Index: Reading Lists

This is a list of reading lists featured on the blog, and will give you some very useful reading suggestions. For later posts which have not yet been archived, please click here.

• The Big Gay Read (21/8/05)
• The Transgender Reading List (23/11/05)
• Reading Map (23/11/05)
• Books of the Year (27/11/05)
• More Best Books (3/12/05)
• Richard and Judy Go Forth (15/12/05)
• My Friendly Guides to Japanese Fiction (7/9/05)
• Literature for the Sub-Literate (4/3/06)
• A Writer's Reading List (13/4/06)
• 1001 Novels You Must Read (19/4/06)
• Best Gay Read (12/5/06)
• Seeking The Great American Novel (15/5/06)
• All American for Animah? (26/5/06)
• An Easy Way In (1/6/06)
• Novels to Inspire Writers (12/6/06)
• More Best Holiday Reads (9/7/06)
• Custom Reads (19/7/06)
• Prose on Prose to Emulate (28/8/06)
• Best of British (9/10/06)
• The South-East Asia Reading List (2/11/06)
• Guilt-Free Low Lit (12/11/06)
• The Best of Best of Lists (1/12/06)
• Young Adult Fiction (12/12/06)
• My Best Books of 2006 (29/12/06)
• Looking Back, Looking Forward (30/12/06)
• Liar! Liar! Books on Fire! (26/1/07)
• The Most Precious Book (4/3/07)
• What Are Your Favourites? (1/4/07)
• Top Tens (13/4/07)
• Comparative Literature (23/4/07)
• Malaysia's Top 10 (29/4/07)
• Boys into Books (17/5/07)
• Books of the Times (6/6/07)
• Cult Fiction (15/6/07)
• Summer Reading for Every Kind of Reader (10/7/07)
• The Greatest Love Story? (13/8/07)
• Ten Best Reads About Asia (11/9/07)
• The Didn't-Make It-But-Excellent titles (15/9/07)
• An Australian Reading List (14/11/07)
• 100 Notable Books of 2007 (23/12/07)
• This Year's Best Fiction (2/12/07)
• Still More Best of Lists (16/12/07)
• Richard and Judy's Picks (28/1/08)
• Great British (5/1/08)
• The Art Garfunkel Reading List (22/1/08)
• The Slippery Eel of Literary Fiction (27/1/08)
• Tie-In Titles and Hollywood Respect (23/2/08)
• 50 Best Crime Novels (24/2/08)
• Literary London (26/4/08)
• 50 Best Cult Books (26/4/08)

Index: On Book Retailing

In General:
How Squidgy is Your Bookshop? (30/11/05)
More Love Among the Bookshelves (12/2/06)

Chain Bookstores:
Bookshop Snakes and Ladders (19/6/05)
A Quick Guide to Bookshop Chains (16/2/06)

Independent Bookstores:
Independent Bookshops (22/3/05)
Not Daunted by Squidginess (2/12/05)
A Bookshop that Thinks It's a Hotel, A Hotel that Thinks It's a Library (9/12/06)
Skoob is Books Drawkcab (17/1/06)
A Home for Bookworms (20/2/06)
Pay Less, Read More (25/2/06)
The Lure of the Independents (9/10/06)

Warehouse Sales:
(inder construction)

Unusual Ways of Selling Books
Books Among the Baked Beans (16/3/05)
Food for the Mind: By Vending Machine (23/8/05)
Teh Tarik Books (29/8/06)
Thinking Outside the Bookstore (4/11/06)

Index: On Censorship

About Censorship in General:

• Every Letter a Bullet, Every Word a Bomb (17/8/05)
• Authors on Censorship (2/3/07)
• Banned Books Become Most Widely Read! (28/11/07)

About Censorship in the US:

• Screams Over Scrotum! (21/2/07)
• Daddy, Daddy and Tango (25/5/07)

About Censorship in Malaysia:

• Censorship and Creativity (23/12/04)
• Ministry of Muffled Thinking (6/4/05)
• Banning Books (12/5/05)
• Malaysian Anti-Semitism (11/6/05)
• Banned Books (14/10/05)
• Contraband Reads (6/12/05)
• Brokeback Mountain (18/1/06)
• The Lost Communist (13/5/06)
• Too Many Amirs and Two Minutes of Fame (23/5/06)
• Banned Unbanned Banned (30/5/06)
• More Banned Books (19/6/06)
• Burgess ... Banned? (23/8/06)
• The Malayan Trilogy Run-Around (24/8/06)
• Things Surely Falling Apart (4/9/06)
• No Book Market for Marriage Market (11/9/06)
• What you Already Know (13/9/06)
• Other Bannings (13/10/06)
• Banned Book of the Day (18/10/06)
• The Bane of Banning (25/10/06)
• Midnight's Children Banned ... and a Hundred Others (1/11/06)
• Banned Books Malaysia 101 (5/11/06)
• The Complete Official Lists (7/11/06)*
• Disallowed? (4/12/06)
• Offensive Publications? (4/12/06)
• Books ... or Ikan Bilis? (9/11/05)
• Book in KKDN Limbo (11/1/07)
• Government Bans 18 Books (19/1/07)
• Censorship in UKM? (20/2/07)
• Book on Kampong Medan Clash Banned (22/2/07)
• Turning off Village Radio (28/2/07)
• Earthly Powers (10/3/07)
• May 13 Book Seized (15/5/07)
• Intimidasi (18/5/07)
• Geraldine Brooks Banned ... and 36 Others (6/6/08)
• Karen Armstrong ... Recorded Elsewhere (17/6/07)
• "Picked Up" vs "Seized" ... What a Difference a Verb Makes (20/6/07)
• Copies of Qur'an Banned in Malaysia (15/7/07)
• The Complete Ghoul (21/9/07)
• Children's Books Seized (14/1/08)
• More on the Seized Children's Books (20/1/08)
• Remembering Mr. Wilson (20/1/08)
• 11 More Books on Islam Banned (30/1/08)
• Hands Off the Holy Books (8/2/08)
• Readers Want Answers (29/4/08)
• Postcards for Protest (4/5/08)

* My posts on the Manuscripts Don't Burn blog

About Censorship in other South-East Asian Countries

• Become a Fully Certified Censor (14/6/06) (About Brunei)
• Just Be Thankful (8/1/08) (About the treatment of authors in Myanmar, Cambodia and Iran.)
  

Index: On the Craft of Writing

Just Do It!
Bag Lady in the City of Fiction (2/6/05)
When to Stop Making Excuses (10/10/05)
Reprise: Air and Light and Time and Space (26/10/05)
The Secret Author (3/9/06)
You're a Writer, Nathan (21/12/07)
Extracting Stories (9/9/07)

Why Write?
Orhan's Medicine (28/10/06)
Frantic Fanarcists (17/4/07) (About Neil Gaiman)
Hari's Secret (11/7/07)

The Creative Process and Finding Ideas
Kobayashi on Haiku (30/3/05)
Crazy Dumbsaints Unite (25/3/05)
Where Do Little Stories Come From, Mummy? (23/07/05)
Litt-craft: the Art of Writing Recklessly (13/3/05)
From Fragment to Novel (31/5/07) (About Michael Ondaatje)
Extracting Stories (9/9/07)
Authors - Protect Your Space (24/11/08)

Drawing on Real Life Relationships for your Writing
The Vampire and the Alimony Whore (16/5/06)
Fictionalising Family (19/5/06)
Why She Writes (5/3/07) (About Beryl Bainbridge)
Castro on Writing (24/4/07)
Yasmin has Something to Tell You (8/3/08)

Tools of the Trade (Pen, paper, typewriter, computer, writing desk etc.)
Whose Desk? (11/2/07)
Writing by Voice ... and by Mobile Phone (8/1/07)
Software Tools for Writers (10/6/07)
Another 50th Anniversary (30/8/07) (about Keroac's "scrolls")

Yes, But You've Got to Practice
Ian Banks' Advice (8/2/07)

Creating Characters
Bringing Characters to Life (31/5/07)
Characters in Just a Few Brushstrokes (28/1/08)
His Inestimable Self (9/2/08)

Naming Your Characters (and Yourself)
What's in a Name? The Curse of Scrofa (2/7/05)
A Character By One's Own Name (21/11/07)

Writing Dialogue
Perverted Commas? (17/1/07)

Voice
It Jist Comes Oot (11/8/07)

Writing About Memory/ Flashbacks
Enright and the Workings of Memory (4/12/07)

Theme
What's Your Theme? (22/11/07)

Researching
Home on the Range (13/12/04)

Getting Past the Critic
Closet 7/6/05
That Pesky Inner Critic (16/9/05)
In Praise of Truly Awful Writing (26/9/05)
On Writer's Block (30/1/06)
Twaddle is Good Too (10/3/06)
Writers Who Can't ... or Won't (3/5/06)
Writing the World (5/11/07)

Writing with a Partner
Writing in Tandem (20/9/07)

Style
Neurological Opiates and Agatha Christie (19/12/05)
Lexical Choices (15/12/2007)
His Inestimable Self (9/2/08) (Peter Carey's comments about punctuation.)

Audience
Who Do You Write For? (11/4/06)
The Ideal Reader (29/10/06)

Reading for Writers
You are What you Read (21/7/05)
A Writer's Reading List (13/7/06)

Health Tips for Writers
Writing that Marathon (6/11/05)

Writing Different Genres
Stories that Go Bump in the Night (4/9/07)

Getting Rejected/ Accepting Criticism
Rejected Not Dejected (13/7/05)
A Post on Kindness and Criticism Written in Horribly Clashing Metaphors (26/12/08)

Revising
Romesh Revising (24/3/06)

Proofreading
Nuke Them Darn Apostrophes (4/7/07) (About Cormac Mc Carthy)
Where are all the Blooper Catchers? (15/8/07)
Daphne's Rap on the Knuckles (2/9/07)

Submitting Manuscripts
From the Lips of an Editor (19/10/06)

Backing Up Your Writing
Ibsen in the Afternoon (24/7/06)

Writers Talking About How the Process Works for Them
Word Weavers (12/10/06)
Anita Desai's Advice to Writers (15/10/06)

Working with an Editor
When an Editor has to be Hands Off (23/9/07)

Doing the Nanowrimo
Nanowrimo (19/10/04)
Thoughts on Winning Nanowrimo (30/11/04)
NaNoTechnology (21/8/05)
Agent Smith Endorses Nanowrimo (6/10/05)
The Jesper Fanclub (29/10/05)
At the Starting Line Waiting for the Pistol (31/10/05)
Sit Vacant for Nanowrimo ML (25/8/06)
Go, Nanuts, Go! (31/10/06)

Blogging to Develop Writing Skills
Blogs Help Develop Writers (5/1/08)

Doing a Creative Writing Course
Ian Banks' Advice (8/2/07)

(Last updated 8/3/07)

Index: On Creative Writing Courses

Can Creative Writing Be Taught?
Creativity Bootcamp (28/9/04)
So You Want to Write Like Ian McEwan? (26/4/05)
The Painful Truth (20/10/05)
Prose ... on Prose to Emulate (28/8/06)
Anita Desai's Advice to Writers (15/10/06)
It's Okay to be Ambitious (4/11/06)

My Creative Writing Courses
Creative Writing Course (28/1/05)
The Course of Course (4/3/05)
The Last Night (8/4/05)
After the Storm (27/4/05)
Creative Writing Course Investigated (20/5/05)
Authenticity (22/6/05)
Writing Buddies (18/8/05)
Writing Crap and Loving It (30/8/06)

Other Benefits of Creative Writing Courses
Creative Writing as Therapy (9/5/05)

(Index last updated 5/11/06)

Index: On the Short Story

The Short Story

• Brief Encounters (3/10/04)
• Hillaire Belloc on the Short Story (1/11/04)
• A Shot for the Shorts (22/5/06)
• Save the Short Story Campaign (10/7/05)
• Goddess of the Literary Bordello (25/8/05)
• Food for the Mind - By Vending Machine (23/8/05)
• Small Gems (25/8/05)
• Interpreting the Story (8/1/06)
• Summer Stories (27/7/06) (some recent short fiction online)
• Resourcing the Story (20/12/06)
• Christmas Fiction (25/12/07)
• The Spirit of the Short Story, The Spirit of the Place (16/4/07)
• A Question of Length (11/5/07)
• Summer Shorts (13/8/07)
• The Passing of Grace Paley (25/8/07)
• When the Short Story Grows Up, It Wants to be a Novel (18/9/07)
• Filmmaker Takes Short Story Award (15/9/07)
• Darling Little Instruments (3/11/07)
• Believing in Your Story Collections (7/5/08)
• A Short Story is Like a First Date, A Novel Like a Marriage (23/06/08)
  

Writing Short Fiction

• Where Do Little Stories Come from, Mummy? (23/7/05)

Short Story Collections

• Domestic Women and Short Story Land (25/3/05)
• The Sound of the Future (7/5/06) (about Hari Kunzru's Noise)
• B-Reef Readings (28/11/05) (about Romesh Gunasekeran's Monkfish Moon)
• Between Pussy and Elephant: Gripping Social Reality (19/12/05) (about Rattawat Lapcharoensap's Sightseeing)
• Quirky Shorts (20/1/06) (about Etgar Keret's The Bus Driver who wanted to be God)
• License to Spin (6/7/05) (about Peter Ho Davies' The Ugliest House in the World)
• Decongestion Charge (1/7/06)
• Good Prayers, Great Stories (24/8/06) (about Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers)
• Yiyun's Story (7/12/06)
• Little Book of Delights (31/8/06) (about Paul Auster's Auggie Wren's Christmas Story)
• The Spirit of the Short Story, the Spirit of the Place (16/4/07)
  
• Summer Shorts (13/8/07)
  
• Very Well Versed (15/8/07) (about the British Council's New Writing 15)
• The Passing of Grace Paley (25/8/07)
  
• When the Short Story Grows Up it Wants to be a Novel (18/9/07)
  
• Filmmaker Takes Short Story Award (25/9/07) (about Miranda July)
  
• Daring Little Instruments (3/11/08)
  
• Wena's Lions (5/2/08) (a review of Wena Poon's Lions in Winter)
  

Short short stories /Microfiction

• Write a Nanotale (24/2/07)
• Short, Shorter, Shortest (6/3/07)
• Sufian's Mission (30/3/08)
  

Malaysian Short Story Collections

• Giving Writers a Chance (18/5/05) (my editing experience)
• Welcome Reissues (3/7/05) (about Lloyd Fernando's stories)
• The Book Project (30/7/05)
• Best of Silverfish (4/4/06)
• The Birth of Neohikayat (14/4/06)
• SNW6 - Best Yet? (24/1/07)
• Another Dark City Ride of Terror (24/11/07)
• Guat's Old House (27/2/08) (a review of Chuah Guat Eng's collection of stories)
  
• Sufian's Mission (30/3/08) (about Sufian Abas' first short story collection)
• Silverfish's Full Stop (7/8/08) (review of Silverfish New Writing 7)
  

(Index last updated 6/4/08)

Index: Building a Nation of Readers

The Problems

• Depressing Picture of Book Sales (13/8/06)
• The Reading Habits of Malaysia : Some Stats (28/8/06)

Reading Campaigns and Initiatives in Malaysia

• Money Where the Mouth Is (20/11/05)
• A Nation that Reads ... (16/7/06)
• A City for Books? (4/8/06)
• Raising Rural Reading (17/9/06)
  

Reading Campaigns Elsewhere

Getting Kids to Read

• The EVO Approach (23/10/05)
• Why Schools Fail to Produce Readers (16/1/07)
  

Index: On the Local Writing Scene

• Issues
  

• Telling Tales (21/3/05)
• Giving Writers a Chance (18/5/05)
• Writers' Centre (19/5/05)
• A Lazy Colony of Silverfish? (15/5/05)
• Pitching In (30/6/05)
• Writers Don't Say No-one does Nuffink for You (30/6/05)
• Kutu Kutu (6/2/05)
• The Book Project (30/7/05)
• Toyols Steal the Reading Public (29/7/05)
• Representing Thailand on the Page (2/8/05)
• Recognising Local Writers (19/8/05)
• South of the Border, West of the Lit World (28/7/05)
• Is There a Market for Malaysian Fiction in English? (21/8/05)
• Write in English? Don't be So Disloyal! (22/8/05)
• Dream Ink at the Singapore Writers' Festival (5/9/05)
• The Silverfish Bug (18/9/05)
• Kee Principles (17/9/05)
• Local Writers' Manifesto (20/9/05)
• The Literary Landscape of Singapore (7/10/05)
• A Toast to Mr. Wong (13/10/05)
• Local Authors Outsell the Da Vinci Code (26/2/05)
• New Voices (24/3/06)
• International Literary Society for KL (4/7/06)
• Malaysian PEN? (5/7/06)

• Readings by Local Writers (at Darling Muse/ 67 Jalan Tempinis 1/ Maya Gallery/ La Bodega/ Silverfish)

• Readings at Darling Muse (5/1/05)
• Oh Darling Muse! (9/1/05)
• Saturday Perambulations (20/3/05)
• A Surfeit of Readings (17/4/05)
• A New Home for Words (22/5/05)
• 67 Jalan Tempinis 1 Strikes Again (22/6/05)
• Brown Sugar and Special Branch (26/6/05)
• Winning Wimmin (31/7/05)
• Captured! (1/8/05)
• Occasional Nudist Pumps Deltoids On the Road to Elvis (25/9/05)
• Painted Piggies, Winging Words (30/9/05)
• Nice One, Cecil (14/11/05)
  
• Inky Little Fingers (19/11/05)
  
• Rain and Readings (20/11/05)
• Pictures from Reading at Maya Gallery (24/3/06)
• Shirley Shines (25/3/06)
• Saturday in Photos (21/5/06)

• MPH Writer's Circle:
  

• MPH Writers' Circle (16/1/05)
• Distribution (20/2/05)
• Saturday Perambulations (20/3/05)
• Print on Demand (22/5/05)
• Tash Dash (18/6/05)
• One Aw-Some Day (26/6/05)
• Drifting Characters in Search of a Plot (16/7/05)
• Write a Novel in a Month (5/8/05)
• NaNoTechnology (21/8/05)
• Short Notice Writers' Circle (17/3/06)
• Round and Round in Circles (19/3/06)
• Saturday in Photos (21/5/06)
  
• Sneaking in the Fiction Agenda (16/6/06)
  
• Generating Income from Fiction (18/6/06)
• Self-Serving Great Grandmother's Dishes (15/7/06)
  

What This Space is For

This site is going to be a place for me to post the indexes I've compiled for posts on my main blog bibliobibuli. I may also use it to archive longer articles if I feel that they are in danger of disappearing from cyberspace, as well as useful reading lists.

It's my storage space, in other words.