High Browse Online

Our first post on the late Mr. S. Rajaratnam was in 2006, Feb 23.

Singapore remembers him again, with this 2010 publication “The Singapore Lion: A Biography of S. Rajaratnam“, by Irene Ng.

Mr. S. Rajaratnam, one of Singapore’s founding fathers, was born in Sri Lanka on 25 February 1915.

He was a former journalist who held various portfolios throughout his political career. After co-founding the People’s Action Party (PAP), he was named Singapore’s first Foreign Minister after independence in 1965. He was also Singapore’s Second Deputy Prime Minister from 1980-1985, after which he became a Senior Minister.

In 1966, Rajaratnam together with the former minister Ong Pang Boon, composed the National Pledge with an emphasis on a united and multi-racial society.

Mr Rajaratnam passed away peacefully on 22 February 2006, at the age of 90.

Read more about his life and political career:

The Singapore Lion: A Biography of S. Rajaratnam
By Irene Ng
Call No: SING 327.59570092 NG

Dialogues with S. Rajaratnam, former Senior Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office
Translated by Lee Seng Giap; edited by Ang Hwee Suan
Call No: R SING 320.95957 RAJ

S. Rajaratnam on Singapore: From Ideas to Reality
Edited by Kwa Chong Guan
Call No: SING 327.5957 S

Lee’s Lieutenants: Singapore’s Old Guard
Edited by Lam Peng Er and Kevin YL Tan
Call No: SING 320.95957 LEE

You can check the availability of our titles through NLB Searchplus, http://searchplus.pl.sg

Read more about S. Rajaratnam at Singapore Infopedia.
URL: http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_644_2005-01-10.html

Or look up “S. Rajaratnam” at newspapers.nl.sg.

[photo source: S Rajaratnam School of International Studies]

The writer, the controversial and reclusive author of the classic “Catcher in the Rye”, has died aged 91.

Born to comfortable middle-class circumstances, Salinger’s childhood and school education could generally be characterised as “indifferent”, and “failing to apply himself”. Apparently, it was only in 1938 or thereabouts, while taking night classes in Columbia, when he came under the mentorship of a gifted editor, that Salinger began to find his metier as a writer. He begun to write short stories, which were published in various magazines.

But war clouds were gathering in Europe, and young Salinger was to eventually serve as an intelligence officer in Europe, where the carnage of war may have led to a nervous breakdown in 1945-46. During this period he continued to write, and the seeds of what eventually became ‘Catcher in the Rye” were sown.

In 1951, the novel, his most ambitious work to date, was published, and it was an immediate sensation. An estimated 60 million copies have since been sold. Critics have compared Salinger’s work to a modern Huckleberry Finn, or maybe a Lewis Carroll of our time. The anti-hero of the novel, Holden Caufield - the confused, yet intensely self-aware outraged loner, is now a familiar archetype in our literary landscape.

Though Salinger was to continue to write short stories and novellas, “Catcher in the Rye” would become his defining work. And its long shadow seems to have caused him to seek out reclusiveness and obscurity. In his later years, he would be continually dogged by stories and rumours of strange and outlandish behaviour.

(References: The Guardian, JD Salinger obituary, and JD Salinger: from boy of war, to modern man of letters)

~ contributed by Nur Hakim Low, Librarian.

Dear friends,

Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince”, a seemingly simple book for children, has been recognised for its philosophical and metaphysical dialogue which deals with perceptions, perspectives and understanding. 

Join us for discussion on this book on:

Date/Time:  5.00pm, Friday, 29 January 2010
Venue:  The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Public Library
Title of book:  The Little Prince by  Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
Call No.:  SAI
Facilitator:  Ms Clara Chua, retired teacher

About the book:  The book starts with the narrator, who is an airplane pilot, recollecting his favorite picture when he was a six-year-old boy. The picture was of a boa constrictor eating a large animal. He recalls how a boa constrictor cannot move after swallowing its prey, and must hibernate for the six months until its food has been digested. Fascinated by this story, he had drawn his first drawing, Drawing Number One, which showed a boa constrictor devouring an elephant. When he showed his picture to the elders he was surprised to see that they couldn’t make out what it was and were not frightened of it either as he had hoped they would be. They couldn’t understand why anyone would be frightened of a hat, which is what they interpreted the drawing to be. But his picture was not a hat but rather, a boa constrictor digesting an elephant…. 

(Source:  www.wisedude.com/books/little_prince1.htm

Please send email to: soon_huat_KWEH@nlb.gov.sg if you wish to participate.

Yours sincerely,
Kweh Soon Huat (Mr)
Librarian
Heartlands Book Club
Brought to you by the Adults and Young People Services

Emily of Emerald Hill
by Stella Kon
Singapore : Raffles, c2000.
(All Rights Reserved)

For item availability, please check here.

I just finished reading the play Emily of Emerald Hill. I picked it up ‘cos I was intrigued by Stella Kon when I heard her speak at the Breakfast Club at NLB this past weekend — she seemed so layered and full of vigour, and I wanted to see what the play was all about.  

Emily of Emerald Hill is the most well-known of Stella’s works.  She won the National Playwriting Compeition in 1979, 1982 and 1985 (after which they promptly discontinued the competition), but ironically the play was produced in Malaysia first, leading her to make this snarky and hilarious comment when Singapore finally comissioned it to be produced the following year (1986), possibly out of sheer embarrassment:

“I am delighted that Emily of Emerald Hill has now been brought to the stage. Until it was, I could fairly well claim to be Singapore’s greatest never-produced playwright… Some years ago, I wrote The Bridge, a play with eighteen people in the cast — it had been meant for production by a drug addicts’  rehabilitation centre,  and was tailored to what they could provide.  And the producer said the cast was too big.  Then I wrote The Trial with a cast of twelve, which was well within the limits set by the Ministry of Culture, but still the producers said, “Very interesting, but cast too big.”  So I went and wrote Emily with a cast of ONE.” (Le Blond, 1986, 115).

Heh. So Emily is a monologue by a Peranakan Singaporean.  It’s her life story — a story of power and loss.  At first, I wasn’t that impressed.  It seemed like Emily was an anachronism that belonged squarely in the 80s.  She sounded like a middle-class tai tai, someone alienated from me.  Yet, as the story went on, something sad in Emily reached out to me.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for capable and lonely old women, but I felt sorry for her, especially at the end of the play.  

This play captures a specific period in Singapore’s history — a period of modernisation and rapid change.  I don’t know if younger readers will be able to relate to this period in Singapore’s history, but if it is true that this generation also feels that it is in a place of “rapid change”, then perhaps there is something in there that will make sense.

~ Contributed by Li Ern-Goh

Would you like to send us your contribution?
Post your comments, or email to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

Access library services without leaving your Facebook space!

Library services are now available on Facebook through a trial application called the NLB myLibrary application.

This application allows you to:
 - Check your account
 - Renew and reserve items
 - Keep up to date with our new arrivals, latest events and blogs

Share any library related resources with your friends and publish them as recommendations, or simply save them to your personal Facebook space.

Read more about the application here.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your continuous support and participation making the Heartlands Book Club a very active club.  Yes we will be 5 years in existence in 2010 and planning a birthday bash in August.  Starting from 2010, our book discussions will start at 5.00pm, instead of 4.00pm, on the last Friday of every month.  This is the resulf of feedback from members who want to join us but the old timing was too rush for some.  Hence 5.00pm in 2010 onwards it will be

To kick off  the New Year discussion,  our bookclub is honoured to have Boey Kim Cheng to drop in to our book club in January.  Here are the details:

Datre/Time:  5.00pm, Thursday 7 January 2010
Venue:  The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Public Library
Title of book:  Between Stations by Boey Kim Cheng.  Call No.:  SING  S821 BOE
Facilitator:  Mr Kweh Soon Huat, Librarian

About the author: Dr Boey Kim Cheng has published four collections of poems - Somewhere-Bound (1989), Another Place (1992), Days of No Name (1995), After the Fire (2006)  - and a book of essays entitled Between Stations. He was born in Singapore in 1965 and emigrated to Australia in 1997. He lives in Sydney and teaches at the University of Newcastle. Awards won:
Awards
1992 : NBDCS Book Award for Poetry for Somewhere-bound
1994 : NBDCS Highly Commended Work for Poetry for Another Place
1995 : Merit Award Winner for the Singapore Literature Prize for Days of No Name
1996 : National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature
1999 : Third Annual Inner City Life Literary Competition, First Prize for Poetry (New South Wales, Australia)

About the book: Between Stations traces Boey’s travels through India, China, Egypt and Morocco. In each place he visits, the cosmopolitan mix of peoples, the markets and crossroads, the overlays of history and religion, remind him of old Singapore and of his gambler father, who would return after long absences to walk with him down the vanished arcades and alleys, past the shophouses and hawkers’ stalls. Boey’s essays capture a historic moment in the modernisation of the Asian city; they chronicle the break-up and the resilience of the family (Taken from publisher’s website  www.selectbooks.com.sg).

Please send an email to soon_huat_KWEH@nlb.gov.sg  if you wish to participate.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
With best regards

Kweh Soon Huat (Mr)
Librarian
Heartlands Book Club
Brought to you by the Adults and Young People’s Services

Dear friends,

To set the mood before discussing  Joseph Conrad’s book “Heart of Darkness”. we will be screening part of the movie “Apocalypse Now”, one of the best movies on the Vietnam War.  The movie is based on the book.  As this is a special discussion on 24 December which is on Christmas Eve, there will be a small party after the discussion.  Please bring along a small gift for exchange.    The details:

Date/Time:  2.30pm, Thursday 24 December 2009
Venue:  The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Public Library
Screening of Movie:  2.30pm (45mins)
Title/Author/Call Number:  The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  Call No.:  CON
Facilitator:  Mr Lawrence Chew, an ex-teacher who taught literature in a junior college.

What the book is about:  A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness (1902) exposes the tenuous fabric that holds “civilization” together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad’s crowning achievement recounts Marlow’s physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz.  (Taken from Amazon.com)

To confirm participation, please email to soon_huat_KWEH@nlb.gov.sg

See you!

With best regards,
Soon Huat
Librarian
Heartlands Book Club
Brought to you by Adults and Young People Services

The Evil Seed
Joanne Harris
London:  Black Swan, 2008.
(All Rights Reserved)
Call No.: HAR
Available at NLB libraries

Better known as the author of “Chocolat”, Joanne Harris brings us her debut novel, which can be said to be a great departure from her usual themes of culinary intrigues and the enchanting small-town life in France. Recently republished with an author’s note, it gives a glimpse into Harris’s early writing style and an interesting background of how this novel developed. While she admits to a few rough spots in the plot and other failings, the story still managed to capture my imagination, especially with her eerie invitation: “Caution. May contain vampires.”

Although vampires may be the key attraction for this book (what with the popularity of the “Twilight” series and other vampire fiction), the main theme that Harris plays on in this story is memory and its power. Memory can be a terrible thing, especially when it is used to dig up a past that you want buried forever. Just ask Daniel Holmes, a studious researcher in Cambridge, just after World War II. When he meets a woman named Rosemary Virginia Ashley, everything he knows will be completely useless, in the face of such ethereal and haunting beauty. But, of course, there is more than meets the eye. Bewitching both Daniel and his best friend, Robert, Rosemary is no simple lady.

Realising the hopelessness of the situation, Daniel pens down all his experiences in a journal - a journal that would be discovered by Alice in modern-time Cambridge. Newly single, Alice is introduced to Ginny by her ex-boyfriend, Joe, as the new love in his life. With her innocent look, Ginny excites a cartwheel of emotions from Alice – jealousy, sympathy and fear. When Alice notices something strange about Ginny’s behaviour and the unsavoury group of friends she consorts with, Alice sets out to unravel the horrifying truth of Ginny’s nightmare world.

This ambitious plot may have been inspired by the fervour for Anne Rice-read-alike novels then in the early ‘90s and it does succeed in some parts. The originality of the plot was quite refreshing to a non-horror fan like me and Harris exercised a subtle hand during the scenes of ‘ravishment’, for which I’m eternally thankful for, as I can get quite squeamish with blood. Furthermore, Harris’s flair for imagery shines through in her maiden novel, albeit not as polished as in “Chocolat” or “Blackberry Wine”.

“Close against his flesh he felt her breath as she laughed. Then, with a sudden crunch, she bit. Blood rushed out as his head lolled; blood soaked the front of his short, blood rushed down the side of the girl’s face and dripped from the stray damp strands of her hair … He tried her name; it burst in a bubble of blood and ran down the side of his shoulder, but he did not feel it. He was alone in the tunnel falling further and further away … When – some time later – she had sated her appetite, the girl wiped her face fastidiously on the dead man’s handkerchief. She always washed after meals.”

However, the pacing of the storyline is rather slow and it feels like Harris is purposely prolonging the tension, much to the irritation of impatient readers like myself. Of course, if your preference is for long drawn-out gothic horror novels, then this story should be next on your reading list. Perhaps this lack of tightness in the plot led me to another criticism – poor character development. Granted, this is a first novel but I felt that there could been more to discover about Alice and Ginny that Harris somehow did not focus on. Much of the story was concentrated on Daniel, leaving me to think that Alice and Ginny were playing supportive roles only, when they could have the “power” to turn the story around.

When I read this book, I tried to push aside all assumptions I had of Harris’s strengths as an author and to view the story as if with a fresh eye. If I didn’t have the knowledge that it was written by Harris, I would say that “The evil seed” is a decent effort at gothic fiction and my time was quite well spent on reading it. At times, I even imagined that this story might be worth the while translating to a short film even, with the powerful imagery that Harris is usually skilled at. But, my expectations kept pushing the bar for this book and I was left somewhat dissatisfied with the feeble ending. For better reads by Harris, I suggest sticking to her other books “Chocolat” or “Five Quarters of the Orange”.

~ By Elizabeth Lee, National Library Board

Would you like to send us your contribution?
Post your comments, or email to HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg

Dear Readers,

On 1st Dec, you can also ASK! Chat with us online!

How does ASK! Chat work?
Communicate with our librarians via online chat widgets available at:

ASK! blog: http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/ask/
Public Libraries Singapore http://www.pl.sg/page/PlJustAskContent
NLB eResources: http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg

Chat widgets will be available on library catalogue and multimedia stations at Sengkang Public Library and Woodlands Regional Library at a later date.

This is a trial enquiry service running from Dec 1, 2009 to February 28, 2010.

For questions that require personal data to be revealed, for example, your NRIC or your membership number, please call our Helpdesk at 6332-3255 or approach the Customer Service Counter at any public library.

You can, of course, continue to contact the ASK! service through the following channels:

ASK! E-mail: ask@nlb.gov.sg
ASK! SMS: 9184-2015
ASK! Phone: 6332-3255

For an FAQ on the new chat service, please read on. [Read more →]

Dear friends,

We are discussing “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk-Kidd. The details:

Date/Time: 4.00pm, Friday 20 November 2009
Venue: The Activity Room, Bukit Batok Public Library
Facilitator: Mr Lawrence Chew
Title/Author/ Call number “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue-Monk Kidd
Call No.: KID
 
About the book: In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart’s answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. (Extract taken from www.Amazon.com)
 
About the facilitator: Mr Chew was an ex-teacher who taught literature at a junior college. He has written short stories as a hobby and is currently embarking on writing a non-fiction book on quantum physics.

Kindly note that the date for November book discussion is brought forward earlier that is, on 20th November rather than the last Friday of the month due to the latter falling on a Public Holiday.

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