The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2011 06:45 AM PST The Unforgotten Coat Author: Frank Cottrell Boyce Publisher: Candlewick Press, 112 pages WHEN two Mongolian brothers join Julie's Year Six class, they declare her their "Good Guide", making her responsible for getting them settled into their new surroundings. Julie accepts her role and carries out her "duties" with enthusiasm. The more she gets to know the brothers, the more she wants to know about them and their background, and the mysterious "demon" they say they are being followed by. What she doesn't expect is what happens next! My Name Is Elizabeth Author: Annika Dunklee Illustrator: Matthew Forsythe Publisher: Kids Can Press, 24 pages Elizabeth loves her name. All of it. She doesn't like Liz or Lizzie, Beth or Bess, Betty or Betsy. It's "Elizabeth Alfreda Roxanne Carmelita Bluebell Jones" she declares finally, unable to take any more presumptuous shortening of her beloved moniker. But just "Elizabeth" is fine too. Kids and adults can learn a thing or two from this picture book – don't shorten someone's name unless you've been told to! Daughter Of Smoke And Bone Author: Laini Taylor Publisher: Little, Brown Books For Young Readers, 432 pages Karou is a beautiful teenager with blue hair and a gift for drawing who lives in the in the Czech Republic. She attends art school in Prague and her sketchbooks are filled with images of monsters that her friends believe she's just dreamed up. But Karou was, in fact, raised by chimaera and is used to travelling between worlds and realities. Lately, she's begun to question who, or what, she really is, and when a mysterious winged stranger enters her life, the shocking truth of her identity is finally revealed. Wildwood Author: Colin Meloy Illustrator: Carson Ellis Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 560 pages Prue McKeel's ordinary life turns extraordinary when her baby brother is carried off by a murder of crows into the mysterious forest on the edge of Portland. This is the Impassable Wilderness and Prue must venture into its dark depths to save her brother. She sets off with her friend Curtis, and they soon find themselves in a bleak, strange and cruel world, caught up in the struggle for the freedom of this wilderness called Wildwood. A Few Blocks Author/Illustrator: Cybele Young Publisher: Groundwood Books, 48 pages When Ferdie drags his feet on the way to school, his big sister, Viola, encourages him by cooking up tall tales in which he features as a character. It all involves taking a few more steps in the right direction, but after they've recovered treasure, fought a dragon and saved a princess, it's Viola's turn to drag her feet. Now Ferdie has to use his imagination to get his sister to school. Can he do it? Bumble-Ardy Author/Illustrator: Maurice Sendak Publisher: HarperCollins, 40 pages Poor Bumble-Ardy is a young pig whose birthday is always forgotten by his parents – on purpose! After he turns eight, his family end up being eaten and Bumble goes to live with his kindly Aunt Adeline. When his ninth birthday rolls around, Bumble decides to throw a party. He invites all his friends who raise a real ruckus and enrage Aunt Adeline. Will Bumble live to see his 10th birthday? The Aviary Author: Kathleen O'Dell Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 32 pages Twelve-year-old Clara Dooley's mother is a servant to the old matriarch of the Glendoveer family, and Clara has lived at Glendoveer Mansion for as long as she can remember. When old Mrs Glendoveer dies, the family's many secrets start coming to light and Clara finds herself compelled to get to the bottom of the mysteries harboured by the house, including the murder of the children who were kidnapped years ago – and the strange message that the birds in the aviary seem to be trying to give her. Chime Author: Franny Billingsley Publisher: Dial, 368 pages Briony has been taught to hate herself. After all, she is a selfish, jealous girl and it's her fault her twin sister is ill and their stepmother is dead. To crown everything, Briony can see and speak to spirits. This makes her a witch, and Briony feels she deserves to be put to death as one. But then she meets golden-eyed Eldric, and his kindness and friendship change everything and makes Briony want to live. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2011 06:40 AM PST Fantastical scenes of murder and mayhem lend this book a subtle touch of humour. Just don't take everything seriously. Day Of The Oprichnik Author: Vladimir Sorokin Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 191 pages FOUND my way downstairs and drank a cup of tea. And looking up, I noticed I was late. I then proceeded to put a severed dog's head on my red, government-issued, Chinese-manufactured Mercedov car and spent the rest of the day killing enemies of the state, assaulting their wives, sending their children to orphanages, ingesting a hallucinogenic fish, before retiring to a plush bath-house for an orgy that gives new meaning to the term 'organs of the state'. In essence, the paragraph above summarises a day in the life of Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, Vladimir Sorokin's narcissistic, cold-hearted, Tsar-obeying protagonist in Day Of The Oprichnik. Set in Russia in 2028, Day Of The Oprichnik is a darkly humorous novel with a dystopian bent. However, Sorokin's near-futuristic society represents a sort of mutant amalgamation of 500 years of the worst aspects of Russian and Soviet life. In this near-futuristic setting, Russia is no longer ruled by the Soviets (the "Red period") or the cowboy capitalist oligarchs (the "White period") of the immediate post-Soviet era. In Sorokin's hands, his Russia is ruled once again by an all-powerful Tsar. Russian political life is dominated by the Tsar and its soul is governed by the newly ascendant Russian Orthodox Church. The novel centres around Andrei, whom we follow throughout the course of day, from the moment he wakes from a drunken stupor to the moment he passes out because of drinking too much, and a bunch of unwholesome activities in between. As the title suggests, Andrei is an oprichnik, a Russian term which Sorokin describes as the recreation of Russia's first KGB, an organisation created in the 16th century by Ivan the Terrible. The oprichnik of Ivan the Terrible's time tortured and killed the Tsar's enemies, both real and imagined, dressed in black robes, and wandered around carrying the severed heads of dogs in order to "sniff out reason". In Sorokin's 2028 version, the oprichnik still dress in black, but they mount the heads of dogs on their government-issued cars (which we are reminded, in more graphic detail in the novel, are manufactured in neighbouring China). Though during the time of the Tsar's rule Russia thrived in the field of the arts, in 2028 Russia, the Tsarist government recalls the era of Stalin and the worst excesses of the Soviet state. Puritanical social structures and the zealous oversight of the arts and literature recalls the obsessive policing of the arts and literature during the Soviet regime. One cannot help but wonder just what Sorokin is trying to convey to his readers about his vision of Russia in the 21st century and of Russia today (as opposed to 2028). As an example of Soviet-era debauchery, Sorokin goes into great depths in the bathhouse orgy scene, whereby Andrei and a dozen or so of his fellow male oprichniks partake in a weird sexual ritual in which they are linked together like a caterpillar! As with all translated works, some of the original meaning may have got lost in translation, in particular, some of the references Sorokin makes. Readers who are familiar with Russian literature, history and politics or who can read and understand Russian may find Day Of The Oprichnik more accessible than those who aren't au fait with the country and its history. I am sure the novel is a lot funnier in the original Russian and while hints of humour remain in this translated text, the original work would probably better display it. And as I am not very familiar with Russian politics, many of the snide remarks made by Sorokin about present day Russia did not make much of an impact on me, which is a shame. Those who are familiar with Sorokin's works will not be easily offended by the graphic details documenting the rape, pillage, murder, bribery, sexual orgies and easy access to vodka as described in the novel. However, if you are, like this reviewer, a first-timer, the debauchery described might seem a tad harsh and in your face. But if you keep your sense of humour and not take everything at face value, you'll have a better experience. I mean, there is no way that Andrei can be that sexually active and still move around unaffected after downing countless tumblers of vodka! Day Of The Oprichnik is not a novel that would appeal to mainstream tastes; it is for a niche group of readers. For those who want to have a whimsical taste of Russia, I highly recommend Day Of The Oprichnik. It will make you want to discover more about the great and turbulent nation that is Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 18 Nov 2011 06:40 AM PST Here's a treasure trove of postcards that provides rare insight into life in a key Malayan state in the early days. Perak Postcards: 1890s-1940s Authors: Abdur-Razzaq Lubis, Malcom Wade and Khoo Salma Nasution Publisher: Areca Books, 336 pages DID you ever wish you could see what Malaysia looked like a century ago? Well, instead of wishing for a time-travel machine, you can now turn to Perak Postcards: 1890s-1940s and follow its expertly guided tour of the towns, industries, and people of that state in the past. This unusual, beautifully produced book uses rare images of streets and worksites to lead readers into an earlier time when Perak was at the centre of economic development on the Malay peninsula. It offers readers not only visual images but a well-written, sophisticated text that pairs contemporary commentary with details on the sources of the postcards and the paths the missives travelled. Postcards are not just pictures with a stamp. They combine business and pleasure, circulating public and personal information. Photographers, printers, merchants, writers and readers cooperated through these cards to tell stories about Perak, selecting what they wanted to be seen and remembered. Parents sent pictures of Ipoh buildings where they worked to children living in Britain. A Mandailing sent his brother a card showing the main street of Papan, where he lived. The urge to connect one's own experience to a particular site or space crossed ethnic and social lines. Cards also travelled long distances. Some of the best images were printed and hand-tinted in Europe. One picture of the Perak Club in Taiping (48b), whose publisher was the Penang photographer Adolph Kaulfuss, was printed in Germany, then shipped back to Penang and sold to Tan Khai Sai, who sent it to a collector in Stockholm in 1914. Postcards brought Perak into a global circulation of images and information. Perak Postcards takes its readers on a memorable journey through Taiping, Kuala Kangsar, Teluk Anson and Ipoh, as well as the small towns of the Kinta Valley. Although the images have a static quality, imposed by the photographic technology of that time, their overwhelming message is that of modernity. Automobiles share roads with bicycles and pedestrians, and shophouses are overtopped by street lamps and electricity wires. Railway stations, telegraph offices and clock towers are iconic images of the early 20th-century Perak townscape, and a series of images with dates show the evolution of the built environment. A particularly fine series surveys the campus and activities of the Sultan Idris Training College. Photographers and consumers identified their towns with the architecture and institutions of modernity that were brought to the region along with colonial rule. What we might see nowadays as "heritage", they regarded with pride as progress. Artistic prints of electric power stations, steam launches and pontoon bridges communicate some of the power and appeal those subjects had for contemporaries. Those few images that portray Perak as an exotic place inhabited by orang asli offer a convenient and clear measurement of the social distance separating these forest peoples and the urbanised senders of postcards. Rare early images, printed in Singapore and Penang, show different types and stages of tin mining. Captions point to the differences among tin washing, open-cast mining, gravel pumps, and dredges, whose technologies' increasing scale dwarfed the crews of Chinese, Malay and Europeans labouring in their shadows. Women, rarely seen in these postcard images, appear as dulang washers and gleaners. Small details – the hats, wicker baskets and hoes of the mine workers – give a sense of the weight of their physical labour in the sun. The photographs depict brilliantly the material culture of work within this particular technological setting. They also convey a sobering ecological message of environmental devastation. Deforested slopes, deep open pits, and piles of sand and gravel surround machinery and men. The landscape of Perak as transformed by its inhabitants also emerges as a subject in these cards. The appeal of these images extended well beyond the European community in Perak. Not only did Chinese collectors hoard and circulate postcards, but occasional hand-written messages in Tamil or Jawi script testify to their use by Malays and South Asians. A small collection of cards owned and sent by a family of Mandailing penghulus (headmen) shows some of the ways in which cards helped educate Muslims to communicate with one another. Comfortably multilingual, this family sent messages sometimes in English, sometimes in Jawi script or Romanised Mandailing. They sent good wishes and asked for family news. Raja Haji Muhammad Yacob, the first Malay photographer in Perak, had one of his photos printed on a card which he sent to his brother with Hari Raya greetings. Another card requested a holiday meeting using a picture of Ipoh's Anderson School, which the writer hoped would serve as a "remembrance". While some of the images chosen were of Malay villages or houses, others depicted a familial group of urban streets and public buildings. Abdur-Razzaq Lubis, Malcolm Wade, and Khoo Salma Nasution jointly produced this fine book, each adding particular expertise and enthusiasms. Wade, an avid collector and postal historian, contributed most of the images and details on Perak post offices, post marks and publishers. Abdur-Razzaq, an expert in Mandailing history, introduces the volume with a lively tour of the difficult, early days of the postal system, when elephants and pony carts carried mail around the state and tried not to attract the attention of armed robbers. Khoo Salma, the author of several books on Penang and the Kinta Valley, helped produce the excellent descriptions of photos and local scenery. Publisher Areca Books is to be congratulated on the high quality of the reproduced images, cover and binding. The work demonstrates the sophistication as well as the importance of heritage activities and activists in Perak, whose detailed local knowledge has reclaimed these remarkable images. This book deserves wide circulation. n Lynn Hollen Lees is Professor of History and Vice Provost for Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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