Why I hate some books

I was reading this story in Bookriot.com called What are your Book Dealbreakers when I wondered, "What is it about some books that I hate?" I am frequently ask, what I consider to be a good book, and find myself speechless for a while. Could it be something as simple as prejudice? In which case I would have wasted my entire life. There would be no difference between a child's scribblings and a Michaelangelo! No difference between an English 1119 standard essay masquerading as manuscript that I often receive and a Garcia Marquez! But that's another story.

When I was younger, I would read every book I started from cover to cover, but life it too short for that now. There are books I'd stop reading after the first page, after the first 10 pages, the first 50 pages or even after reading it half way through. I have even stopped reading after the first paragraph! (A bit drastic, you would think, but I prefer to trust my instincts.)

What would a book dealbreaker be for me? What would make me not buy a book, not continue reading it, or even toss it across the room part of the way through it. (I meant the last metaphorically, but I know of friends who have done that literally.)  Let me try to remember.

1. Train wrecks. Ah yes, A Fine Balance by Rohington Mistry was probably the first book I didn't bother to finish.  God, was it a train wreck?! One misery after another, it was relentless. I could here those mat sallehs going, "Oh, it's so-oo Indian." Yes, like a bad Indian movie! And I have seen enough of those as a kid. I gave up after the vasectomy turned castration scene (although I think I deserved a medal for even getting that far.)

2. Gratuitous rape scenes -- including boys. (No, rape is not entertainment). House of Blue Mangoes by David Davidar.  Imagine this: A group of girls are walking to the temple, and they come across a group of boys: result, rape. God!!! Another Indian movie plot. (Part 3 of Interlock was like that too.) Do western readers really like this shit?

3. Gratuitous incest and homosexuality. God of Small Things by Arundhathi Roy. What was that incest scene all about? I didn't toss this book, still I asked. (I asked a friend, a good reader, about it thinking it was perhaps only my hangup. She said she wondered about it, too. She is also the friend who told me that there are only good books and bad books.)

4. Bad research. Life of Pi by Yann Martel. First, there was a Tamil boy called Patel. What? Are all Indians Patels? Have you lived in London too long? Then, there was the corny dialogue between the imam, the pundit and the priest. I came this close to tossing the book.

5. Bad similes. Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. "... the weight of South African diamonds, so great, so heavy, that one day, from one ear, ear-ring ripped through, a meteor disappearing with a bloody clonk into her bowl of srikhand." Arghhh!!! Yes, I confess, I tossed that book.

6. Bad beginnings. This is really related to item 5 above -- bad similes. (No book title will be mentioned here though.) An island is like to a bubble escaping from a birds throat? I put this book quietly to one side. No, there was no need for drama. I simply decided not to read any further. Less said the better.

7. Bad genre labels. Chick Lit. How can I even get close to a book that describes itself as Chick Lit. (Like a restaurant that calls itself Papa Rich, which to me sounds way too close to Sugar Daddy!) I squirm just thinking about it. I'm going to need a bath after this! No genre has put me off like it has. How demeaning can you get? (Where are the women's libbers when you need them?!)

8. Exotic Asia. I avoid these like diseases after reading Joy Luck Club. "It is so-oo touching." Pul-lease.

Yes, most of them are books by Indian authors in who write in English, but this is just a list off the top of my head. I guess there are enough dumb mat sallehs who like this kind of exotic India to create an industry out of it. Now it's all about Fifty Shades of Grey and soft porn. I keeping away from them like I did with Chick Lit.

What? You still think the book industry is created for and by intelligent people? That only clever people read books? Think again. Just remember that the last best seller was a badly written soft porn. (The smart ones are those tip-toeing around the manure to pick the lovely flowers and fruits, trying not to step on the crap or get it onto their clothes.)

An Egyptian/Welsh author I met recently said, "I can't complain though; Fifty Shades is probably paying for my book."

Why I don't join book clubs

Reading Motoko Rich's story, The Book Club With Just One Member, I couldn't help thinking that she was writing about me. I love to read, but I really do not like to talk about books I read, which puts me a bind sometimes, being a bookseller and a publisher. When people walk into the store and ask me for a good read, it is quite easy. But when they ask me what the book is about, I get stumped. First of all, does a book have to be about something? Secondly, a good book is about many things, all at the same time, and that is its beauty. And different people will walk away from it taking different things with them, and the book will still remain whole. But, usually, I can tell them quite easily what a book is not about: it is not self-help, it is not management, and so on.

Fortunately, most of my customers do not expect a blow-by-blow account of the entire plot. All I need to tell them is how the prose leaves a pleasant after-taste in the mouth, or how full-bodied and big it is, or warn them that 'this is strong stuff'. Yes, it is almost like describing wine. Most understand, even love my suggestions, but a few will still want to know, "So, what is the story about?"

I have never liked taking apart a book, even when I was young, particularly ones I liked, I considered good. Thank God I didn't major in literature. All that deconstruction would have killed it for me. I often recommend good books to others, of course, but a 'you must read this' or a 'read this and tell me what you think' will be the extent of my spin. And all I would want in response would be a 'wow' or an 'oh my God!'. In my world, good books must be savoured and enjoyed whole, not talked about to death.

Certainly, I am obsessive. I do understand book clubs and the roles they play, and why people like to join them, even online ones. Why, I have even helped organise several, but I have preferred not to become a member of any. If I read something and I like, or can relate to a line, a sentence, a phrase or even a word, I do not like to strip it, take it apart, and parade it naked in front of a dozen prying eyes in public. Go on now, go! Go find your own personal moment, line, phrase, word or whatever! Go, parade that all you want, if you want. For me, let me enjoy my private moments with my books, moments that will live with me for years, or decades. I might mention it to someone special, someone close, someone whom I know will understand, in private as if at a confession. But, I would prefer not to go starkers in public.

So, that is why I do not join book clubs. Please do not misunderstand. It is nothing personal. Please join as many clubs as you want, and enjoy them. As Motoko Rich says, "The collective literary experience certainly has its benefits. Reading with a group can feed your passion for a book, or help you understand it better. Social reading may even persuade you that you liked something you thought you didn't."

But I am different. You might have heard the saying, "If you can talk about it, it ain't Tao." Or, to quote Louis Armstrong, "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Reading, for me, is like that. It is a total body experience.

Read Motoko Rich's story in the New York Times

It's the iTablet, stupid!

One report says that not since Moses came down from Mount Sinai has there been this much excitement over a bunch of tablets. Though no one knows if something like this even exists (Apple refuses to comment officially) it has been described as an "iPhone on steroids", as "some sick shit" with "out of control" multi-touch gestures (all serious compliments in geek-speak). It was the undisputable star at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the biggest and most influential consumer electronics exposition in the world, and the thing (if it exists) was not even on show! (Apple Inc, does not participate in the annual CES nor, of late, even at the (privately organised) MacWorld Expo, a show devoted to products manufactured by the company.)

It is as if one cannot read a single tech site without running into another iTablet or iSlate rumour. Even the Wall Street Journal and several other non-tech newspapers and magazines seem to be in the act. Chris Maxcer of MacNewsworld writes: "As the Apple tablet rumour frenzy blows way past the level of a fever pitch, I'm starting to reconcile myself with the notion that we may -- within a few weeks -- finally hear from Apple. The company is widely expected to make a public announcement Jan 27 or so, though again, the expectation isn't due to Apple, it's due to a report stating the company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco ... What might Apple announce?"

Exactly. So, what might Apple announce? Its first quarter results? At this year's CES, there were three tablet PCs on offer: one HP tablet running Windows 7 that supports multitouch and an accelerometer (like the iPhone and the iPod Touch) that will be released in mid year selling for around USD500, and others from Pegatron and Archos -- no info. I watched a video of Steve Balmer (CEO of Microsoft) introduce the HP device at the end of his keynote address. The device looked like a Kindle wannabe that had been hijacked for the show just to beat an Apple announcement, in case there is one. The devices looked lame, and the charade was sad.

The ebook is, of course, the gadget of the moment and everyone wants to ride the bandwagon. (Amazon announced that they sold more ebook downloads than physical books for the first time on Chrismas Day, 2009, though they didn't give out numbers or details. They are good with smoke and mirrors.) Among the ebooks out in the market, Barnes & Noble has the Nook at USD259, Amazon the new Kindle DX that will cost USD489, Samsung has announced E6 and E101 selling at USD399 and USD699, respectively, and Plastic Logic will be selling two Que proReader units for USD649 (4 GB) and USD799 (8 GB).

Over all these looms the huge shadow of the Apple iTablet, a gadget that does not yet exists in any shape or form, but one which everyone is sure will be announced soon. Speculated to cost between USD700-USD900, it has spooked an entire industry. No one dares to breathe, no one dares to make a sudden movement, or any movement. The whole scene is almost comical. No, it is all so hilariously funny. No one can prove it is there, but everyone is sure it is, and they all wait with bated breaths for Zeus to hurl his thunderbolt, and change the game. Once again.

Or, it might be like Waiting for Godot where (as someone said) nothing happens, twice.

What it feels like to be a boy

Alison Flood writes in The Guardian of how the judges for the Carnegie medal, Britain's oldest children's book award, have drawn up a shortlist consitingo of entirely 'boysy' stories. She says: "Magic and monsters are conspicuous by their absence this year from the shortlist for Britain's oldest children's book prize, the Carnegie medal, which is dominated by titles featuring ordinary children dealing with the pitfalls and adventures of everyday life." (The Carnegie is in its 72nd year and is seen as the most 'the kids' Booker.)

Getting boys to read for pleasure has, of course, been the subject of much literary angst. Girls have always appeared to gravitate more naturally than boys towards books or anything literary. I am currently one of the judges for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Young Malaysians for 2009. I was sent the final shortlist of twenty essays/short stories to grade, out of which, interestingly, 16 were by girls. But as a bookseller I, notice that I have as many customers who are women as men, although their buying habits are different.

Keith Gray, one of the authors on the list says: "People have said it's quite boysy -- I say hurrah for that. There seem to be quite a lot of books out there for girls, about what it feels like to be a girl in modern times, whether it's Jacqueline Wilson or pinker, fluffier books. Whereas a lot of books aimed at boys are about being a spy, fighting monsters, being a vampire. It's great to have some which are about what it feels like to just be a boy ... So many books for boys are about being X Box-style heroes -- it's so nice to have more down to earth heroes."

But is the problem all about books not appealing to boys? I know why I started reading -- the pictures. Then when I was in primary school, I had the most wonderful history teacher a boy could have. Mr Selvaratnam was his name, and the twelve-inch ruler was his game. And with his ruler he could transform from a sword-wielding pirate to a Portuguese commandant with a blunderbuss or a Japanese soldier with a bayonet. He would prance about in front of the class swishing and shooting and stabbing with his ruler, setting free our imagination. So I was more than a bit surprise when, during my Form 4 years, some of my classmates decided to 'drop' History and Literature. How could anyone not like history and literature, I thought?

Going back to the Carnagie, Gray describes himself as a reluctant reader as a child. He says the first book he was persuaded to pick up was the Carnegie-winning The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall. "I can remember seeing the Carnegie medal stamped on the front cover. Just having my name on the shortlist is great," he says. "The Machine Gunners got me reading, and that's what got me writing, so you could say the Carnegie turned me into a reader and a writer."

My son grew up in the eighties, amply distracted by the television and video games. (Internet was not available then). Interestingly, what started him reading were the movies. I remember queuing for the tickets for Jurassic Park because he was into the dinosaur phase too at the time. I had never read Michael Crichton before, but I decided to get a copy of the book just for the heck of it. He saw it lying around the house and asked if he could read it. He never looked back after that. So boys do read for different reasons, but I suspect having books around the house does not hurt.

One frequently asked question we get at Silverfish Books is from parents who want to know how they can get their children, especially boys, to read? We generally manage to huff and puff round that question. But what we really really want to say is: "So what books do you read?"

Turning boys into bookworms

A story in The Independent by Warwick Mansell, Power of words: How a children's writer is turning boys into bookworms, tells how writer GP Taylor is making pupils read by telling them stories, with some remarkable results.

Which comes as a bit of surprise. It should be expected, one would have thought. Common sense. But when bureaucratic educationists get into the act, I should think they'd be able to committee anything to death, including common sense. I started reading because it was fun, because I could go places I never could in real life. My memory of childhood is all about story-telling by my parents, my uncles, aunts and older cousins.

Graham Taylor is an ex-vicar, ex-policeman, and exorcist turned multi-million selling author of fantasy novels who has visited more than 150 primary schools this year to tell children stories, for which he does not charge. His object is to get students, especially boys, reading for pleasure.

The British Government's national literacy strategy has been accused of focusing on teaching reading mainly through extracts of books, and drilling pupils to pass tests. " ... the literacy strategy, introduced in 1998, which emphasized the teaching of reading and writing as the acquisition of discrete skills -- such as word decoding, analysing sentence structure, spelling and grammar -- without actually getting pupils wanting to read in the first place."

Professor Teresa Cremin, president of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, says: "Children were shown a text and asked to find the adverbial clause, or asked what complex sentences they could find in a paragraph. This approach can get a bit farcical."

You bet. Who cares what part of speech a word is, or how a sentence is structured. What's important are the stories they tell and the joy a child gets when he reads them. Reading is entertainment, but if there is one thing the school system does well it to take all the joy out of it, and make it  a chore.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, says: "There was an overemphasis on skills and an underemphasis on the reason why you would read. Reading for pleasure suffered."

Professor Cremin agrees: "The pressure to achieve the level fours and level fives in tests is so great that teachers have felt that there is not the time to engage in reading for pleasure".

Which is kind of funny because children who read for pleasure will surely do better in tests, as results show at St Peter's Church of England primary school in Ashton-under-Lyne, outside Manchester. Last year 83 per cent of pupils gained their expected level, well ahead of the school's 43 per cent target.

The Independent

Why I like to read fiction

(A version of this story appeared in The Malay Mail on the 30th of October 2008).

I would get people coming into the store and announcing very loudly that they did not read fiction any more, as if it was an for activity simpler minds. I would simply smile without saying anything, but I would think, "How sad. How many non-fiction Nobel Literature laureates do you know?"

Don't get me wrong. I have read, and still read, plenty of non-fiction, and I do have an extensive collection of titles on history, politics, philosophy and theology. The problem with non-fiction is that it is, most of the time, filled with so much of prejudice, bias, personal agendas, half-truths, distortions and omissions. Take history for instance: I will have to read at least six books before I even get an idea of what actually happened (and more, to actually understand). As for politics and theology, one may never know the truth no matter how many books one reads. And then we have just-add-water books masquerading as philosophy (much like Kenny G records in the jazz racks of music stores).

I have come a full circle and I read mostly fiction now. Oh, there are the bummers, of course, and often all that pandering, stereotyping, cliche mongering and bad writing gets to me and, sometimes, I seriously want to invite them for coffee in one of those swanky joints and, like somebody I know would, advise them never to write again. (But, I know I am too chicken for that.) Still, I persist. It is like going through a basket of durians: you are pushed on by a memory of a really good fruit you once ate, you want to rediscover it, you want to feel again that creamy texture, you want to experience that divine bitter sweet taste once more, you are willing to go through an entire basket, through a lot of poor ones, average ones, okay ones, good ones before you finally get to that great one. Yes!

JM Coetzee's 1999 Booker Prize winning novel, Disgrace, is one such literary fruit, one that comes along only a few times every century. Good literature is like good software -- user (readers) will find far more uses (messages) in it than the author intended or even thought possible.

David Lurie is a professor who teaches English Romantic poetry at a university in Cape Town. An affair with one of his students gets him into trouble. It is not a difficult situation, he could have easily got off with an apology, as false as it may be. But he refuses to give in to the prurience and sentimentality of his judges. He is disgraced, loses everything and goes to live with his daughter in a farm. David is arrogant and not very likable. Yet, when he ponders if he should submit himself for castration and live the life of a neutered domestic beast, we can identify with him, as if that is what being human is all about --to live at the level of beasts, rewarded for 'right' behaviour and punished for getting out of line.

Things don't get better at the farm. His daughter is raped and he gets assaulted badly. He is outraged; he sees the perpetrators at a neighbour's party, but his daughter will not allow him to create a ruckus or even confront them. She has to live in that neighbourhood. She prefers to accept the humiliation and get on with her life, albeit in disgrace. She marries her neighbour, who was probably a party to the crime in the first place, for 'protection'. Sounds familiar? Like beasts, we will live in disgrace, for the little crumbs, the little mercies tossed at us.

Most reviewers I've read don't get that. They can see David's disgrace, but not his daughter's. They are too consumed by their own self-righteousness to even think it possible for anyone not to be outraged. Welcome to the Third World. It feels like an abomination, because that is what it is. That's why it is scary. Some of us have broken out, saying: "We will not take it anymore." But the truth is the majority would prefer to live like neutered domestic beasts, constantly herded and kept in line. They will get (metaphorically, but sometimes actually) raped over and over and over and their advise will still be, "Don't rock the boat." (The word rakyat comes from the Arabic word for a herd of sheep.) We are told constantly about what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot have, all for our own 'good' because we cannot think for ourselves. And under no circumstances are we allowed to express ourselves.

Coetzee's situations are extreme, but these are story-telling devices, artistic license to make a point. It is not a very large book, only 224 pages. There are many similarities between post apartheid South Africa and Malaysia, except it is not so extreme here. Yet.

Books most abandoned

WRITING: Most Left Behind Books

Why are some books left behind at hotels? Not for lack of space inside the suitcase, I should think, not if you really love the book. But then some, like the BookCrossing people, leave books they like for others to pick up. I will never do that with a book I love. I would rather buy extra copies of books I love to give away to people who would otherwise want to borrow my copy. (I know it does not make sense, but I have a great fear that firstly the book will not come back -- why isn't stealing books a crime punishable by death yet? -- and secondly, if it does get returned it often looks like it just came back from a battlefield -- even if the damage is just a little nick on the cover.) So with all my personal prejudices in place, I'd say that people will only leave books behind if they absolutely hate it, or they are culling, or if they have just acquired a hardback copy (or a first edition). I suffer inconsolably whenever a book of mine leaves home to live with someone else, even for a little while, even if I know she will look after it with extreme care. (Yes, yes, yes, but what about her children with their grubby little hands that were just holding pizza? What if her husband spills coffee? What if, there is a major thunderstorm, and the roof tiles in her house which have not been secured properly come lose, and it leaks, and her house gets flooded, and my book gets wet? Workers are all Indonesians now, you know. What if, what if? It was never easy being a book parent. Now it is getting harder. And no, I am not going to see a doctor about it, thank you very much.)

So it is with a little disdain that I looked at (yes, it is in pictures) this Sky News feature on Books Most Abandoned In Travelodge Inns. Here is the dirt:

• Celebrity books take all the first five spots. The most abandoned book is Meet John Prescott by the former UK Deputy Prime Minister. That is not surprising. We have plenty of Malaysian politicians we would like to forget. Second is comedian Russel Brand's My Booky Wook. Third most left behind book is by another 'political' celebrity, Cherri Blair with Speaking for Myself, about her life from her childhood in working-class Liverpool, to the heart of the British legal system and then, as the wife of the prime minister. Kati Price (Jordan) follows with two books. Why did she even bother? Television host Piers Morgan is next. I guess it is safe to say they all got what they deserved. Leave writing to writers.

• Then comes the surprise. Ian McEvan's On Chesil Beach, which was on last years Booker shortlist, which sold over 100,000 in hardback, is at number six. It is hardly my favourite book, but I will not give my hardback copy away. (It does not say if the books left behind were paperbacks or hardbacks.) What is the problem? Too difficult to read? Boring? Not quite John Grisham? Maybe the next book, also fiction, might give us a clue: Kathy Kelly's Lessons in Heartbreak. From the Amazon.com blurb it sounds like a major tearjerker. Did On Chesil Beach jerk your tears? Not mine, though it did leave me a little dissatisfied. Another work of fiction on the list is Blind Faith by Ben Elton.

• The other two would fall into our 'just add water' classification (if we had such a section). Soak book in 800 mls of water, bring to a simmer on low flame, add sugar (or salt) to taste, allow to cool, and drink a glass before bedtime for a lifetime of warm fuzzy feelings, instant riches, instant health and perfect happiness. Alternatively, admit yourself into the psychiatric ward of the nearest hospital. Number eight: Alvin Hall's You and Your Money -- a personal relationship. Number Ten: Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

Sky News

Why don't boys read?

(A version of this story appeared in the Malay Mail on the 28^th of August)

This question resurfaces every now and then and, lately, has been the subject of much internet stories -- the first one in the Wall Street Journal and the other in the Timesonline. They read texted messages; they read games instruction manuals and football magazines, so it is not like they are illiterate. Publishers in America claim to have found one solution: gross them out. That's right, give them what they want and they will read. So 261 titles aimed at boys was released in 2007, from the gory (Vlad the Impaler: the real Count Dracula, Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo and Mary Tudor: Courageous Queen or Bloody Mary?) to gross (Captain Underpants, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, and The Day My Butt Went Psycho). Says John Hechinger of the WSJ, 'Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys -- many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open Little House on the Prairie. Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate.'

I think of my own reading when I was a kid. By the time I was ten, I had read every Enid Blyton I had set my sights on (I don't know how many, but surely over fifty) after finishing all the bridged and illustrated classics (Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, Ivanhoe, etc, etc). At eleven years old, I added Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne and HG Wells to the menu. From twelve to thirteen, I must have read every Agatha Cristie, Leslie Charteris (The Saint) and Earl Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) book published. I won't say what I was reading when I was fourteen because I am afraid you might call my mother.

In Malaysia I guess the question would be, 'Why don't people read?' (Before we go further, let me assure you that we did have television when I was young. I'm not that old. In fact, the number of books sold worlwide has increased many fold despite television and the internet.) There is a story I'd like to relate. It was during the early years of Silverfish Books. There was his lady, one of those teacher types with thick black plastic-rimmed glasses and tight hair bun, who came into the shop asking for workbooks, in particular on a Malaysian author whose work had just been added to the Form Five English curriculum. I told her that we didn't sell workbooks. Besides, since the inclusion of this author was recent, there was not likely to be workbooks anywhere.

'Oh dear,' she said. 'Does that mean I will have to read the book?'

Gobsmacked doesn't begin to describe my reaction.

'Malaysians read two books a year'. I have been hearing this for almost ten years, with no other details -- sample size, demography, what kind of questions were asked, what was included, not included, nothing. Frankly, I don't believe the figure. I think the situation is far worse and whoever put out the number is trying not to make us look less bad than we are. (If the number is correct, we should be importing some 50 million books a year. Are we?)

I was at the Dataran Merdeka once, about a year ago, at about six-thirty in the evening. We were early for the show at the Town Hall, so I persuaded my wife to take a walk to the KL City Library on the other side. Of course, it was closed. What was I thinking? That is the absurdity of the situation: the only time people can go to a library is after school or work, but they are closed. It is bad enough we have so few libraries to start with. (When I was growing up in JB, I had three libraries to choose from: the one in school, the town library next to the post office, and the National Library in Singapore.) And, building humungous library in places people have no access to, does not exactly help.

Okay, not every teacher is as bad as the one I described above. Some are worse. But, I would like to propose another survey. How many teachers actually read the books they have to teach? How many read anything apart from what they have to teach? (Include tertiary level.) How many library employees read? How many employees of Dewan Bahasa read?

I hear parents complaining about their children all the time. Sometimes, when I am feeling jahat, I will ask them what type of books they read. It is a lot like the Malay proverb about the crab teaching his son to walk straight. But it is not their fault entirely, not with our education system that makes the Ford Model T assembly line look modern. To read, one has to have some competency in a language, at least the ability to write one's name. And the books must be fun. So, there.

(Psst. The books I was reading at fourteen were so much fun that I had to pass them under the desks in school.)

The Amazon juggernaut

A recent story in iStockAnalyst, Amazon.com to Acquire AbeBooks, sent a chill down my spine. Jeff Bezos wants nothing less than world domination. So, why am I surprised? Looks like everyone wants to dominate the world these days: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Dewan Bandaraya ...

According to the report, Amazon.com, Inc. has announced that, subject to closing conditions, it has reached an agreement to acquire AbeBooks. Those who are familiar with it, AbeBooks is an online marketplace with (reportedly) over 110 million titles, primarily, used, rare and out-of-print books that are listed by thousands of independent booksellers from around the world or, in other words, the only credible online competition for Amazon.com. One will be able to find pretty much any book that has been printed on Abebooks, and buy it if one is willing to pay the price. From our survey, the prices are very reasonable. But the main cost, due to our geographical location, will be the postage. (I still haven't decided if I want to spend USD25.00 -- not including postage -- for a mass-market paperback edition of John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.)

I understand that the operative word in business today is no longer monopoly. It is hegemony -- the little guys can set up all the bookshops they want, but we are going to take a cut from it all ... mwahahahaha.

Both the companies are making the customary 'best experience for customers' noise. Russell Grandinetti, vice president of books for Amazon.com says, "AbeBooks provides a wide range of services to both sellers and customers, and we look forward to working with them to further grow their business ..." Right. And Hannes Blum, chief executive officer of AbeBooks is quoted, "This deal brings together book sellers and book lovers from around the world, and offers both types of customers a great experience ... We are very excited to be joining the Amazon family." Right again.

The report says that AbeBooks will continue to function as a stand-alone operation based in Victoria, British Columbia. Let's see how long that will last.

Meanwhile, Richard Cohen in his Washington Post blog, The Book on the Shelf, laments the death of the book as we know it. He writes, "What Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon's founder, wants more than anything is to do away with the book as we know it." He further says that according to Steven Kessel, one of Amazon's 'top guys' in charge of 'digitizing everything in sight', Bezos once said that 'he couldn't imagine anything more important than reinventing the book ...'

Does Bezos read? I mean seriously read? Does he know what a book is?

Richard Cohen goes on, "The book is warm. The book is handy. The book is handsome to the eye. The book occupies the shelf of the owner and is a reflection of him or her ... The book is always there, to be reached for, to be thumbed and, too often, I admit, to wonder about: Why did I buy this? My bookcase is full of mysteries."

It is at this point that the sitcom laugh track goes, "Aawwww ..."

But yes, I know how it feels. I feel so comfortable in my little room (into which I crawl when I want to be by myself) surrounded by my books I have acquired through the ages ... some are fifty years old ... no, more ... I inherited some from my father, and he got some of those from my grandfather. Bezos wants to replace all that? Surely, there are better things to replace.

(Am I just being over-sentimental here? Did I not feel something similar when my collection of vinyl records became obsolete? Was that the same?)

Richard Cohen further writes, "Bezos will win. Amazon has this device that downloads books. It is called the Kindle, which must be one of those focus group words. Sounds like the German word for children. Sounds like kind. Sounds innocent. Of course, it is not. My friends, book lovers all, have bought Kindles. At first, I was shocked: You? A Kindle? It's like discovering some sort of secret perversion."

Sigh. Are we simply being nostalgic? Soft? Is the Kindle really only a perversion?

Please, tell me that it is.

iStockAnalyst

The Wasington Post

Here we are now, entertain us

Book critics are getting all angsty again. Michael Saler writes in a The Times Literary Supplement story The rise of fan fiction and comic book culture explores the industry from 'book-burning and prohibition to Pulitzer Prizes and prestige'.

One of the lines in the report says: 'If culture is often war by other means, we are finally witnessing a truce in one longstanding conflict: that between so-called elite and mass cultures.' I suppose Silverfish Books would be compared to 'Japanese soldiers fighting the Second World War long after it ended'.

So are we, in Silverfish Books, snobs? I guess we are and will be perceived as such. But we are willing to live with that. I have nothing against genre fiction, really -- I was weaned on them -- but somehow find most of them not quite satisfying anymore, after having read a bit. I mean, it's a bit difficult having caramel coated popcorn for lunch (I could, when I was a kid) after you have tried banana leaf rice. But if you have never had anything but popcorn for lunch, I guess you will not miss anything.

Which brings us to the question: what industry are we in? Not food for sure.

Let's go back to basics -- which I do whenever I have an issue to deal with. Let us imagine living in caves fifty thousand years ago. The first need would be food. We would have got that from the nuts, fruits, roots, stems, seeds, leaves, and the occasional rabbit or squirrel or wild boar. Then we would need to reproduce; hence some wild sex. After this would come communication, or story telling. This would have been absolutely essential to keep us alive, especially good story telling. Can you imagine coming home after an encounter with a tiger and not telling everyone about it? Or, I mean, the difference between, "Oh, I saw a tiger on the way home," and, "There is a bloody tiger, big as a house, out there and it is eating people! I just escape being eaten!" said with the lots of dramatic and, appropriate, special effects to communicate the danger (although you actually saw the event from a safe distance from the top of the hill). Then, came entertainment.

Fast forward to the 21^st century. Food is aplenty, we fornicate ourselves silly and security is seldom an issue. So, what else is there? Entertainment. Never before in our entire history have people demanded so much entertainment every time, all the time. It is one long continuous bop till you drop fun-fest. Food is entertainment. Shopping is entertainment. Sex is entertainment. And dressing. And talking. And everything. Even colleges advertise as if their courses are all entertainment. We, fucking, blow our minds to find ways to entertain ourselves, maxing out at every bloody opportunity, which is all the time. Since the end of the Second World War, the most rapidly growing industry has been entertainment -- from the radio, to television to computers to everything. Remember the 90s anthem, Smells like Teen Spirit?

Here we are now, entertain us,
I feel stupid and contagious.

So, what industry is the book in? (Let's leave out the educational and academic books for the moment -- they are going to be taken over by the internet and e-readers soon, anyway.) Surprise! Entertainment. If in the past, storytelling has been part of entertainment, or entertainment has always had storytelling as a part of it, now storytelling is all entertainment. And books are about story telling. Books compete directly with music, movies, television, shopping malls, mamak shops and even telephone calls, it appears. Write it well and it will be read. Write it badly and people will not, no matter what the critics say. Storytelling is about communicating information, 'the tiger' in the case above and the danger associated with it.

So, Silverfish Books is an insufferably snobbish bookstore. We are only interested in books we (and our friends) like, and they generally tend to be good stories well told. We don't really bother too much about genre. Love in the Times of Cholera is a romance after all..

Times on line

Book review by a guest writer

Review of Latif Kamaluddin's Lazy Lamas and Voodoo Genitalia, Prayala, 2006

by

Guest Writer: Shankaran Nambiar

Latif Kamaluddin's Lazy Lamas and Voodoo Genitalia is an exciting and provocative collection of poems that attempts to tease and disturb the reader. With this volume, Kamaluddin effortlessly establishes himself as the most outstanding poet in Malaysia who attempts to explore the limits of language and the mystical edges of religion.

His "Cosmic Interview" raises the question of "why when and how/ did the individual/ self experience separation/ from the Universal Self". Only to be answered with a terse, "... if I know". This is followed by some blank space, framed by the line "END OF INTERVIEW." This poem is at once an exploration in religion in its most mystical sense, as well as a play of space and silence. Kamaluddin could have noted that the interview had ended immediately after the answer to the question was delivered, rather he chose to permit space to pervade between the answer and his declaration that the interview had ended. This serves only to highlight the silence that follows something for which no ready answer can be given. In this sense, Kamaluddin equates space (with no words) with silence.

This play of space as silence finds expression in an untitled poem of his where on one side of the page one finds the lines "god/must/be /liberated" juxtaposed against the lines "man/must/be/ re-created". Both of these lines, arranged as columns, are separated by a wide gap, or a breadth of space, that denotes the divide between man and God. Reading this poem, it is clear that Kamaluddin does more than seek to stress the unbridgeable gap between man and God. He also points out that God is a linguistic contraption of which we must be freed, and in so doing we take upon ourselves the task of liberating God from our preconceptions of Him, however we may conceive of Him. This process of "liberating god" or our linguistic understanding of God, Kamaluddin declares, results in man being re-created. But that, indeed, is a long process that in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions could take lifetimes of effort. It is an effort that needs great patience; and if we do not have the patience to wait without any demand, it could be akin to the feeling of constipation. And that explains why Kamaluddin rather irreverently announces at the close: "LET US ALL THEN GET CONSTIPATED."

We have come to be accustomed to waiting for actions that are result-oriented. Waiting in the spiritual sense is quite the opposite; it is a waiting that calls for the attitude "Thy will be done". Such waiting consequently implies waiting outside the boundaries of time. Kamaluddin’s concern with waiting of that nature comes to the fore again in his "Memogramme". He notes that "You are/dead now/and/I/ am unavailable/" and then goes on to ask, "so/where does/that leave/longing?" The context that he poses here is one where Nietzsche's God is dead and the seeker is unavailable. In a situation such as this what does longing mean, if one can at all long for the Divine under such circumstances? The irony that Kamaluddin hints at is mischievous when one notes that the title of this poem suggests the common memo that is circulated in offices, which requires results of a tangible form, not some longing that needs divine fervour. Again, a memo cannot function in the presence of the death of a person and the absence of another, a distinction that is absolutely at odds with a religious life.

Kamaluddin's untitled 'box' poem appears, at first sight, like word play. It seems to be the careful arrangement of words that takes the form of a square. The line on top reads, "every body has" and it turns down in clockwise direction to go on to "a box no one", leading on to "goes there", finally ending with "no one knows". If read in the natural sequence of a square, it would read: "every body has/a box no one/ goes there/ no one knows." One could, and is tempted to, read differently. Perhaps Kamaluddin is suggesting that everyone has a 'box', to which no one goes, and of which no one knows. If the reader were to take the trouble to develop the right metaphors, this poem can elicit tremendous insights; and in this sense he wants us to take a more intellectual posture towards his poems. Whatever it is that one takes a 'box' to suggest, at its core it is empty. And one cannot but fail to note that the "void" is a theme that recurs in his poetry in different ways, as the absence of person, as the death of God, as a concept that begs to be stripped of its linguistic trappings.

As can only be fitting for a collection of poems that is religious in a rebellious fashion and which invites linguistic de- and re-construction, Kamaluddin's last poem, entitled "Finalaudit", has just three lines, "going/ going/ gone". And these three words, which are so reminiscent of the Buddhist exhort to go beyond the temporal world, seem to be hiss reminder that urges us to go beyond the apparent as suggested by language and grammar.

In this volume Kamaluddin, perhaps, expresses concerns that should be central to one's life: to explore the foundation of time and space, to delve into solidity and embrace the void, to explore the interplay of word and silence; and more than anything else, to seek liberation from the strictures of language, grammar, form and sound. Kamaluddin in his slim and shocking volume, extends a formidable invitation to the reader.

(Silverfish Books will be giving away free copies of this book to anyone who comes to the bookshop and is interested -- please ask for one. Since we have only limited copies, it will have to be on a, strictly, first come first served basis. We will not take reservations or bookings.)

Behind the curtain

As I get older, I try not to read more than one or two books by a particular author because I want to spread my reading more widely. But there are a few authors I cannot help but peek into their latest offerings, and be inevitably drawn into them. Milan Kundera in one of them. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Jose Saramago, Salman Rushdie, JM Coetzee and, lately, Orhan Pamuk being others. Yes, Sharon, none of them are women. That was not a conscious decision. None of them are Anglo-Saxon either. Again, not a conscious omission.)

Milan Kundrea's The Curtain is a small book of seven essays on the art of the novel (though the blurb on the cover says the book is an essay in seven parts). Having read his previous book on the topic, Testaments Betrayed, I more or less knew what to expect. But, still, Kundera does not fail to excite, though I can imagine the comment that this book is meant for his 'fans', which, I admit, I am one. (This, by the way, is not a review of the book.)

Kundera says on page 16, "Each aesthetic judgement is a personal wager, but a wager that does not close off its own subjectivity; that faces up to other judgements, seeks to be acknowledged, aspires to objectivity ..." (italics mine). Wow! How I wish I wrote that.

Yes, when someone says a book, or anything, is 'good', is he (or she) saying that it possesses some universal absolute indisputable 'good', or is the person merely saying that he liked it? Even the word 'like' then comes up for dispute. Another person could (and would) say the he 'didn’t like' it. So is it merely a matter of taste then? Of prejudice? Of subjectivity? In which case, of course, quality would not exist.

Fortunately, Kundera points the way out of that one when he quotes Jan Mukarovsky: "Only the presumption of objective aesthetic value gives meaning to the historical evolution of art." And says, in other words; (in the) absence of aesthetic value, the history of art is just an enormous warehouse of works whose chronological sequence carries no meaning. That is, the aesthetic value of art can only be seen from its historic value. And this is his main point in the first essay in The Curtain called The Consciousness of Continuity, in which he discusses, amongst many other things, the difference between the many types of history. 'History as such’ is the history of events, of victories (and defeats). It is the history of mankind, of things that no longer exist, and which have no direct connection to our present lives. The history of science (and technology) depends little on man and has nothing to do with his freedom ... it is nonhuman: "If Edison had not invented the light bulb, someone else would have." The history of art (including literature) is a history of (aesthetic) values ... (which is) always present, always with us."

In the second essay called Die Weltliteratur (World Literature -- a term coined by Goethe), Kundera provocatively says about Kafka (who, he emphasises, wrote in German and considered himself a German writer): "No, believe me, nobody would know Kafka today -- nobody -- if he had been a Czech", that is if he had written his works in the language of a "faraway country which we know little (about)".

This reminds me of a little incident that happened at Silverfish Books a few years ago. The, then, Austrian Ambassador, came in one day looking for books by Austrian writers (for an exhibition or something, in conjunction with something or other at the Embassy). I told him that I did have a few European writers but I was not sure if any of them were Austrian. (I often don't care about the nationality of a writer when I buy or read a book.) He asked me if he could look around, and came back from the shelves in a short while with a bunch of books. In his hands were Hermann Broch, Max Brod, Sigmund Freud, Peter Handke, and there was Kafka! (I didn't have Elfride Jelinek then.) And he subsequently proceeded to educate me on why Kafka was Austrian ­-- one of the things being that he wrote in German. I told him that I always though he was Czech. He said I was mistaken. It was sometime after that I ran into the wife of the Czech Ambassador (who was an active member in a book club I was helping) and related this story to her. I thought she would laugh about it, but I was wrong. She was livid. She must have told my little story to her husband because the next time we chanced to meet (at another one of those functions) I was witness to some very diplomatic but decidedly barbed exchanges between the Ambassadors of two central European countries! I quickly found an excuse to run off elsewhere. I guess, when one comes from a country whose fate has, for centuries, been decided entirely by the 'major' powers, one could get quite sensitive. (BTW, Wikipedia has Kafka as an Austrian writer. Now is Rasa Sayang and satay Malaysian, Singaporean or Indonesian?)

One point I am not altogether sure I agree with Kundera, is his assertion that size and population does not matter in determining 'major' and 'minor' nations. He mentions how, though Spain and Poland have roughly the same population, the former is considered a world power but not the latter. But wouldn't that be ignoring the rest of the Spanish-speaking people in the world? In the Americas? I take the point of Iceland and how its massive collection of thirteenth and fourteenth century literature has been relegated to the 'archaeology of letters' and does not in any way 'influence world literature' (as they would have, if they had been written in English).

"The word 'kitsch' was born in Munich in the mid nineteenth century; it describes the syrupy leftover of the great Romantic period." He says that the concept of kitsch only arrived in France (and presumably the rest of the world) in the 1960s, that is, a hundred years later where the ultimate 'aesthetic reprobation' was (and still is) vulgarity -- from Latin vulgus, of the people. (There is an interesting, and sad, story involving Sartre and Camus after the latter won the Nobel prize in 1957 due to Camus' apparent 'vulgar' origins in Algeria.) From the evidence of giant fibreglass pitcher plants, lamp-posts with electric hibiscus light-bulbs, gold-plated palatial gates and Corinthian columns at residences, giant stores selling Emperors' furniture, and Kenny G, kitsch has met an entirely different form of vulgar, fallen in love and they are now happily married, and live in Malaysia.

In Getting into the Soul of Things, Kundera quotes Hermann Broch: "... the novel’s soul morality is knowledge; a novel that fails to reveal some hitherto unknown bit of existence is immoral ..." and adds his own comment further on, "... the novelist, unlike the poet or the musician, must learn how to silence the cries of his own soul ... the writing of a novel takes up a whole era in a writer's life, and when the labour is done he is no longer the person he was at the start."

What is a Novelist? A novelist is the person who lifts the curtain just a little bit, just momentarily, to let the reader have a peek at what is behind, the obvious cliche that is life,. Kundera says. A novelist is 'born from the ruins of his lyrical years.' "I have long seen youth as the lyrical age, that is, the age when the individual, focused almost exclusively on himself, is unable to see, to comprehend, to judge clearly the world around him." This he uses to differentiate between the poet and the novelist. He quotes from Proust: "Every reader as he reads is actually a reader of himself. The writer’s work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen himself without this book."

If I have to pick a favourite essay, it would have to be Aesthetics and Existence. When Kundera says: "I often think: tragedy has deserted us; and that may be our true punishment ...", I feel like I know what he feels. (I have not dismissed entirely the possible play of cognitive dissonance in taking this view.) When the entire world is seen in terms of black and white, in right and wrong, between the forces of good and those of evil, when we are constantly told of the 'grandeur in massacres' of innocents and of martyrdom, of indignant self-righteousness, the only real tragedy is the death of tragedy.

Kundera's essays do suggest and emphasise the Western, that is Greek, origins of the tragedy, and the resultant birth of the novel. If that were true in his definition, the Asian novel can only be an orphan at best, existing in a vacuum, but a bastard more likely. I can only speak of what I know. Didn't The Ramayana start as a tragedy, of a king's foolish (forgotten) promise to his favourite (third) wife, a lady of impeccable piety and virtue, who is cast as a villain and a monster only for trying to safeguard the interest of her only son, whose love for Rama is only exceeded by that for her own Bharath (who refuses the throne for himself but, instead, places the Sri Paduka on it as he awaits the return of the rightful king). It was a tragedy from the beginning, and one that leads to one after another, despite attempts by petty 'moralists' to conjure up 'divine' interpretations and tie themselves up in knots in the process. It is the tragedy that has breathed life into the tale through the millenniums, sparked numerous debates ,and kept the story alive till today.

Arguably, the greatest Indian tragedy is the Mahabaratha. Kunti upon giving birth to a child out of wedlock, Karna (later day 'morally correct' versions suggest some divine intervention by the gods and involvement of a form of parthenogenesis -- in fact, later day moralists, who rewrote whole chunks of the Mahabaratha, would imply that all her other five children were also conceived asexually given that Pandu, her husband, was impotent), and gives him away, drifts him down a river in a reed boat, ala Moses, without anyone's knowledge. Later Kunti's other son Arjuna and Karna meet and become sworn enemies. The battle between the two warriors (neither Arjuna nor Karna know that the enemy is his brother) is one of the highlights of the epic. It is a tragic tale that is alive and well even today and affects the very Indian psyche. (All this inspite of moralists who like to take sides, and the 'Conversation with God' bit, which most people don't even understand, inserted in-between by person or persons unknown centuries after the original was written -- not unlike political versions of Antigone, Kundera talks about, during WW2 in which Creon was cast as a wicked fascist against a 'young heroine of liberty' and thus completely ruining the tragedy). How many tales, and tragic Bollywood movies, have been written involving battles between long lost brothers, and a mother who couldn't speak the truth? (A bit of trivia: did you know Sukarno was named after Karna?)

History doesn't like tragedies. It prefers clear winners, it prefers the 'grandeur of massacres', even if it kills the very thing that makes us human, even if it kills us. Good and bad, we (like to) define these terms, quite clear, no doubt, somehow. But I was so much older then, I am younger than that now. (Apologies Robert Zimmerman).

Thai, Arab, Burmese, Kenyan and Japanese reading and writing

The literary pages on the internet in the last fortnight has been about the usual gripe about reading all over again, from all over the world. Here are a few of them. First in Thailand, The Nation reports Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand (PUBAT) president Risuan Aramcharoen as saying that, according to a survey conducted by the association in conjunction with the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, the Thai reading habit is to be way behind that of its neighbours. The report says that the Thais read only two books a year while Vietnamese read 60 and Singaporeans 45! (We don't think these are typos because they are mentioned twice in the article and average means every adult, youth and infant!) Where do they come up with these numbers?! If an average Vietnamese reads 60 books then the avid reader in that country should be reading over 200 to 250 books a year! Oh, come on.

A European Union report on reading habits found the Czech's averaged 16 books a year, the highest in Europe and probably in the world. Do Vietnamese and Singaporeans read three to four times more than that? Where the hell does the PUBAT president get his figures from? Bet he doesn't read and has no idea how long it takes to read a book. The same probably applies to the newspaper reporter who wrote the story. How glibly people throw numbers about. http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/10/18/headlines/headlines_30052875.php

Then there was the story about the Arabic writing debate as reported in the New Statesman. In his latest book, Why Are the Arabs Not Free ? Moustapha Safouan brings up the question of the type of Arabic writers should use. Apparently, the disparity between written and spoken Arabic is so great that writers can’t decide which to use. If he were to use the vernacular, it would be all but impossible for him to include sophisticated arguments and deep thoughts. But if he were to use the more formal written language he runs the risk of sounding pompous and rhetorical and, probably, will fail to reach the masses given the high level of illiteracy in the Arab world.

This is an old argument and it is also taking place in every country with a language police. We have heard it before. Some insist that there is only one way Bahasa can be written (though they have done several somersaults and back-flips and u-turns in the past fifty years and will probably continue to do so in the future) and everyone else not caring. Guess who will win? Are people writing in dialect incapable of projecting sophisticated emotions and deep thoughts? This appears like another excuse for keeping writing and reading in the hands of the elite. The inquisition ended in Europe several centuries ago but the debates appear to be still alive in many other parts of the world. http://www.newstatesman.com/200710180049

Then in Burma, 'Scratching poems on cell floors, or making ink from the brick powder of the walls, Burmese writers have managed to continue writing despite imprisonment and censorship,' Aida Edemariam reports in the Guardian

Yes, the feature is corny, mawkishly romantic and melodramatic to the max - but that's simply another example of 'past-colonial' writing for you. (She should sell her story to Hollywood. They love that kind of shit.) We all agree that it is a cruel and repressive regime but there is no need to get all gooey and mushy about it. Still, if you manage to get past all that, there are some interesting (and disturbing) facts in the article.

'International PEN, the global writer's association is currently campaigning for the release of nine writers serving sentences ranging from seven to 21 years. Aung Than and Zeya Aung, who wrote a book of verses called Daung Mann (or The Pride of the Peacock) received sentences of 19 years apiece last June for writing "anti-government poems'. Their printer received 14 years, and their distributor seven.

'The censorship office's 11 guidelines for what cannot be printed still include "anything that might be harmful to national solidarity and unity ... any incorrect ideas which do not accord with the times ... [and] any descriptions which, though factually correct, are unsuitable because of the time or the circumstance of their writing ...' (That sounds awfully familiar for some reason. Was there something like it in Amir's book?)

'Yet the regime has not been able to dent the liveliness of Burma's literary culture. Because of a system of education (that) runs through the monasteries, literacy levels - unlike in many similarly totalitarian states in the developing world - are high. The educational system, which forces the brightest high-school graduates into medicine, is also gender-blind ...’ (Well, that is good news at least.) http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330945136-118740,00.html

Then in Kenya, the debate has shifted to the quality of reading materials, the tired discussion on whether Kenyans read or do not read. Ms Muthoni Garland, a writer turned publisher, believes Kenyans love reading but there is lack of good reading materials from local writers. She says some (local) books are so appalling that few would spend their hard-earned money on them ... "While there are many good oral story-tellers who can captivate and entertain an audience, we are challenged when it comes to writing stories ..." Most publishing companies merely churn out textbooks. http://www.eastandard.net/archives/?mnu=details&id=1143976395&catid=316

And, finally, in Japan literary magazines, the 'home' of pure literature, are at a turning point. 'The magazines are welcoming young novelists as well as writers of entertaining works, and they are also opening up to talented people in other fields, including playwrights, film directors and illustrators ...' the report from Ashahi Simbun says. http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200710200056.html

Obviously we do not live alone in this world.

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

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.

Reading - the good news

After reading about Victoria 'Posh Spice' Beckham's infamous bimboesque pronouncements about how she has never read anything in her entire life, some of us must have though, quite resignedly, "So it is true, the world as we know it is coming to an end," though we always suspected that being dumb was cooler than being smart. And then what more with news of country after country after country reporting declines in readership? (Oh no, not Malaysia, of course! While others may require statistics and surveys to come up with figures, we have the sublime skills to pluck them out of the air. Viola! Was it two books per person per year the last time? I cannot wait for the a new announcement that says it is four, and then sixteen, and then thirty two ...)

But, apparently, all is not lost. Reading is not dying. A study done by the University of Manchester, Trajectories of time spent reading as a primary activity: a comparison of the Netherlands, Norway, France, UK and USA since the 1970s, which focussed 'on reading printed material as a primary activity, and excluding that conducted for the purposes of work or education' indicates that the reverse is actually the truth.

According to the report: '(In Britain the) average time women spent reading a book jumped from two minutes a day in 1975 to eight minutes in 2000. Men's reading time rose from three to five minutes a day.' Still lower than for television, but 'hey'!

As for other countries in the study, the increase was similar in Norway but in French it went up from 10 minutes a day up to 18. Wahhhh! Dey de champion. There was a slight decline in the Netherlands from 13 minutes to 12 (in 1995), while in the US the increase was from five to seven minutes.

Quoting one of the researchers, Dale Southerton, from Manchester's school of social sciences, a BBC report says: "there was a popular perception that people were reading less but all reading had gone up, reading books had gone up the most - and there were 17% more people reading them".

Here is some academic gobbledygook about how the study was conducted (according to the abstract which you can find on the internet): "(The study) examines four commonly held assumptions: that time spent reading has declined in all countries; that book reading has declined to a greater extent than it has for magazines and newspapers; that reading is increasingly concentrated in a small minority of the populations in all countries; and, that there is cross-national convergence of consumer behaviour in the practice of reading."

(Did you understand that? Good, because I didn't. What the hell is 'cross-national convergence' of consumer behaviour?)

Still this (also from the abstract) is interesting: "Generic trends of increased book and declining magazine and newspaper readership mask the differential impact of global consumer cultures in national contexts." Go figure.

Full story: http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/staff/Dale_Southerton/reading.htm
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6285740.stm

Then in another report from India (where else), The Times of India reports that, "Young Indian authors with their contemporary plots and ideas are fast becoming the favourites of readers across age groups …" and "The sale of books in the Indian segment has increased by 30 to 40 per cent in the past four or five years ..."

Other quotes from the report:

"The good news is that it is the youth who is displaying a keener interest in Indian authors ..."

"Out of every 10 books sold on a given day, four are by Indian authors ..." (Have you been to a Malaysian mega bookstore lately, or seen their - highly suspect - bestseller list?)

"Indians are now talking of serious issues tastefully and people are flocking to take a read ..."

"I prefer Indian authors simply because I can relate to the subjects, places, events and most importantly to their characters ..."

Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow_Times/Indians_are_the_write_choice_baby_/articleshow/2189502.cms

Wither Malaysian book industry

I was in Singapore on Monday, having lunch with some book industry people when the conversation inevitably turned to, surprise, books. What the hell is going on in Malaysia? Some said there is a warehouse sale every month. Others said there is one almost every other week. There are warehouse sales in Singapore but not like this.

The consensus was that whatever is happening does not bode well for the industry. But it is the industry that is doing it to itself! They are all eating from the same bowl what? And the bowl is only so big (or small).

As described by one of the book dealers during the lunch, "Warehouse sales are like steroid injections." How true. They solve the short-term problem of cash flow ... but the long-term side effects are less predictable. He said, "They can net about 200,000 in a warehouse sale, which will take them three months to make at the shops." I cannot be certain about that, but warehouse sales are about cash flow, or the lack of it. Warehouse sales used to be held once or twice a year for getting rid of old stock, a reasonably healthy situation. "Raman, what do you want me to do with all that old stock?" one CEO of a major book-chain said. True. No one is arguing with that. What the industry is grumbling about is that there is one practically every month (or, according to some, more often even than that), with brand new books being offered at huge discounts as loss leaders to attract customers, and with remaindered books brought in pallet-loads from Singapore, Australia, the UK and the US (in a practice known as dumping which is, probably, illegal in those countries). More than one book buyer has confessed that she would rather wait for the next sale. Besides once they have used up their budget for the month ...

From the conversation around the table one can see that the industry is jittery, very jittery. They know that this cannot go on, yet they are powerless and clueless to stop it. Everyone is accusing the others of spoiling the market. Meanwhile, they all join in the cannibal feast, oblivious of (or blinkering out) the potentially disastrous long-term effects. There could be a spectacular meltdown. (Singapore saw a relatively minor correction in 2000/2001, and in more recent times, Borders has had to exit the UK, unable to take the heat, and Waterstones is also, reportedly, consolidating.) One thing is for sure, Malaysian businesses don't learn from history, and they think it is only the 'other guy' who will fall. But all it takes is for one player to collapse, millions of ringgit worth of books will be returned to the distributors, dumping will take place every where, retail will slump, and ... There are only so many tom yam soup shops that can be set up in any city.

(Strangely, call it wishful thinking if you like, I think the independent niche player, especially those who add value in various ways, who have their loyal band of customers/clients, and who differentiate their products and services, will probably survive provided they stop moping and are quick off their feet. The big chains, for the large part, all sell the exactly same stuff with only superficial - and often sad- attempts at differentiation.)

The customer is obviously happy with the situation, and why not? Cheap books. Enjoy it while it lasts. I believe the next sale will be coming your way soon.

Libraries and Bookshops

I read two interesting stories this week. My interest was not so much what was in the stories as what was not.

The first one: 'I like my libraries stable, durable, serene. I am looking for adventure in the books, rather than in the building,' says Germaine Greer in The Guardian in a story titled Flashy libraries? I prefer to get my adventure out of the books not the building, and that if there was a lovable word for her it would be 'library'.

Even if my favourite when I was growing up was 'library' (I cannot remember what my favourite was then, to be honest), it was a word that was used often. There was a school library, of course, not big but interesting with lots of books donated by USIS at that time. Do they still do that? Then there was the Johore Bahru town library, a 15-minute bicycle ride from where I lived, next to the post office. It a simple boxy two-storey structure, packed with books. Whoever stacked the shelves knew how to buy them. Then every weekend we would drive into Singapore to use the National Library on Stamford Road. We were all card carrying members - my parents, my three siblings (the youngest was less than ten at that time) and me. And every weekend we would come back with at least two books apiece - they had a Tamil section for my mum.

I am going to tell you a story of Gay and Peter. (I may have told it before, but I think it is worth repeating.) When Gay married Peter and moved to Malaysia in the early seventies, they lived in a plantation in Teluk Anson. She says boredom almost killed her. Then she heard of the Kuala Lumpur library and became a member. The KL library at that time had a simple arrangement. Periodically (I cannot remember if it was weekly, fortnightly or monthly), the library would send Gay a selection of books (according to a list of preferences provided by her) locked inside a wooden box, by train. Gay would, on its arrival in Teluk Anson, pick out about twelve books that interested her, return some of the earlier ones, lock the box and return it to the Kuala Lumpur library by the return train.

This over 30 years ago and you may well ask, "What happened?" Well what happened, indeed. The last I heard the Johor Bahru library has been moved out of the city - to some place quite inaccessible, I would assume. The National Library on Jalan Tun Razak is a fine example. What were they thinking?! After spending millions, the book collection is sad, it is completely inaccessible, the wide open spaces inside the building could be converted to skating rinks and the roof into ski slopes. The Kuala Lumpur library at Dataran is an imposing structure, but was told it is open only during office hours, the last time I tried to get in. What is the point?

Going back to Germain Greer, 'I am looking for adventure in the books, rather than in the building.' What's wrong with a library in a rented bungalow, a shophouse or a even a mall. We are MallAsia, after all. (Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

Then the second story: In a story called World class marketing Neal Hoskins writes in The Guardian weblog: 'Foreign titles tend to get hidden away in bookshops, but I think their relatively exotic provenance could be a real selling point.'

Jees! How completely opposite to the situation in Malaysia, is that? Here it would read: 'Malaysian titles tend to get hidden away in bookshops, but I think their relatively exotic provenance could be a real selling point.'

An American couple that used to visit Silverfish Books often (they are back in the US now) used to be amazed at what a bizarre country this is. We have humungous bookstores all over Klang Valley (eight, the last I counted, Singapore has only two) in a country that, the government acknowledges, does not read, choker-block with books from the US and the UK. Malaysian titles, if stocked at all, would be in a bottom shelf, at the back of the store.

(They would also ask me why Malaysian newspapers don't review local book? I shall not go there, nanti merajuk pula with me - for my 'big mouth' - as I suspect at least one of them (or a group within) already is. Yes, this is a bizarre country.)