Woots! Tan Twan Eng's Gift of Rain has made it to the Man Booker Longlist! He's up against a strong crowd with the likes of Mohsin Hamid and Ian McEwan, but I'm certainly rooting for Mr. Tan.
(Via Eric Forbes).
(Via Eric Forbes).
The bane of every book collecting person: the Silverfish. DUN DUN DUNNNNN!!! How to get rid of them? If one book has been infected, place it inside an air-tight plastic bag along with some silica gel desiccant. The silica gel is important to get rid of moisture, because you will now place the sealed plastic bag with the book in it inside the freezer. Leave it in there for a couple of days so that those bugs catch their death of cold. If you're feeling particularly paranoid, (like I usually am) feel free to leave the plastic bag in there for a week. If they're not dead, then you might likely have an infestation of zombie silverfish , which is out of the scope of this blogpost. But what if a whole colony of silverfish decided to invade your whole bookcase? Then you have to make sure you're ready for war. Place a generous amount of silica gel (or if you can find it, diatomaceous earth) behind your books at the back of the shelves so that moisture levels remain low.
I am sure they're just drawn by the exoticism(sic) of Tan's novel. Its actually poorly edited and could have done with less description of food and the fauna/flora of Penang ad neuseum. It comes across like a mishmash of Clavell and Mishima. Writing and hiding behind a half chinese/english character and writing about he knows just shows that he's hardly stretched as a writer, much less as a novelist
ReplyDeletePoorly edited? I must check again.
ReplyDeleteAs for exoticism... nothing wrong with that! Isn't that Asia's biggest export next to Apple computers and Nike shoes? :p
as for the food, this is the most food obsessed nation on earth (and rightly so!) so the authors are going to reflect that i think
ReplyDeletei also think authors here feel a need to fill in background detail that western readers and readers elsewhere might not know or understand.
why is he "hiding" behind this character? seems to be a v. useful way of exploring belonging vs. dislocation
It's his first novel and he's on the Booker Longlist, so I think he's doing well enough. I think the novel reads well and the exoticism doesn't bother me. Makes Malaysians more interesting! :-) Half-English semi-Chinese, whatever lah! What comes across is how HUMAN Philip is, so who cares if he's half this and half that.
ReplyDelete