19 -26 FAN FictioN GENtLY DoES it PAPER

ebruary
January/F
2012
Marginalia
pages of tips to get you ahead
PAPER-FREE
Tips for e-reading.
• Get free e-books at Project
Gutenberg (gutenberg.org).
• Clean your e-reader with
dampened spectacle cleaning
cloths and lens cleaning solution, then dry with soft lintfree cloth.
FAN fiction
Love a story so much
you write your own
take? That’s fan f iction.
A Study
in Emerald
Mixing Sherlock
Holmes and The
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, this
novella by graphic novel author
Neil Gaiman (of The Sandman) is not to be missed.
Download at: bit.ly/NeilGaimanshortstories
The Demon’s
Lexicon
Sarah Rees Brennan was wildly
popular in the
Harry Potter fandom before getting a book contract. Her first novel The Demon’s
Lexicon was long-listed for the
Carnegie Medal literary award.
DID you Know?
Interview with the Vampire
author Anne Rice has famously
banned all fan fiction based on her
works, citing copyright issues.
19-26
We love words and we want
to share the love. Here’s
a smorgasbord of literary
offerings that will help you
literarily impress the boss
and co-workers.
is the art of jotting down your
thoughts in words or doodles
in the unmarked spaces of
your books. It’s a useful tool to
crystallise your thoughts, or a
way of personalising your book.
GENTLY DOES IT
If creased book spines give you the
heebie-jeebies, follow these tips.
1
Place the
book with
its spine on
a table.
To deal with gobbledegook:
2
3
Let the front
cover down.
Then the back cover.
The Complete Plain Words
by Sir Ernest Gowers
You know who you are: the guilty ones
who butcher the English language in
vain attempts to impress the boss.
Learn to write clearly and concisely
with this book.
To add intrigue to your job:
Going Postal
by Terry Pratchett
4
Then open a few
leaves in front.
A skilled con artist, saved from the gallows, ends up as the Postmaster of the
rundown Postal Service. Dealing with
bureaucracy isn’t the hard part, escaping an assassin is…
To impress people:
5
The Lazy Intellectual
by Richard Wallace
Then a few at the
back, alternating front
and back,
6
Gently pressing
them down until the
center is reached.
Confession: We don’t know the original source of this illustration
that we found on the Internet. If you do, drop us an email!
With 10 chapters of facts covering philosophy to math, you’ll know enough
of everything to be the most knowledgeable person in the office.
To deal with writer’s block:
The Write Brain Workbook
by Bonnie Neubauer
Chock-full of creative exercises, this
will get you off the block and writing.
Legend
KA-P
Instructions
• Use any small object (e.g. eraser) as
a counter at the ‘START’ square
OW!
• Get a die or use an online one
(http://www.arcess.com/dice/dice.htm)
Action
?
Question
!
Your cheat sheet to poetry.
• Roll the die and when you land on a
‘Question’ square or an ‘Action’ square,
answer correctly to move forward
BOOKWORM CLUB GAME
Like Solitaire, you can play
this alone. But that’s sad.
So ask other bookworms to join in!
The competitive
art of performance
poetry where
works are
recited aloud
to audiences.
Not for the
faint-hearted.
• If you fail to do so, stay put or miss
a turn, and wait for your turn again
• If you land on a ‘Trivia’ square, stay
put and wait for your turn again
• First to reach the end, wins!
Trivia
1
2
3
Most folktales hold
similar themes and motifs,
and the Aarne-Thompson
Classification System is
a widely used means of
sorting them.
Tired of princes saving
damsels in distress? Try
reading some modern fairy
tales with a twist at
www.rosemarylake.com
4
Filipino publishing
house Precious Hearts’
local pulp romances
are the country’s most
popular books. All
books are 128 pages
and happy endings
are guaranteed.
Create a fairy tale story, in
5
Name any play
Shakespeare wrote to
move to square 5.
If not, skip a turn.
Sentences,
where the prince needs
to be rescued and
move to square 14.
If not, stay put.
Funny, often nonsensical poetry.
Like that one about the epicure dining
at Crewe. http://bit.ly/crewe
5
In English, haiku
are three lines with syllables
in five, seven, five.
6
We started playing this game.
%RMQEP
8EPIW
Recite a romancerelated quote to
move to square 8.
If not, stay put.
*EMV]8E
PI
W
2SZIP
12
Recite a foodrelated quote to
move to square 14.
If not, skip a turn.
13
Name a
famous
fictional
detective.
Move to
square 14.
If not,
stay put.
14
In 2009, Hamlet came out tops
in literary scholar Lucy
Pollard-Gott’s ranking of the
100 most influential fictional
characters in world literature.
Another tortured romantic hero,
Jia Bao Yu from Dream of the Red
Chamber, came in at no. 8.
11
10
The earliest English
cookbook A Forme of Cury
(1390s) was a compendium
by the master chefs
of King Richard II,
and included recipes like
pygg in sawsesawge.
Follow the old English
at ye owne perile.
9
Name a chef who has
published a cookbook.
Move to square 14.
If not, stay put.
7
8
Pick a book with a tragic
ending, and reasonably work
it to a happy ending, to
move to square 11.
If not, skip a turn.
The word tragedy comes
from the Greek: τραγῳδία
(tragoedia), and literally
means goat song, possibly
from the practice of
singing lamentations for
sacrificial goats. No word
on how the goats saw it.
Name a book that ends with
a tragedy and move to
square 11.
If not, skip a turn.
Deriving from Italian for “little song”,
no other form of poetry seems quite as
romantic as the 14-lined sonnet favoured
by Shakespeare.
Forming a word from the sound it is
naming. Like Baa or Moo.
Lengthy, serious poems often
part of oral traditions.
15
16
Draw out a book title
without using words.
If someone can guess
it correctly,
move on to square 17.
If not, skip a turn.
Name a brand of
travel guide book and
move to square 17.
If not, stay.
17
19
18
Travel literature was fairly
common in medieval
Arabic literature, with
Ibn Battuta’s fascinating
14th century Rihla
(The Journey) recounting
three decades worth of
adventures through
Europe, Africa and Asia.
Ernest Hemingway ‘s
colleagues bet he
could not write a
story in six words. He
won with For sale:
baby shoes, never
worn. Apparently he
considered it his
best work.
Come up with a
word story to
complete the game.
If not, move back
to square 14.
The rhythm used within a line, with five
counts of an unstressed syllable followed
by a stressed one. Ba DUM Ba DUM Ba
DUM Ba DUM Ba DUM just like your heart.
Repeating the same sound at the
start of a phrase or set of words. Just
like the names of most comic book
superheroes like
Peter Parker
(Spider-Man) and
Bruce Banner
( The Hulk).
Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
No other book fleshes out the
idea that the way to a man’s heart
is through his stomach quite as
beautifully as this does. Powerful
food imagery is woven through the
book, substantial as
a hearty meal.
Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
Warning: You may begin to live
by the maxim that You Can Never
Have Too Much Butter. If, by
the end of the book, you’re not
tempted to pick up a copy of
The Art of French Cooking,
we salute you.
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Guaranteed
The Man Who Ate Everything
by Jeffrey Steingarten
Reading a highly witty book by a
man who truly loves food is a marvel.
Human beings and our complex
relationship with food get put under
the microscope in this global gastronomic tour. You’ll definitely feel
hungry after.
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
Even if green eggs and ham would
be highly suspect in real life, SamI-am makes a highly persuasive case
for this delicacy. Spoiler: the unseen
protagonist eventually falls sway. So,
lesson learned: don’t knock anything
till you’ve tried it.
HOW TO BE A
SUCCESSFUL
AUTHOR IN
SINGAPORE
Not to burst your bubble
or anything….
1. Write horror stories
Dramatic
LicenCe
Singapore’s dramatic
productions of note.
Can you match the right quote to the
right Singa porea n write r?
“Each and
every item in
it is a reminder
of affection”
1
2
“Great
houses
are history,
clan,
3
essential
unity;
“Old hopes
belief”
from I Still Prefer to Live
in this House
from Uncle Never
Knew
renewed by latest
opportunities/Steadfast
in defending dreams
and slogan”
from The Koran Chanter
of Geylang Serai
The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole
by Kuo Pao Kun
A seminal work in Singapore’s
collection of plays, this gently satirical
look at life, death and bureaucratic
red tape is a must-know.
Army Daze by Michael Chiang
Very quintessentially Singaporean,
this snapshot of bonding during
Basic Military Training has entertained
generations of Singaporeans since it
was first released in 1984.
Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon
Well before The Little Nyonya, we see
the triumph and tragedies in the
life of a Peranakan matriarch in
Singapore’s longest running play.
LOVE WORDS? COME
GATHER ALL AROUND
The lit scene in Singapore is hotting up.
Singapore Writer’s
Festival
One of Asia’s premier literary
festivals, the international event
is proudly one of the few multilingual festivals globally, featuring writing from Singapore’s
four main languages, as well as
Singlish. The festival, organised
by the National Arts Council, is
now an annual affair.
Lit Up Singapore
Organised by Word Forward and
The Writers Centre Singapore,
the event focuses on emerging
writers by engaging them as
writers, poets, performers, directors, actors, hosts, moderators
and volunteers.
Mutamizh Vizha
(Tamil Literature Festival)
Organised by the Association of Singapore
Tamil Writers and
the Tamil Language
Council, it aims to
promote the use of the
Tamil language and to
spur creative writing,
with competitions held
from kindergarten to
tertiary levels.
4
“We find
ourselves again/
become lighter
than air”
from Why I Sing
Answers on last page of Pullout
TIP
NoQ Online is a new online store that
ships for a $5 flat fee within Singapore.
Paid membership entitles you to
10% off storewide. www.noqstore.asia
With nine out of 10 of the
National Library Board’s most
borrowed local titles coming
from Russell Lee’s True Singapore Ghost Stories series, the
13-year-old collection is still
going strong. Over a million
copies have been sold.
2. Write children’s stories
The Diary of Amos Lee series
has made The Straits Times’
National Best Sellers’ List for
more than 52 weeks.
3. Write horror stories
for children
The Mr Midnight series by
Jim Aitchison, under the nom
de plume James Lee, has sold
over two million copies since
the first book was released
in 1998.
4. Failing which, tr y
your hand at writing
assessment books
You have to admit this
stuff is evergreen.
FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly(Steer Clear)
The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje (1992)
Theatre
Somerset Maugham (1937)
A Leap of Love
Catherine Lim (2000)
The English Patient
Anthony Minghella (1996)
Being Julia
István Szabó (2004)
The Leap Years
Jean Yeo (2008)
Many writers can’t
bear to have their works
adapted, so for Michael
Ondaatje to say it ’s “good”
is a sound endorsement.
Somerset Maugham’s carefully
crafted character in his love
letter to theatre becomes a
caricature that not even Annette
Bening’s performance can save.
All romances where leads
display no chemistry are doomed
to fail. The novella was lighthearted; the movie, pitifully
mediocre.
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk (1996)
I Am Legend
Richard Matheson (1954)
The Queen of
the Damned
Anne Rice (1988)
Fight Club
David Fincher (1998)
I Am Legend
Francis Lawrence (2007)
The first rule of Fight Club is:
you do not talk about Fight Club.
One of the rare adaptations where
people who’ve actually read
the book don’t feel cheated:
faithful to the spirit and
unbelievably cool.
It starts out so promisingly,
before everything falls flat.
Many lay the blame on how
the ending was changed from
the spine-chilling perspective
switch in the book, to
unnecessary explosions.
MUST
WATCH
Queen of the Damned
Michael Rymer (2002)
A flashy vampire wakes up an
ancient undead queen with rock
music. Bad acting and cheesy lines
later, it still doesn’t make it to
‘It ’s so bad it ’s good’. It just stays
bad. Keep far, far away.
The Teenage Textbook Movie (1998)
The Teenage Textbook (1988) and The Teenage Workbook (1989) by Adrian Tan
directed by Philip Lim: A veritable Singapore flick that captures the essence of awkward, pimply, crush-filled teenage
years. Catch the hilariously uplifting movie on YouTube at bit.ly/teenagetextbook.
SETTING
THE
SCENE
Stockists of Singapore literature
1
2
3
Books Kinokuniya
Hidden near the long
corridor of world literature are the shelves
dedicated to local
publications.
Books Actually
The largest collection
of Singapore literary
titles can be found
here, including outof-print titles.
Select Books
An active publisher
and distributor of
Asian books, go for
the ‘widest selection
of books about Asia’.
Main Store: 391 Orchard Road #0309/10/15, Ngee Ann City, Takashimaya Shopping Centre S(238872)
www.kinokuniya.com.sg
9 Yong Siak Street,
Tiong Bahru, S(168645)
www.booksactually.com
www.selectbooks.com.sg
Answers to Whose Line Is It Anyway?: 1. Edwin Thumboo 2. You Jin 3. Isa Kamari 4. Cyril Wong
Research and writing by Abigail Kang / Edited by Bridgette See / Designed and illustrated by Yip Siew Fei & Ng Shiwei / ©Challenge Magazine
We sort out the wheat f rom the chaff in book-to-movie adaptations so you don’t have to.