The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 17 Mar 2013 07:10 AM PDT When illness strikes, a real-life book nook cures all. MY study has always been my sanctuary. It has a mahogany bookshelf, a green sofa bed so large that one can almost swim in it, an Ikea desk, and two antiquated stools I bought from a flea market. On normal days, I love to slide myself down on the sofa bed and prop my feet on a stool. Minutes later, you will find me snuggling in, totally embraced by the bed as I read. In the past few days, however, the room has been a shambles. Books and documents scattered everywhere, and each time I go out of the room, I come back in with more papers and letters. And as I have been sick due to a stubborn viral infection, I can't do much tidying. I can only lie on my sofa bed, as I am now, lying down and writing. Strangely, it is at times like this, when I'm ill, that I become a more prolific reader. I finished a feminist fiction in two days, followed by a business book that deals with risk taking and the biological aspect of it. A Japanese short story collection was read like a picture book, and I found Kishore Muhbubani's The Great Convergence highly addictive and entertaining even though it deals with great complexities of the world. As I read, the birds were chirping outside in the garden, my head was pounding, my jaw hurt, and my limbs were weak, but I took in every word. In one secluded corner of my heart that the virus had missed, I giggled at the joy books bring. Books continue to pour in; they are books of my children who want to be with their mummy. My son's The Boy With The Striped Pyjamas, rests in one corner of the sofa bed to mark his territory. My daughter, always accommodating and giving, occupies the floor, her library books and her little drawings scattered at the foot of the sofa on a makeshift bedside table she has made for herself. This book-loving household ... I simply love it! My daughter reminds me of myself when I was 11 and I wanted so desperately a little desk on which to keep my books and stationery. I never had one until I spotted a little stool discarded by the roadside. I took it home, cleaned it, banged a nail into one of the legs so it wouldn't wobble, and placed it by my bed. On it I put my books. It was a makeshift desk, battered and stained, but I loved it, for it held the weight of my fervour for reading. It was the home of my friends: my books. Indeed so. Because I looked poor and nerdy, I did not have many friends. So in my hand I always had a book, though in my pocket I rarely had coins. The canteen in my secondary school offered scrumptious food but it was the air-conditioned library that I frequented most. Like a larger version of my study Down Under today, that library had endless rows of mahogany bookshelves and comfortable lounges so large for our size then that I had difficulty getting back up from them every time. In there, the boy on whom I had a crush was always reading the stock market pages, scrutinising closing prices of public listed companies as if he had a stake in some of them, while I was struggling to read Enid Blyton. He has gone on to become a medical doctor and I remain, still, a reader. The kookaburras are squawking this evening here in Sydney, broadcasting news of impending rain. The air is moist and the house is quiet with the kids out with their dad on the only night of the week when shops stay open until 9pm. Australians love and enjoy life. Having lived here for five years now, we too have learned to strike a good balance between wealth and health. So my husband recently bought a kayak, and he is now out buying my kids life vests so they can go on a fishing trip together this Sunday. "Oh, can I bring my books along, Dad?" my son asked, anticipating a positive reply. "Don't be a nerd, Jonn. When you are doing outdoor sports, enjoy nature. Books stay at home where they belong," my husband said, guffawing as he remembered the time when Jonn was caught reading a book at a sports carnival while his team mates were doing the long jump. On that day of sweltering heat, the cover of the book he was reading shimmered, and so did the sweat on his forehead. I found that endearing. It is about time I clean up the study, lest the books pile up and documents become misplaced. Never before has any corner of my house been so untidy. "But this is what we call living, mum. Sprucing up is showing off," my son sang to a Les Misérables tune. "Where did you learn that?" "From a movie. Still, I'll clean this place up, as it is your lair," he continued, helping me to put away my daughter's drawings. Yes. My study is my book nook. ■ A cup of tea, a good book (or two, or more), and a comfortable study are proving good remedies for Abby Wong's nasty viral infection. |
| Posted: 17 Mar 2013 07:08 AM PDT Prepare to feel your blood pressure rise when you read this book, as its contents are sure to get you riled up, one way or another. Bad Pharma LET'S get this out of the way right from the start: this is not a pleasant book to read. There is reading for pleasure, reading for entertainment, and then there is reading for knowledge or understanding. This book falls in the last category. Author Ben Goldacre is a well-known figure in the field of popular science. He is a medical doctor by training and regularly writes for The Guardian newspaper. His newspaper column on Bad Science eventually became a book. I first came across Goldacre a few months ago through his TED talk (and if you still aren't watching Ted Talks you owe it to yourself to visit ted.com – and while you are at it, get your kids onto ed.ted.com) and much of that talk is replicated, almost word for word, in this book. Since its publication late last year, Bad Pharma has been sending shockwaves through the pharmaceutical industry. It has even led to issues being raised in the British parliament. Like many readers I first started to learn about the unethical practices that are almost routine in the pharmaceutical industry when I read John Le Carré's book The Constant Gardener. In the book's afterword Le Carré says "by comparison with the reality, my story (is) as tame as a holiday postcard." Bad Pharma is certainly no holiday postcard, but neither is it an outright condemnation of the pharmaceutical industry. Goldacre pays homage to the many dedicated scientists active in the field and credits their dedication and hard work for saving countless lives. Equally he points out that many drugs are improving people's health and quality of life. But not all of them. He sets out his evidence in passionate but level-headed arguments. While Bad Pharma can be a little technical at times, it is well written and meticulously researched. He doesn't just point fingers at problems but analyses their causes and then offers constructive suggestions to solve them. The pharmaceutical industry makes profits of tens of billions of US dollars every year. Reactions from the industry to Goldacre's book range from outright denial to (unfounded) claims that the issues raised in Bad Pharma are historic and have already been resolved. Perhaps most telling is that the industry has been using some of the considerable resources at their disposal to engage in an unpleasant smear campaign striking out against the book and its author. One example of these unresolved issues is how Roche still refuses to release trial information on the anti-viral drug Tamiflu – a drug on which governments worldwide spent billions of dollars. Britain alone spent £500mil (RM2.4bil at today's rates) despite a lack of evidence about the drug's efficacy and lack of information on its possible side effects. The main crux of Bad Pharma is the issue of publication bias. Goldacre shows the extent of the collusion between pharmaceutical companies and scientists conducting clinical trials: 100% of clinical trials sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry produce favourable results. A pharmaceutical company is well within its rights to stop trials midway if results are not looking favourable. The results of these trials will never be published or shared. Evidence that may be harmful to the drug companies is routinely hidden or ignored. This pays forward to new work based on previous evidence and researchers may be completely unaware that research has shown that a certain drug might not actually work, or might even have harmful side-effects – including death. Not all clinical trials are industry sponsored, but even so "Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine," says Goldacre. Essentially, there is no way of knowing how much of the data obtained through clinical trials is hidden. Doctors have no way of making informed decisions when prescribing medication, and of course neither do patients. The pharmaceutical industry employs doctors to network with other doctors to recommend their drugs, without revealing that they are being paid to do so. Doctors are unknowingly prescribing medication to their patients that might not help them at all and often might make their illnesses worse. Goldacre cites plenty of evidence of this, including one case where an estimated 100,000 people died because trial data on a drug had been deliberately buried. Other victims are the trial volunteers, who act out of altruism and risk their own health for the betterment of humanity. They sacrifice their time, and often their health, to provide evidence that has a very good chance of being hidden if the trial results are not seen to enhance the drug companies' position. Goldacre calls for systemic reviews of all trial results, whether published or unpublished, favourable or unfavourable. Only then will doctors and patients have the information necessary to make informed decisions. Bad Pharma is essential reading for all doctors, those in the medical field, and anyone on long-term medication – but be warned, the truth is shocking and you might find yourself getting angry while you read this book. |
| Posted: 17 Mar 2013 07:05 AM PDT MALAYSIAN author Tan Twan Eng's novel, The Garden Of Evening Mists, beat the work of a Nobel laureate to win the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize earlier this week. Not bad for just his second book! Tan himself had not expected the result: "I was quite taken by surprise when my name was called – I had anticipated the prize would go to one of the other authors," he said in a quick e-mail shot off from Hong Kong where the prize had been announced on Thursday. "As Prof David Parker (executive director of the Asian Literary Prize, the award's organising body) said in his speech, it was one of the strongest shortlist in the prize's history. I thought Orhan Pamuk or Jeet Thayil would win," Tan, 40, added. Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel prize for literature for his body of work, which includes Silent House, the book that had been shortlisted for this prize (though it had been published nearly three decades ago, it appeared in English for the first time in 2012 and so was eligible for nomination). And Thayil's novel, Narcopolis, had also been shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Stiff competition indeed. At manasianliteraryprize.org, chair of judges Maya Jaggi said, "Our task as a jury was exceptionally difficult, as well as gratifying, because of the outstanding quality and originality of the novels in contention from across Asia, and the strength of our shortlist." The Garden, however, was hailed for its "stylistic poise and probing intelligence". "Taking its aesthetic cues from the artful deceptions of Japanese landscape gardening," Jaggi said, "it opens up a startling perspective on converging histories, using the feints and twists of fiction to explore its themes of personal and national honour; love and atonement; memory and forgetting; and the disturbing co-existence of cultural refinement and barbarism." Like Tan's first novel, 2010's The Gift Of Rain, which is set in 1930s Malaya, The Garden also delves into the past, revisiting the aftermath of the Japanese occupation during World War II. And like his first book that was praised for, among other aspects, evocatively capturing the details of its period, The Garden was also thoroughly researched. As Tan said in an interview at news portal The Huffington Post, "The Garden Of Evening Mists ... it's exactly what it says it is. There's a garden and it's in the mountains (the Cameron Highlands, specifically) so it gets misty. It's not false advertising." The one-time KL lawyer (now full time writer based in South Africa) even got his hands deep into soil despite being a complete city boy who had "zero interest in gardening" because gardens, specifically Japanese gardens and the philosophy behind them, are a key part of the novel. Jaggi describes what his efforts produced: "The layering of historical periods is intricate, the descriptions of highland Malaysia are richly evocative, and the characterisation is both dark and compelling. Guarding its mysteries until the very end, this is a novel of subtle power and redemptive grace." Parker had this to say about the book: "Achieved with the seemingly effortless poise of a remarkable fictional artistry, Tan Twan Eng's winning novel will be prized by all those who cannot resist the mastery of language." Naturally, Tan is hoping that the numbers of "those who cannot resist" the mastery of language will increase now: "The win will hopefully make more readers aware of the book, and once they're aware of it, hopefully they'll be interested to read it. The prize has given immense exposure to all of us shortlisted authors." And there's probably even more exposure in the near future for the winner, judging by past results: Last year's winning title, Please Look After Mom, by South Korean writer Kyung-sook Shin, had, by January this year, sold two million copies worldwide. The Man Asian Literary Prize began in 2007 and is given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English. The winner is awarded US$30,000 (RM93,630) with the winning translator, if there is one, receiving US$5,000 (RM15,605). – Malini Dias |
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