Collin’s books, other books

Who’s driving the bus? Parasites rool, OK!

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I’ve recently suggested that parasites can be our friends, with special reference to Bill the Mathematician’s quest to become infected with hookworm.

Now I see a member of the Bangkok Writers’ Guild has posted a reference to a story I’d filed some time ago among notes regarding neuro-parasites (“Zombie ants have fungus on the brain”).

“Tropical carpenter ants (Camponotus leonardi) live high up in the rainforest canopy. When infected by a parasitic fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) the

… Read more

Can the novel survive the demise of novelists?

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The demise of the novel? This has been predicted again and again over the decades, if not the centuries, yet people keep reading novels. Here’s a recent vote of confidence in their persistence:

“The book-length text is coded in our DNA and will never go away; it is the written version of the oral myths and histories told on consecutive nights around campfires for 80,000 years. In each new generation, roughly the same percentage of people is born with

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Writerly occupational hazards: Plagiarism

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Plagiarism has become more tempting and easier, perhaps, in this digital age. The danger of being found out may also be greater.

Here’s a copy of the letter I e-mailed a week ago to The Tribune, New Delhi (I’ve yet to hear from either the newspaper or the writer):

Dear Editors,

I must inform you that more than half of Uma Vasudeva’s review of C.Y. Gopinath’s The Books of Answers (The Tribune, New Delhi, 7 August 2011) 

… Read more

The Book of Answers

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C.Y. “Gopi” Gopinath, a Bangkok-based writer of note, has just published his first novel, which promises even greater success than his globetrotting chronicle Travels with the Fish (HarperCollins India, 1999). The Book of Answers, released just this month, also by HarperCollins India, has already soared to #10 on the bestseller list in that country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to don my “let’s pitch this book to a modern market” hat, something I … Read more

Nirvana, freedom, etc.

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I’m reposting this item (originally put up by Jack Shackaway 22 April 2010), in light of the fact that Bill Page’s Nirvana Experiments are now available  in e-book form. Well worth reading.

July 2011 update: The Nirvana Experiments are now available in e-book form on DCO Books, Amazon, and Smashwords.

Goodbye writer’s garret in town and hello moobaan at the edge of the universe, ostensibly in suburban Bangkok. Bill Page, Bangkok old-timer and columnist of note under … Read more

Incoming, incoming! Or, the problem with glass houses

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I’ve decided one of the comments on my last blog installment merits a post in itself, together with my response. This is from a friend and professional editor:

“Is “Eyes filled with disquiet” a full sentence or is it a noun modified by a phrase? Do you mean to say the eyes, they filled with disquiet? Or these are eyes that are filled with disquiet?”

My initial response:

“The latter, of course.”

Then, following further reflection:

If that isn’t “of … Read more

Stones hurled from a glass house

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Bangkok Noir is enjoying favorable review, both locally and abroad. But I’d like to critique the second sentence of my own contribution to that story collection, “Hot Enough to Kill.” In fact, I suggest that readers take a pen and revise it.

Here’s the printed version (not mine—I swear that some gremlin on my computer vandalized the sentence; I have two copies of the story that read the way I wrote them, and two more corrupted versions):

Eyes are filled … Read more

Get your free books here: What’s good enough for Paulo Coelho…

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This is to announce a new feature of this blogsite—a new page, and a source of free books for those who ask. (Click on “FREE BOOKS,” at the top of this page.)

I’ve been inspired by eminent author Paulo Coelho and his recent blog about his own “Piracy Page,” and the merits of giving his work away for free. (Comments on his post express a range of attitudes toward the issues of piracy and creative products being offered … Read more

Writerly occupational hazards: Ersatz creativity (boozing)

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Inebriation is a false Muse. As seductive as they may be, chemical substitutes for true creative intoxication don’t work.

Maybe there are exceptions that prove this rule. Malcolm Lowry, e.g., did much field research for his brilliant novel Under the Volcano, which included a main protagonist who was drinking himself to death. (Lowry, unfortunately, perhaps in his quest for verisimilitude, was himself to go all the way at an early age.) Emulating his own hard-boiled detective protagonists, writer … Read more

Harvest Season—better than The Beach?

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In my opinion, Chris Taylor’s Harvest Season is a better story, better told, than Alex Garland’s The Beach.

I compare the two books only because each involves “backpackers” on the Asia trail. Taylor’s story unfolds in relatively remote China, whereas The Beach is set in what are supposed to be islands in the Gulf of Thailand. With Harvest Season, though, I have a much surer sense that the writer is indeed familiar with his geographical and subcultural settings. … Read more