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Paul Theroux, Singapore and Naipaul
Paul Theroux is in Singapore, planning to write a sequel to The Great Railway Bazaar, reported The Straits Times yesterday. I can’t recall what he wrote about Singapore in his famous book about the various trains he rode on an epic journey from London to Tokyo and back. I was more interested then in what […]
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The amazing teen fiction factory
Writing fiction may no longer be a solitary exercise: other people may be involved too besides the person named as the author on the book cover. The New York Times spills the beans on how some teen fiction gets written. Kaavya Viswanthan is named as the author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild […]
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How to write a bestseller — like an ad
Only the author’s name may appear on the book cover. But the book itself may be the product of team work much like a commercial advertisement. Writing a novel need not longer be a solitary exercise of a writer pegging away alone, putting down thoughts on paper. Indian-born Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan apparently received expert […]
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Opal Mehta eats crow
Time to eat crow. Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan has apologised to Megan McCafferty for borrowing words and phrases from her books, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. I should apologise too to Harvard Crimson for questioning its coverage of the story. In my post yesterday, I noted the Harvard newspaper in one of its early reports […]
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A teen prodigy & Harvard reporters who can’t count
Indian-born Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard sophomore, is being accused of plagiarism after news got out that her bestseller about student life will be made into a Steven Spielberg movie. But it has also revealed that Harvard Crimson newspaper reporters and editors can’t count. Count the words in this passage from Viswanathan’s book, How Opal Mehta […]
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Shakespeare and his women
It’s a pity Shakespeare (1564-1616) is no longer compulsory reading in Singapore schools. So many girls here have the perfect figure to play the boy-girl roles of Shakespeare’s comedies. No offence meant. It’s just that Shakespeare is taken so seriously it throws people off. Lighten up, please, Shakespeare wrote for entertainment. One may ask where’s […]
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Blink: Not what it’s blurbed to be
“Trust your instincts. Don’t think — blink,” says the blurb. But I am beginning to have doubts about my instincts after reading this. “Blink is all about those moments when we ‘know’ something without really knowing why,” says the blurb. But I thought the book showed our first impressions could be both right and wrong. […]
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Who let the blogs out?
Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of WeblogsA book by Biz Stone Dan Gillmor may not know it, but I link to his blog. He links to Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit which makes me two degrees removed from the pundit. Bloggers, click on your blogrolls, and see where the blogs […]
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Lost in translation
A rock’n’roll fan, I don’t care for Tagore’s songs or dance dramas, but I have come across no poet who has written more consistently well than the grand old man of Bengali literature. Wordsworth can bore, Keats has his juvenalia, Yeats and Dylan Thomas can be incomprehensible, Tennyson trite, Browning dense, Shakespeare — well, how […]
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To Kill A Mockingbird
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of […]
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