High Browse Online

HAPPENIN’ . programmes + events

There will be TWO book discusions in June!

For the first book discussion, meet the author herself Suchen Christine Lim as she discusses on her award winning book “Fistful of colours“.

Date/time: Friday, 4.00pm, 20 June 2008
Venue: The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Community Library
Author in appearance: Ms Suchen Christine Lim
Co-facilitator: Mrs Clara Chow
Title/author of book: Fistful of Colours by Suchen Christine Lim
Call no. of book: SING English LIM

What the book is about: It is a novel about characters living in Singapore during the 80s and the struggle to find their identity in the modern world. The main character, Suwen who is a daughter of an opera fah-dan and whose stepfather was a rickshaw puller whose fate changed due to him adopting the surname of a rich business tycoon.As she struggles to find herself and the artist in her, she delves into Singapore’s past (with the help of her friends Jan, Zul, Nica and Mark as well as Ah Siew Chay, her servant) - where the whites ruled and Asians were mere second-class citizens in their own country. Other issues being examined include gender discrimination, racial discrimination and love.

About the author: Su-chen Christine Lim (b. 1948, Malaysia) is the first winner of the Singapore Literature Prize (Fiction) in 1992, for her novel, A Fistful of Colours. Lim, who has four novels to her name, is also the writer of short stories, children’s stories, students’ textbooks and a play. She was the International Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa, USA, in 2000.

UPDATE - 21 June 2008: Here are some photos from the book discussion session.

The second book discussion is one of this year’s READ! Singapore 2008 titles, The Namesake by Lahiri Jhumpa. The details:

Date/time: Friday, 4.00pm, 27 June 2008
Venue: The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Community Library
Facilitator: Mrs Nasreen Ramnath
Title/author of book: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Call no. of book: English LAH

What the book is about: Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli are recent immigrants to Boston from India in 1968 when they give birth to their first child, a son. Their son ends up with the pet name of Gogul, when his “good name” never arrives from India. Gogul despises his name and grows up as American as he can while his parents cling to their Bengali past while living what appears to be a typical American suburban lifestyle. (Review taken from Amazon.com)

If you are interested in participating, please email Soon Huat at Soon_Huat_KWEH@nlb.gov.sg.

Contributed by Kweh Soon Huat, Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services, Public Library Service

Have you participated in this event?
Post your comments, or email to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

Posted by Isaak Kwok, Associate Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services, Public Library Service

HB Squad Alert . general + snippets 

Who will be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after Nov?

In the US, both major political parties, Democratic and Republican, have chosen their nominees as candidates for the highest office in the land, the Presidency.

In one corner, … 

For the Republicans, their choice is Senator John McCain. McCain, the son of a prominent navy admiral, served as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War. in 1967, his plane was shot down, and he ended up a prisoner-of-war till his release in 1973. During his confinement, he was repeatedly beaten up and tortured, his bones broken, and to this day, he does not have the full range of motion in his arms.  So bitter were his memories that, on a return visit to the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” where he was imprisoned, he remarked that he still bore his captors “ill will“.

Nevertheless, McCain is a firm supporter of the Iraq war; in fact, his own son is serving in Iraq, as a US Marine.

Long known as a maverick unafraid to speak his mind, McCain has had to work to win over conservative elements of his own party who view him with mistrust. He is also known for his quick temper. His first run at the presidential nomination was in 2000, which he eventually lost to George W Bush in a bitterly fought campaign.

If he wins the elections in November, he will become the oldest person to ever take up the office of President (he will be 72 on Election Day).

Books by John McCain:

Character is destiny
by John McCain with Mark Salter
New York : Random House, 2005
Call No.: 155.2 MAC

Faith of my fathers
by John McCain with Mark Salter
New York : Random House, c1999.
Call No.: 973.90922 MAC

Why courage matters
by John McCain, with Mark Salter.
New York : Random House, c2004.
Call No.: 179.6 MAC

Please click here for item availability.

And in the other corner,

The candidacy of Barack Obama has captivated the attention of the press, Americans, and of the wider world. Born to an African father and a white American mother, he has been described as America’s first post-racial candidate, and he has overcome long odds to come this far, including defeating his formidable rival Hilary Clinton.

His message of hope and change has been inspiring for many Americans, but doubts remain as to whether he can win over less-educated, working-class voters, or make headway in traditionally Republican strongholds.

At first glance, it would seem improbable that Barack Obama could have prevailed over his rival from New York, Senator Hilary Clinton. He is a first-term senator from Illinois; he was an unknown in national politics; and there was always hovering, in the background, the race question. But in a campaign that will be studied by the political classes and academics for a long time, he overcame all odds.

When he first started contesting, the issue of race cropped up, and the US Secret Service decided to place him under protection some nine months before the first Democractic primary, the earliest ever for a presidential candidate.

One of the reasons for his success so far has been his astonishing ability to raise money, particularly through the Internet, including some $55 million—$45 million through the end of Febuary. The campaign claims to have over 50,000 Internet donors.

Obama’s best-selling memoirs have made him a millionaire. He and his wife reported income of US $4.2 milliion for 2007, with some $4 million, or the vast bulk, coming from the sale of books.

 Books by Barack Obama:

The audacity of hope
by Barack Obama
New York : Three Rivers Press, c2006.
Call No.: 973.04960730092 OBA

Dreams from my father
by Barack Obama
New York : Three Rivers Press, c2004
Call No.: 973.0496762092 OBA

Please click here for item availability.

 About the US Presidential Elections:

1. The post of President and Vice-President are the only elected offices that are decided via nation-wide voting.
2. The election tends to take place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
3. It is an indirect process: voters do not directly elect the President, instead, they vote for “electors”, who form up the Electoral College, who then elect the President. It is possible for one candidate to win the popular vote, and still lose. This was what happened to Al Gore in 2000.

For more, you can visit this explanation by the BBC.

Contributed by Nur Hakim Low, Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services

What do you think? Know of any interesting book-related news? Want to join the Hb Squad?Email us at HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

Public Events in the Library . programmes + events

The following post is contributed by Kweh Soon Huat, Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services, Public Library Service

Always sporting a fedora hat as the host of Arts Central’s popular TV history series, Site and Sound, which takes a quirky, up-beat, off-the-road look at Singapore’s past, Dr Julian Davison went retro with us as we discussed his book “One for the Road: Satu Empat Jalan“.

Remember the Indian Red Bean seeds which school boys picked up to present to girls they fancy? Our member Margaret Bringham said: “Funnily enough, when I bought them, I asked the man what they were, and he said they were ‘love seeds’. Now I know what he meant! … were they ever cast on the ground in disgust, I wonder, like Jack and the Beanstalk, only to grow into beautiful Indian Bean Trees?. We don’t know but we know you made a wonderful table display out of them.

An instant bestseller when the book was first published in 2001, many could relate, though not experientially (you must be at least 50 years and above to qualify) through listening to our parents or elderly relatives reviving the past. Similarly, one could smell, feel, walking hand-in-hand with Julian, as he traversed the buildings, places and roads of that period.

Heard of Ah Mah Chehs? Their distinctive black and white outfits were ubiquitous in rich households and British families then. These unmarried nannies from China dedicated their lives looking after the families as if they were their own. The book cover’s photo of Julian as a kid with his Ah Mah Cheh brought a smile among some members who remembered them.

We reminisced with the old postcards, photographs, artefacts like bedak sejuk (a cooling facial powder which comes in a distinctive square box) which we brought. Hasanah recalled her daily ritual as a child where her mum applied the powder on her and looking stark white each time. Well, she is still a fair lady :).

We ended with hearty retro food, well almost retro, of satay, muah chee (a Chinese dessert of flour with peanuts and sesame seeds), putu piring (Malay steamed cake with grated coconut fillings), kacang puteh in paper cones, Indian homemade dessert kheer made by Nasreen and nonya kuehs.

We could not get tapai, a potent fermented rice dessert though (the stall we checked no longer sells them). Otherwise, it will be an intoxicating conclusion to a great afternoon with Julian and we toast “One for the road!”

Dr Julian Davison - Biodata
Julian Davison (b. 1956) is the son of an architect and grew up in Singapore and Malaysia. At the age of nine he was sent to school in England, though his family home continued to be in Kuala Lumpur until his father retired in 1979. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of Durham and he subsequently studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he completed a doctorate in 1988 based on a study of the headhunting rituals and associated oral literature of the Iban of Sarawak.

Davison currently resides in Singapore where he is a freelance writer, editor, illustrator and book designer. He has edited or otherwise contributed to several reference books and scholarly works relating to the region and he is also the author of regular feature articles on regional history and related subjects for local magazines - a collection of these was published in 2001 under the title One For The Road and was on the best-seller list in Singapore for several months.

Davison is a professional watercolourist, specialising in architectural illustrations and renderings, many of which have appeared in publications relating to the architecture of the region. He is also the host of Arts Centralís popular TV history series, Site and Sound, which takes a quirky, up-beat, off-the-road look at Singapore’s past, visiting historical sites and using special ‘blue-screen’ effects to literally walk into long-vanished landscapes and locations. The first two series of Site and Sound are available on DVD; the third series completed its run in March 2006.

A second volume of collected essays and articles entitled An Eastern Port was published in early 2004 and has also been in the best-seller lists. Davison’s most recent publication is an architectural monograph on the ‘black and white’ colonial bungalows of Singapore, which appeared in November 2005. His next publication (late 2008) will be a history of the Singapore shophouse; Davison is also working on a popular history of Singapore and a comparative ethnography of headhunting in Southeast Asia.

Posted by Isaak Kwok, Associate Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services, Public Library Service

HB Squad Alert . gossip + snippets

The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction was awarded on 04 June at London’s Royal Festival Hall to Rose Tremain for her novel, The Road Home (Call No.: English TRE). The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is open to only female authors and the books need to be published in English. The award comes with £30,000 in prize money.

The Road Home is a story about Lev, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who tries to make his way to Britain. In between falling in and out of love, he sleeps in the streets, works in a Gordon Ramsay-style restaurant and picks asparagus in East Anglia.

The other shortlisted books are:

• Charlotte Mendelson’s When We Were Bad (Call No.: English MEN)
• Sadie Jones’ The Outcast (Call No.: English JON)
• Nancy Huston’s Fault Lines (Call No.: English HUS)
• Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals (Call No.: English ONE)
• Patricia Wood’s Lottery (Call No.: English WOO)

(via The Guardian | Books)

Contributed by Isaak Kwok, Associate Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services, Public Library Service

Have you read the books? Do you have something else to recommend?
Post your comments, or send a longer book review to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

HB Squad ALERT! . gossip + snippets

Dear Readers,

Summer is almost upon the Western hemisphere, and there’s no better way to enjoy those long, lazy summer days than with a great book. So if you’re looking for a couple of good reads to nourish mind, body and soul, these blog sites will have plenty of suggestions for you:

Blogging for a Good Book is run by the Williamsburg Regional Library, and they have a novel approach: each day, a librarian will put up a review of a book the reading public might find interesting. The choices are varied, very eclectic. A good landing spot if you’re looking for ideas, and you’re open to new choices.

Care’s Online Book Club is honest, irreverent and amiable. Started by a lady who missed her former book club sessions after moving home, this blog is an attempt to nuture an online version of a book club. However, as she readily admits, she is prone to inject all sorts of riffs about her dog, her boat and her husband, and anything else that strikes her fancy. It’s a bit like a leisurely afternoon’s chat with a friend.

For lovers of science-fiction, a good stop-over might be Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. Based in Canada, this site carries numerous reviews, as well as listings to the websites of various authors. If you like your Star Wars, Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, you should definitely drop in.

What do you think? Know of any interesting book-related news? Want to join the Hb Squad?
Email us at HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

Perhaps you are a little bit like me. You know that books can be read online - google books, anyone - but for some reason, you just don’t. Maybe you prefer to hear that little crunchy sound when you flip to another page. Or perhaps you only read in bed (it’s so much easier to toss a physical book aside - no need to wait for the computer to shut down).

Or maybe you are nothing like me. You can’t wait to get your grubby right hand onto the mouse to scroll down the pages of the latest thriller hot off the shelf. Well, good for you!

Where was I? Oh, this post is to let you (potential or, already an ebook reader) know that NLB has ebooks that are available. First things first, you must already be a digital library member (that is, you are a library member and have registered on our website with a username).

How do you get started? How to access the eBooks from NLB’s Corporate website or the Public Library website?

Here’s a step by step to get you started.

First, from NLB’s corporate website.

Then choose what you want.

Remember that you need to login before having access to the ebooks.

Below are some highlights.

Overdrive: A collection of 10,000 popular ebooks and audio books, including all kinds of genres and many general interest subjects, coming from publishers such as HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, Time Warner, Scholastic, and Nolo Press.

World ebook Library: World eBook Library contains the world’s largest digital archive of PDF eBooks and eDocuments. Its collection hosts more than 500,000+ PDF eBooks and eDocuments. Available in a comprehensive variety of genres including Action Adventure, Biography, Classics, Drama, Elizabethans, Fiction, Folklore, Children’s, Gothic Tales, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Science, Pulp Fiction, Religion, Renaissance Thinkers and Science Fiction.

You can also find out more at Digitalk, DRS’s (that’s Digital Resources) blog about other eResources that they have.

Only problem with reading ebooks: no page-turners for you then.

Contributed by: LIM Lee Ping, Associate Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services, Public Library Service.

What do you think? Email us at HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

HB Squad ALERT! . gossip + snippets

Those who are familiar with the DDC will know that strange stuff can be found in the 000s section. Although it’s boringly entitled “Generalities”, it’s a haven for fans of the paranormal/unexplained - crop circles, lake monsters, yetis, aliens, hauntings… you name it, if it’s weird, it’s probably located in that shelf!  

Just yesterday, whilst browsing the 000s collection at a library (and pondering whether we do indeed need to have so many titles on UFOs), this title caught my attention: The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls.

Crystal Skulls… Crystal Skulls… Yup it occured to me that the 4th Indiana Jones movie (IJ and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) is opening real soon. So I decided to give it a quick flip, to find out what’s the deal with these skulls.  

According to the authors, Mayan and Native American legends speak of 13 crystal skulls that contain arcane knowledge and they’ll be brought together one day to save humanity. The book then examines some of the skulls that have turned up over the years. 

In a totally weird turn of events, on the same shelf was this other book: The Skeptic’s Dictionary. The entry on crystal skulls is also found online. Suffice to say, the author of this book thinks they’re totally bogus.

I’m more of a skeptic myself (especially after reading some of the Amazon reviews for The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls… Apparently, there a suggestion that the world is ending in 2012), but I think I’ll just put crystal skulls under my Agnostic files for the time being.

If you’re into Fiction, Manda Scott has a recent adventure thriller title, The Crystal Skull and it’s indeed about skulls, ancient codes and the end of the world (in 2012!). 

So, can you really talk to crystal skulls? Will the world end in 2012? Is this all a reflection of an increasing anxious world, plagued by seemingly endless disaster and conflict? What would Hamlet do???

Who knows?

More Links:
National Geographic
Archaeology Magazine
 
Contributed by Jillian Lim, Librarian, Adult and Young People’s Services

What do you think? Know of any interesting book-related news? Want to join the Hb Squad?
Email us at HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

WHO’S READING WHAT . reader’s recommendations

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

by Tim Flannery
New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, c2005.
Call No.: English 363.73874 FLA (Click here for item availability)

In The Weather Makers, Australian biologist Tim Flannery details the history and future impact of climate change.  Climate is a complex, dynamic subject, and it is no mean feat translating complicated concepts such as thermal inertia and global climate modelling into clear language for the layman. (So influential was this book and Flannery’s writings on climate change that Flannery was named Australian of the Year in 2007.) Flannery may be an evolutionary biologist by training, and it shows in his careful explanations of millions of years of climatic changes and his loving descriptions of species threatened by climate change, but he also does a spectacular job of explaining how climate has shaped not just ecosystems but also modern civilisation.

Flannery walks the reader through the various aspects of the climate change discussion, starting with climate history and impact to understanding the science and the political, social, and economic dimensions of the debate, making the Weather Makers not just an interdisciplinary tour de force, but also a useful primer for those new to the subject. Flannery himself came to the global warming topic almost from a sceptical bent, and the opening narrative describes a man who as a good scientist came to see the science as being irrefutable, before finally making the impassioned case that action needs to be taken on climate change now.

And so it is that the Weather Makers cuts through the thicket of climate scepticism, explaining how the scientific evidence is almost certainly that climate change is manmade, and that climate change is likely to affect at least the 70% of the world that will be alive in 2050, and even people living today, and that ‘uncertainty’ has never been a cause for inaction. Yes, Flannery notes, the earth has seen dramatic changes in climate in eras and periods in the past, caused by natural events.  But what is unprecedented is that “some time this century the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors”.

This is “popular science” – a term sometimes seen as derisive – at its best. Flannery walks through his argument without ever talking down to readers, understanding the strong institutional and political forces that prefer the status quo, but compellingly arguing that adopting certain solutions to lower greenhouse gases now would be preferable to a world so overwhelmed by climate-related security problems that the only solution might be the tyrannic control of a “carbon dictatorship”. As a pragmatist, he recognises that nuclear power might be appropriate means of lowering the world’s carbon production in certain contexts. He also appeals for personal action, providing some good (if sometimes Australia-specific) suggestions for what you and I as individuals can do.

Reviewed by Daryl Sng

(Editor’s Note - Daryl, who works for MEWR (www.mewr.gov.sg), contributes the review in his personal capacity. He blogs at http://www.dsng.net )

Have you read these books? Do you have something else to recommend?
Post your comments, or send a longer book review to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

HB Squad Alert . gossip + snippets

The shortlist of Best of the Bookers award has been announced and it pits six past winners of the Booker Prize to determine which novel is the best winning one since the prize began in 1969. It is a one-off celebratory award to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize.

The books in the shortlist were chosen by a team that comprises biographer Victoria Glendinning, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan, professor of English at the University of London. However, the best book will be decided by a public vote that started yesterday on The Man Booker Prize website with the winner to be announced on 10 July 2008.

The shortlist of books are as follows:

• Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road (1995) (Call No.: English BAR)
• Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988) (Call No.: English CAR)
• JM Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) (Call No.: English COE)
• JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) (Call No.: English FAR or here)
• Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974) (Call No.: English GOR)
• Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children (1981) (Call No.: English RUS or here)

Have you read these books? Do you have something else to recommend?
Post your comments, or send a longer book review to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

HAPPENIN’ . programmes + events

Enjoy things retro? For May discussion, we are doing a historical fiction of Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s. The author Dr Julian Davison, a keen biographer, wrote this collection of stories of that period having lived through it. The book was an instant bestseller when it was published in 2001.

For more details:
Date/Time: Friday 4.00pm, 30 May 2008
Venue: The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Community Library
Facilitator: Ms Chen Wee
Title of the book: “One for the road: satu empat jalan” by Dr Julian Davison
Call No.: SING 959.57 DAV

What the book is about: In this collection of biographical stories of Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s, Julian writes with the keen observation of a literary historian of the bygone days when the kampong spirit was prevalent then. References to long forgotten buildings, places and anecdotes come alive in this book.

To spice up the discussion, please bring along an item or two from the era of 1950s and 1960s. You can share what this artifact means to you. Do let me know of the items you are bringing and we can have a table display on them. Potluck still continues and voluntary.

If you are interested in participating, please email Soon Huat at Soon_Huat_KWEH@nlb.gov.sg.

Contributed by Kweh Soon Huat, Adult and Young People’s Services

Have you participated in this event?
Post your comments, or email to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg