
  10. Transactions in Thai - Robert Raymer
  11. Only in Malaysia - Robert Raymer
  12. Invisible - Saraswathy Manickam
  13. The Briefcase - Shalini Akhil
  14. TheFirstTime - Kow Shih-Li
  15. Check-in - Surya Ramkumar
  16. Dog Hot Pot - Wena Poon
  17. The Beggar - Viren Swami
  18. Beer in Fukuoka - Yeo Wei Wei
  19. Layang Layang - Yew Kwang Min

By the way, this will be the last in the Silverfish New Writing series. We have decided to stop here. There will be no Silverfish New Writing 8, nor anymore after that in the foreseeable future. To all those who have contributed in the past, thank you for making the series an unqualified success.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Do women read more?

I have often been asked this question and I have wondered about it. In terms of absolute numbers, more women do visit Silverfish Books compared to men. But when it comes to buying books, though, many of our male customers seem to think nothing about spending several hundred ringgits (up to 2k) on books during a single visit.

Now a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts in America confirms that women are the most avid readers. Typically women read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men, and that the women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.

And, according to surveys conducted in the U.S. and Canada and the gender gap is widest when it comes to fiction. Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market.

The report says that book groups consist almost entirely of women. This we can confirm based on the four book groups that we advice on books for their groups and who purchase their books through us and two others we know. '... and the spate of new literary blogs are also populated mainly by women ...': this I was not aware, because I don’t read blogs, but it could be true in Malaysia too.

Then there are many theories and much psycho-babble that try to explain the gender gap.

'Cognitive psychologists have found that women are more empathetic than men, and possess a greater emotional range -- traits that make fiction more appealing to them.' Ahem.

Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain says: 'At a young age, girls can sit still for much longer periods of time than boys ...' Oh-kaaaaay ...

But this one takes the cake: '...mirror neurons ... behind the eyebrows ... are activated both when we initiate actions and when we watch those same actions in others. Mirror neurons explain why we recoil when seeing others in pain, or salivate when we see other people eating a gourmet meal. Neuroscientists believe that mirror neurons hold the biological key to empathy.

'The research is still in its early stages, but some studies have found that women have more sensitive mirror neurons than men. That might explain why women are drawn to works of fiction, which by definition require the reader to empathize with characters.'

Huh!? That's wierd man!

Okay, let's get back to planet earth. The research also showed that according to Scholastic, 'More boys than girls have read the Harry Potter series and that the books have made more of an impact on boys' reading habits. 61 percent of the boys agreed with the statement 'I didn't read books for fun before reading Harry Potter,' compared with 41 percent of girls.'

Could it be possible, let's take a wild swing here, could it just be possible that the reason men stay away from books is because most books in the current market are primarily not written for them? Chick-lit and 'bodice ripping' romances dominate the fiction market while self-help and cookbooks dominate the non-fiction. So, are women easier to exploit? Or, are men simply not worth the trouble?

(How many times have I heard this: '... my wife will divorce me if she sees all these books I am buying. She says I have too many books.' True, I have heard some women express similar sentiments about their spouses too, but fewer. Much fewer.)

I will tell you a nice Malaysian literary story as a parting shot (and this happened not too long ago): a customer came into the shop and said that she was looking for 50 books to give her husband for his 50th birthday -- could we help her choose some, please? She had asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said books, so she decided to give him 50. Now, is that wonderful or what? Yes, such people do exist in the world.

(Sigh. How I envy him!)

Full story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14175229

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Book Reviews

I don't, generally, read book reviews. No, let me straighten that a little bit. I don't, generally, read book reviews in the Malaysian media. (I say that because I am guilty of reading -- or half-reading, because I am too imaptient -- some reviews in certain foreign magazines, not much but some.) Before I am asked why, I would like to ask the question, "How many people actually read reviews and why do they read them?"

Let me diverge. I used to read a lot of music reviews. I, sort of, established a relationship with the reviewer ­-- not personally but you know, through the media. I would follow weekly columns by two of them in particular because they seemed to like the type of music I did and I felt that I could trust their judgment and recommendations. I was not wrong. (Later, I found out that they were both musicians themselves on the side, so they knew what they were talking about.) Then they stopped writing, and I stopped reading music reviews. (Maybe that was my loss, but never mind.)

So one of the reasons people read reviews is to find out the views of critics whose opinions they trust. I read a criticism of a review that appeared in London newspaper recently. The book was The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas. And the criticism of the review: the reviewer gives a synopsis of the plot and what other reviewers think about it but does not say anywhere if she agrees or disagrees, or if she herself liked it. The crime was that she has no opinion of her own. Boy, let us hope the person who posted that story does not read any review in our local media.

How many such reviews have we read in our local newspapers where the reviewer gives the outline of the entire plot, but absolutely no opinion? And then there are those who lift bits and pieces of other reviews (probably, from the internet), stitch them together -- sometimes cleverly, sometimes stupidly -- and pass it off as their own. And then there are those about whom you wonder, "Have they really read the book?" or "Are we talking about the same book here?" Is that also the reason there are so few reviews of local books in our media -- there is no one to read them and there is nothing to lift off from the internet?

How many people do you know who watch a play, go to a movie or read a book, but are still not sure if they like the experience before they read a review about it? It appears as if forming your own opinion is one of the hardest things to do. (Try to get someone to suggest a place for dinner.) Is this a question of lack of self-confidence, perhaps? What if others liked it, and I didn't? Duh!

I ran into a young man at a teh tarik place who I knew had just watched a play the night before and who I also knew was going to write a review about it for a local daily. "So how was the play?" I asked. "Really bad," was his reply, "But don't worry, I will think of something to write." I was worried. When his article came out, it was a 'glowing' review of the play -- the lighting was beautiful, the setting was beautiful, the concept was very interesting, etc, etc. Why didn't he say what he wanted to say? That it stank? (Even some of the actors in the show thought so when I spoke to them later). Was he afraid to hurt some feelings?

That is it, isn't it? We are so afraid of hurting feelings that we have developed non-reviewing into an art form. Some of you older folk might remember the cat fight by the media some years ago. The play was A Mid Summer Night's Dream, a garden play set at Carcosa Seri Negara (which a friend's father calls the kakus -- lavatory in Tamil). It was panned by a critic in one of the newspapers who said that the only thing interesting about the whole night were the toilet taps in the establishment. Boy did that start a savage cat fight. I don't know if blood was shed but I know many people didn't talk to one another for several years after that.

So there you are: you have either 'non-reviews' or personal attacks. Oh yes, there is also one more type: the gushing fan-boy (or fan-girl) review, so terminally cute, enough to give you diabetes or make you puke, or both. But, let us not go there.

I do routinely glance through every book page I come across, though, if only to see what is new. But I am almost always disappointed. Many of the books are neither new nor old enough to be classics. Then the inevitable thought comes up, Where are the local books? No one to read them? No space (or not good enough) even for capsule reviews? A star rating might help. Too sensitive? We are Malaysians, aren't we?

Postscriptum: My congratulations to Daphne Lee on her article in the StarMag on Sunday, 2nd September. That must have taken courage.