Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Book Club discussion on SAINT JACK at Bukit Batok Library
People make love for so many crazy reasons, why shouldn’t money be one of them?
That quote is from Saint Jack. One of my favorite books about Singapore and South East Asia. You must read this book if you are interested in 1970s Singapore. The movie based on this book was banned until recently in Singapore.Our friendly librarians emailed to inform us of this discussion on Paul Theroux’s Saint Jack.
Seriously, the book is set in Singapore with the full flavours of 1960s Bugis Street, Hilton Hotel, Geylang and the company of mamasans. If time permits, a short screening of the movie will be shown before the book discussion to whet the appetite. Join us for this truly set-in-Singapore movie and book discussion on:
Date/Time: 4.00pm, Friday 28 April
Venue: Activity Room, Bukit Batok Community Library
Facilitator: Mr Paul Fitzpatrick
Light refreshments will be served.
Title of book for discussion: “Saint Jack” by Paul Theroux
Email Soon_Huat_KWEH at nlb.gov.sg to register for this program.
Technorati Tags:
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“Ways to get published the Non-traditional way” at the National Library
Collaborated with the Ivan Chew today for a talk at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. The event was organised by Singapore’s Media Development Authority. We talked about alternative mediums like audiobooks, ebooks and podcasts, why blogging is good for writers, publishing on demand etc. Ivan has a good write-up on the event on his blog. Links to some of the sites and resources we mentioned in the presentation. It was good meeting publishers, authors and people looking to write their first books.
Audiobooks - Audible.com
Ebooks - Amazon’s Ebook Store , E-Asia (Classic books on East Asia available as e-books),
Podcasts - Yahoo’s Podcast Directory , Fee based Podcasts
Sony’s E-Ink Reader
Publishing on demand
Cafepress
Lulu.com
Writers blog
http://goodmorningyesterday.blogspot.com/
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/
http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/
http://writersblocklive.com/
Also check out author Thomas Barnett speaking about how blogging helped in his writing. Download the interview from IT Conversations site. The part about the blogs starts at 32.35 mins from the start of the audio clip.
Some authors have started offering their books as podcasts. Check out Podiobooks.com
The first author to podcast his book was Scott Sigler. IT Coversations has an interview with Scott where he talks about why he chose to podcast and how to create awareness about your book using a podcast.
Singapore author’s websites
George Tan
Meira Chand
Singapore writing-related sites
www.qlrs.com/
http://www.bookcouncil.sg/
Singapore National Library
Singapore National Library’s Highbrowseonline
ASK! the Library
An useful post detailing sites where you can publish files/ podcasts
Creating Podcasts - Odeo, Audioblog
You may want to distribute some chapters or excerpts of your book as an ebook. You can use Readerworks free e-book creation software to create a MS Reader e-book or you can use Online PDF Creator to create a PDF file.
Zohowriter is an web based service that can be used for collaborative writing and PDF conversion.
Internet Archive - A site where you can store your audio or video
Free Blog Services - Blogger, Wordpress
Rambling Librarian’s Blogroll of Writers’ blogs
Douban.net - A social network based on what you read
I have been trying out various reading list social tools - the kind where they let you input the books you have reading, write a review etc. and based on your list the service generates recommendation on books on similar topics and people who are like you.
I like this new site from China called Douban.net. The service has very good user interaction design.
As soon as you log in, you are given this page where you enter the book that you are reading or finished reading. You are also shown some book reviews from people who have similar reading habits as you.
After you have typed in your book name, Douban.net pulls out the book data from Amazon. You are given this screen where you can type in some tags and a short description. You can rate the book too. If any other douban.net members have this book then there are also listed.
You have your own personal page listing what you are reading and what you have read. Douban works with music also. You can add albums you have listened to along with ratings and reviews.
The discussion area on Douban.net is a great place to get further recommendations.
If local libraries opened up their database (of course only for the members who opt in and also they can decide what info they want to make public) then it would facilitate building of Douban.net like services that use the library’s APIs in addition to amazon API. While discussions with far away people is nice, services like meetup.com have shown that people dig specific interest based local networks too.
Comment fights before the blog days (A reader fights back on an Western guy’s travelogue on Japan)
This one is a travelogue written in the 1930s by an American traveler. I found this in the same old book shop in Bangalore.
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An Italian Spy in China
This is another interesting book I found. It is again set in the crazy 1930s. The author is an Italian man in the service of Japanese Intelligence.
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