July texts!

*POETRY*
+Sunthorn Phu’s “The Story of Phra Abhai Mani”
=Bernice Chauly’s “The Book of Sins”
=A. Samad Said’s “Ballad of the Lost Map”

 *FICTION*
=“Malaysian Tales: Retold & Remixed” edited by Daphne Lee
+Donald Barthelme’s “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby”

 *DRAMA*
=Goh Boon Teck’s “Purple”

 *NON-FICTION*
+Richard Dowden’s “Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
=Alison Bechdel’s “Are You My Mother?”

*FILMS*
+Eric Darnell's “Madagascar 3”
+MacGillivray Freeman's “Arabia”

*PERFORMANCES*
=Teater Ekamatra's “Bleeding Grace”
+The Theatre Practice's “Lao Jiu: The Musical”
=Cake Theatre's “Si Ti Kay”
Buds Youth Theatre's “The Coffin Is Still Too Big for the Hole”
Amrita Arts' “Para-Human”
+The Common Folk's “Paper Men”
+Deborah Emmanuel and Lee Jing Yan's “The City of Letting Go”
+W!ld Rice's “La Cage aux Folles”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Singapore Art Museum's  "Not Against Interpretation: Re-staging Jason Lim & Vincent Leow’s A Flog of Birdies in the 21st Century"
+Justin Lee's "The Paper Ball"
+Jendela Art Space's "Our Places, Our Stories"

+Peranakan Museum's “Emily of Emerald Hill: Singapore Identity on Stage”

June texts!

Did a lot of reading overseas, as you can see!

*FICTION*
+Lily Yulianti Farid’s “Family Room”
=Shehan Karunatilaka's “The Legend of Pradeep Mathew”

*DRAMA*
=“Theater of Memory: The Plays of Kalidasa”
+George Bernard Shaw’s “The Doctors’ Dilemma”
+Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined”

*NON-FICTION*
+Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis"
+Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s “The Americas: A Hemispheric History”
+Aung San Suu Kyi’s “Letters from Burma”

*SCRIPTURE*
+Penguin Great Ideas' “Writings from the Zen Masters”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Lisa Sankar-Zhu’s “The Emperor, His Bride and the Dragon Robe”

*FILMS*
Barry Sonnenfeld's “Men In Black III”

*PERFORMANCES*
+TheatreWorks’s “Lear Dreaming”
+Marion D’Cruz’s “Gostan Forward”
=The Merchant Family's “Taj Express”
+I Theatre’s “Our Island”
+“Clybourne Park”
=“Newsical”
+“Shear Madness”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+URA’s “Singapore City Gallery”
+Peter Chen's "Perspectives from the Ideal City"
=The National Museum of Women in the Arts’s permanent collection, "Royalists to Romantics", "25 x 25: Artists’ Books", "Women Silversmiths" and "Mamacita Linda"
=Sister Mary Corita King's "R(ad)ical Love"
+The National Museum of the American Indian’s permanent collection, "A Song for the Horse Nation" and "Best in the World: Native Athletes in the Olympics"
+The US Botanic Garden's permanent collection and "Savage Gardens: The Real and Imaginary World of Carnivorous Plants"
+The Hirshorn Museum's permanent collection and "Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space"
+Ai Wei Wei's "Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads"
The Sackler Museum of Asian Art’s “Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran", Perspectives: Ai Wei Wei”, “Masters of Mercy: Buddha's Amazing Disciples”, "Xu Bing: Monkeys Grasping for the Moon"
The National Museum of African Art’s +“African Mosaic: Celebrating a Decade of Collecting", ="Africa Cosmos: Stellar Arts", +"Lalla Essaydi: Revisions"
The National Museum of American Art’s +permanent collection, ="African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond " and +"The Art of Video Games"
+The National Portrait Gallery’s permanent exhibition and "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter"
+John F. Kennedy Museum and Library’s permanent exhibition
=Boston Tea Party Museum’s permanent exhibition

I'm going to the Makassar International Writers Festival 2012!

It's started already - in fact, I was supposed to go yesterday but Garuda Airlines rescheduled my flight. (I complained and they compensated me by upgrading me to business class, so I can't be that mad at them. Also, I'm now wondering if they informed me by phone while I was half-asleep.)

The website's here, btw. And Makassar is the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, located here:

 I've been invited by Lily Yulianti Farid, whom I bonded with at festivals in Ubud and Singapore in 2009. She writes in Bahasa Indonesia: the volume below is Lontar's excellent translation.

Other folks I know (or have read) who'll be at the festival: slammer Omar Musa (AU), short story writer Xu Xi (HK), memoirist Bernice Chauly (MY), poet Jennifer Mackenzie (AU) and Elizabeth Pisani (US), the fabulous HIV activist and author of The Wisdom of Whores.

I'm afraid I don't know the Indonesians. But I'll get to know them! (As long as they speak *some* English. Malu lah, gua tak boleh cakap bahasa nasional Singapura.)

Texts April 2012

I've been posting with surprising frequency this past month! Let's see if I can keep it up.

*FICTION*
+Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games”, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay”

 *NON-FICTION*
=David Kraal’s “The Devil in Me”
=Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck’s “Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan” 

*SCRIPTURE*
+“The Tibetan Book of the Dead”

 *GRAPHIC TEXTS*
=Sonny Liew’s “Malinky Robot”
+“Liquid City Volume 2” =Gene Ha and Peter David's “1602: A New World and Fantastick Four” 

*FILMS*
+Gary Ross’s “The Hunger Games”

 *PERFORMANCES*
=LaSalle’s “Middletown”
+3 Tigers’ “Song of the Brokenhearted Tiger”
=NYU Tisch Asia’s “Against the Grain”
+Cake Theatre’s “Decimal Points 7.7”
+W!ld Rice’s “Romeo and Juliet”
+Singapore Repertory Theatre’s unge“Twelfth Night”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+The National Museum’s “In the Mood for Cheongsam”
+Eko Prawoto’s “Garbha”
=Brahma Tirta Sari Batik Studio’s “Sarong”
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Panorama”

"The New Village" has been published!

Aka the book of poetry about the Malayan Communist Emergency that I translated from Mandarin to English. Come on down for the launch!



Date: Friday 13 April
Time: 8-945pm
Venue: Living Room, The Arts House

I probably won't be speaking much - focus will be on the poet Wong Yoon Wah - but I should be performing some of my translated work. I'm pretty damn proud of it. :D

March texts!

*POETRY*
Agha Shahid Ali’s + “Call Me Ishmael Tonight”, ="Rooms Are Never Finished” and +“The Country Without a Post Office”
+Cyril Wong’s “Satori Blues”

*FICTION*
+Mohammed Hanif’s “A Case of Exploding Mangoes”
+Salman Rushdie’s “Shalimar the Clown”

*NON-FICTION*
+Denyse Tessensohn’s “Elvis Lived in Katong”

*FILMS*
+Luc Besson's “The Lady”
=Kongdej jaturanrasmee's “P-47”
+Jade Castro’s “Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings”
+Andrew Stanton's “John Carter”

*PERFORMANCES*
=Word Forward's "Poiesis"
Quinta Productions’ “Sonnets for an Old Century”
+Resorts World Sentosa's “Voyage de la Vie”
+W!ld Rice's “Cooling Off Day”
NUS Theatre Department's “The Velveteen Rabbit”
=Buds Theatre Company's “From Scratch”
+Spell #7's “#157”
+Checkpoint Theatre's “City Night Songs”
=NUS Arts Festival's “Face to Face”
+The Necessary Stage's “godeatgod”

*EXHIBITIONS*
=Museum Wayang (Jakarta)'s permanent collection

Books February 2012!

I'm really slacking off on reading books of poetry, aren't I?

*FICTION*
+Joe Haldeman’s “Marsbound”
+Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”

*DRAMA*
=Lisa Loomer’s “The Waiting Room”
+Moira Buffini’s “Silence”

*NON-FICTION*
=Betty de Shong Meador’s "Princess, Priestess, Poet: The Sumerian Temple Hymns of Enheduanna"
+Donald E. Pease's "Theodor Seuss Geisel"

+Al-Ghazali’s “Deliverance from Error”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Future Proof”
=Jeanette Winter’s “The Librarian of Basra”
+Kieron Gillen’s “Uncanny X-Men: Breaking Point”

*FILMS*
Omar Rojik’s “Singapura Dilanggar Todak”
=Phyllida Lloyd’s “The Iron Lady”

*PERFORMANCES*
Teater Ekamatra’s “Hantaran Buat Mangsa Lupa”
+French Stage’s “Cyrano de Bergerac”
=The Necessary Stage’s “Singapore”
=Sean Tobin and Jason Wee’s “Tongues”
Eng Kai Er’s “The Prayer”
+ZeroGrammi’s ”INRI”
The Stage Club’s “The Real Thing”

*EXHIBITIONS*
=Asian Civilisations Museum’s “The Tang Shipwreck: Gold and Ceramics from 9th Century China”
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Chimera”
+Munkao’s “Feng Shui”
+Philip Toledano’s “Kim Jong Phil”
=Htein Lin’s “The Triple Gem”
+Evil Empire’s “Occupy Tiong Bahru”

January 2012 texts!

Two in a row on the same day? Why the hell not.

*POETRY*
+"Voices: an Annotated Anthology of Contemporary Bahraini Poetry" ed. Hasan Marhamah

*FICTION*
Maha Gargash’s “The Sand Fish”
Danderma's The Chronicles of Dathra, a Dowdy Girl from Kuwait, Vol I

*DRAMA*

*NON-FICTION*
+Hugh Miles’s “Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West”
+Tony Perrottet’s ”Napoleon’s Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped”

*FILMS*
+Maneesh Sharma’s “Ladies vs Ricky Bahl”
+Peter Chan’s “Wu Xia”
=Patrick Shen’s “The Philosopher Kings”
Mark Mylod’s “What’s Your Number?”
Most of +Tsui Hark’s “The Chinese Feast”
Short Circuit selection: +Marcia Ong’s “Kristy”, =Ezzam Rahman’s “Someday My Prince Will Come”, =He Shuming’s “Labour Day”, +Lincoln Chia’s “Sisters”, +Regina Tan’s “Transit”, +Kirsten Tan’s “Thin Air”, =Leon Cheo’s “Swing”, and Loo Zihan’s “CHANCRE”

*PERFORMANCES*
STAGES’ “iChestnuts 15”
Ravindran Drama Group’s “Hanuman Resurrection II”
+LaSalle’s “Exit the King”
*EXHIBITIONS*
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Future Proof”
+Singapore Maritime Museum’s permanent exhibition
=Brian Gothong Tan’s “Milk and Honey”

Books November and December 2011

I know I've been horribly behind on updating this blog. I'm not really sure what to do about it, really... It's the age of Facebook and Twitter, but having a regular site like this helps me document what I've covered in my life.

Anyway, here's what I watched and saw at the end of last year. January will be up, maybe tomorrow.

*POETRY*
+Alvin Pang's "What Gives Us Our Names"

*FICTION*
+Victor Pelevin’s “Omon Ra”

*DRAMA*
=Verena Tay’s “In the Company of Heroes”

*NON-FICTION*
+Christiane Bird’s “The Sultan’s Shadow”
=Melanie Chew’s “The Presidential Notes 1: Yusof bin Ishak”

*RELIGIOUS TEXTS*
+Seema Mohanty's “The Book of Kali”
“The Quran”

*FILMS*
+Olivier Megaton's “Colombiana”
Most of =Tate Taylor's “The Help”
=Milan Luthria's “The Dirty Picture”
+James Bobin's “The Muppets”

*PERFORMANCES*
“Improvanopolis”
LaSalle’s +“Loveplay” and “Hamlet”
+The Necessary Stage's “Gemuk Girls”
TheatreWorks's =“Dust: A Recollection”
+W!ld Rice’s “Aladdin”

*EXHIBITIONS*
=Tania de Rozario’s “A Language of Longing”
=“The Elephant Parade”
+Kiran Nadar Museum of Art's permanent collection
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi's +"...in the seeds of time" and ="Company Paintings"
+Indian War Memorial Museum's permanent collection
=Red Fort Archaeological Museum
+Central Sikh Museum

October 2011 texts!

Did I really read and watch so little in October? Singapore Writers Festival can't be that good for me after all...

*POETRY*
Leonard Ng’s “This Mortal World”

*FICTION*
Heidi Munan’s =“Tales from the Iban” and +“Tales from the Bidayuh”
+“My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me”, ed. Kate Bernheimer
Nuruddin Farah’s “Maps”
+Maaza Mengiste’s “Beneath the Lion’s Gaze”

*MIXED GENRE*
=“CERIPH 2”
+“The Short Stories and Radio Plays of S. Rajaratnam”, ed. Irene Ng

*PERFORMANCES*
=“Laskar Pelangi”
+Hofesh Schechter Dance Company’s “Political Mother”
JECKOSdance’s “We Came From the East”
+Pangdemonium Productions’ “Dealer’s Choice”

*EXHIBITIONS*
=Grapheme's "Zine Mosh"

+Amanda Heng’s “Speak to Me, Walk With Me”

Texts September 2011

Did I really not watch any films last month?

*UPDATE: Oh yes I did!



*POETRY*
+Okot p’Bitek ”Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol”
=Marc Daniel Nair’s “Chai”

*FICTION*
+“Teleny, or the Reverse of the Medal” by Anonymous
+Ngugi wa’Thiongo’s “Devil on the Cross”

*DRAMA*
+Yasmina Reza’s “The God of Carnage”

*NON-FICTION*
+Paul Rusesabagina’s “An Ordinary Man”
=Khoo Salma Nasution’s “Sun Yat Sen in Penang”
=Stella Dong’s “Sun Yat-Sen: The Man Who Changed China”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Troy Chin’s “The Resident Tourist (Part 5)”
+Alan Moore’s “Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”

*PERFORMANCES*
+The Finger Players’ “To Whom It May Concern”
+TheatreWorks’s “Serunding”, “The First Emperor’s Last Days” (staged reading) and “Fear of Writing”
=Lau Ming Hang’s “Am I Crying”
STAGES’s “On This Emerald Hill”
Teater Ekamatra’s “The Gunpowder Trail”
LaSalle’s +“Kaspar” and =“Working”

*FILMS*
+James Lee's "Tolong! Awek Aku Pontianak"

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Bruce Quek’s “The Hall of Mirrors”
=Kian-Peng Ong’s “Within 140 Characters”
=Substation’s “Rahim: womb [wu:m]”

Texts July 2011

Sorry this is late!

*FICTION*
=Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Paradise”
+Shamini Flint’s “Inspector Singh Investigates: A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree”

*DRAMA*
Zakaria Ariffin’s “Opera Stage”

*NON-FICTION*
+Tracy Kidder’s “Strength in What Remains”

FOLKLORE
+Rosemarie and Ranjan Somaiah’s “Indian Children’s Favorite Stories”
+Kim So-Un and Jeong Kyoung-Sim’s “Korean Children’s Favorite Stories”
+Pugalenthi’s “Myths and Legends: Philippines”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
Frank Weyers’ “Salvador Dali: Life and Work”

*FILMS*
+Sidney Drew’s “A Florida Enchantment”
=Magnus Hirscheld’s “Laws of Love”
+Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”

*PERFORMANCES*
+W!ld Rice’s “The Weight of Silk on Skin”, “Cooling Off Day” and “Family Outing”
+Teater Ekamatra’s “Charged” and “Nadirah”
DramaBox's "Is This Home?"
Theatrestrays’ “Paper Boat”
+Good Red Road Productions’ “Improvanopolis”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+stuff at Sarawak Art Museum and Sarawak Museum
=IndigNation’s “Pride and Prejudice”
+Asian Civilisations Museum’s “Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy”
+ArtScience Museum’s “Dalí: Mind of a Genius” and “Van Gogh Alive”

Texts July 2011

I'm flying to Kuching today! Given that I probably won't finish any other texts in the next 24 hours, here's the run-down for the month:

*POETRY*
+Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo’s “24 Poems”
=Theophilus Kwek’s “They Only Speak Our Mother Tongue”
=“Fifty on 50”, eds. Edwin Thumboo, Chia Hwee Pheng, Isa Kamari and K.T.M. Iqbal
+Koh Jee Leong’s “Seven Studies for a Self-Portrait”

*FICTION*
+Shamini Flint’s “The Seeds of Time”
+JMG Le Clézio’s “The Prospector”

*DRAMA*
=Soeuf Elbadawi’s “Moroni Blues”

*NON-FICTION*
Michael Steane’s “The Last Colony: An Experience of Réunion Island”
+Stephen King’s “On Writing”

*MIXED GENRE*
+“Ceriph: Issue Zero”, ed. Hans Wong-Jensen and Wei Fen Lee

*FILMS*
+Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class”

*PERFORMANCES*
+Fantastic Entertainment’s “Beauty Kings”
+Queensland Academie of Creative Industries’s “Drowning Ophelia”
=Pentas’s “3 Wajah”
+Nederlands Dans Theater’s “Mémoires d’Oubliettes/Sehnsucht”
+Lit Up’s “The City Limits” (yeah I was IN IT!!!)
=Actors Studio Singapore’s “Food, Sex and Death”

*EXHIBITIONS*
=Singapore Art Museum and Centre Pompidou’s “Video: An Art, a History”
=Lit Up’s “The City Limits”
+National Art Gallery’s “Liu Kang: A Centennial Celebration”

Texts June 2011

Before anything else, I'm reading poetry tonight!

Carnal Stash, the House of Incest Reading
Tuesday 5 July, 730-9pm
Post-Museum, 107 Rowell Road.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=210225729018745

Otherwise... Huh. I guess I really didn't finish a lot of books while I was travelling.

*POETRY*
+Jack Mapanje’s “Of Chameleons and Gods”

*FICTION*
+Mia Couto’s “The Last Flight of the Flamingo”

*NON-FICTION*
Richard Sampson’s “With Sword and Chain in Lusaka”
+Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
“Young Wildlife: Dawn of a New Kingdom”
+Dav Pilkey’s “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung Fu Cavemen from the Future”

*FILMS*
+George Nolfi’s “The Adjustment Bureau”

+Orson Welles's "The Lady from Shanghai"

+Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus”
+Craig Freimond’s “Jozi”
+“30 Rock” Season 4

*PERFORMANCES*
+David Bryan and Joe DiPietro’s “Memphis”
+Ian Rickson and Jez Butterworth’s “Jerusalem”
Teater Ekamatra’s “Pariah”
Kreativ Outbox's "LakiBini"

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Permanent exhibitions at Constitution Hill, the Hector Pieterson Museum, the Apartheid Museum, the Nelson Mandela House
Various exhibits at the Museum Africa

May 2011 texts

Late I know!

*POETRY*
+Kazuko Shirashi’s “Seasons of Sacred Lust”

*FICTION*
+Nadine Gordimer’s “Burger’s Daughter”
+Thomas Mofolo’s “Traveller to the East”
+Neshani Andreas’s “The Purple Violet of Oshaantu”
=Bessie Head’s “When Rain Clouds Gather”
+Nozipo Maraire’s “Zenzele: A Letter to My Daughter”

*DRAMA*
+Aileen Ritchie’s “The Juju Girl”

*NON-FICTION*
+Teo Soh Lung’s “Beyond the Blue Gate”
+Sybil Kathigasu’s “No Dram of Mercy”
+James Hall’s “Sangoma: My Odyssey into the African Spirit World”
+Rolf C. Hemke’s “Theater südlich der Sahara: Theatre in Sub-Saharan Africa”
+Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya's “Singing Away the Hunger”

*FILMS*
+Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor”
+Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”

*PERFORMANCES*
+Cake Theatre’s “Decimal Points: 4.44”
+Arco Renz’s “Crack”
=Boris Charmatz’s “Flip Book”
+Isinha’s “When a Gray Taiwanese Cow Stretched”
=Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s “Life and Times”
+T.H.E. Company’s “As It Fades”
=Living Dance Studio’s “Memory II: Hunger”
+Teatro de los Sentidos’s “Inhabitants”
+Fantastic Productions’ “The Adventures of the Mad Chinaman”
+Ontroerend Goed’s “Internal”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Aung Ko's "Village"
+Joo Choon Lin's "Too Big In the Tank"

April texts

*POETRY*
+Jennifer Crawford’s “Napoleon Swings”

*FICTION*
=João Guimarães Rosa’s “The Devil to Pay in the Backlands”
+Edmundo Paz Soldán’s “The Matter of Desire”
+Silvina Ocampo’s “Autobiografía de Irene”
+H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”

*DRAMA*
+Nestor Amarilla’s “Saved by a Poem”

*NON-FICTION*
+Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed”
=José Enrique Rodó’s “Ariel

*FILMS*
+Jaromil Jires’s “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”
Liao Jiekai’s “Red Dragonflies”

*PERFORMANCES*
+The Necessary Stage’s “Singapore” [preview]
=Cake Theatre’s “Desire and the Melancholic String Quartet”
Toy Factory’s “881”
+Singapore Arts Festival’s “Open Studio: A Language of Their Own”
=Singapore Repertory Theatre’s “Macbeth”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+CERIPH X Substation's "Synaesthesia"
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Notable Acquisitions: Featuring Works by Tan Oe Pang”
=Rofizano Zaino's "Fragments of My Identity"
+House of Matahati’s “The X Residence”

Texts Mar 2011

*POETRY*
+Léon Damas Gontran’s “Pigments – Névralgies”
+Sandra Cisneros’s “Loose Woman”

*FICTION*
+Paul di Filippo's "The Steampunk Trilogy"
+Hyejin Kim's "Jia"
+Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko”
+J. M. Coetzee’s “Summertime”

*NON-FICTION*
+Navtej Sarna’s “The Book of Nanak”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
=Gwee Li Sui’s “Myth of the Stone”

*FILMS*
=Wee Lilin’s “Forever”
=Zack Snyder's “Sucker Punch”

*PERFORMANCES*
Mereka’s “Bersendaloka”
+The Necessary Stage’s “Balek Kampong”
=Zizi Azah’s “No Exit”
+W!ld Rice’s “Emily of Emerald Hill”
=NUS Centre for the Arts and Checkpoint Theatre’s “The Power of Notions, Notions of Power”
+LaSalle’s “Thoroughly Modern Millie”
NUS Stage and Checkpoint Theatre’s “The Good, the Bad and the Sholay”
=Panggung Arts’ “F”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+NTU School of Art, Design and Media's "Port of Call"
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Singapore Biennale”, “It’s Now Or Never II” and “Negotiating Home, History and Nation”
The Art-Science Museum's ="Travelling the Silk Road", +"Genghis Khan: The Exhibition" and ="Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds"

RIP Diana Wynne Jones, 1934-2011

She was my favourite author as a kid. I *loved* her Chrestomanci series and Tale of Time City. I had no idea why people made such a big deal over JK Rowling when there was a genius like this around.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary

February 2010 texts

Grrr, I've been slovenly about reading this month! (But yeah, my fiction books were long and tedious. I forgive myself, partially.)

*POETRY*
+John Agard’s “Lovelines for a Goat-Born Lady”
+Jennifer Crawford’s “bad appendix”

*FICTION*
=VS Naipaul’s “A House For Mr Biswas”
+Rómulo Gallegos’s “Doña Bárbara”

*NON-FICTION*
=Richard Hammond’s “Chien-shiung Wu: Pioneering Nuclear Physicist”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Stan Sakai’s “Usagi Yojimbo: Return of the Black Soul”
+Slinkachu’s “Little People in the City”

*FILMS*
+Wolfgang Reitherman’s “The AristoCats”
+Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go”
+Yann Samuel’s “L’Age de Raison”
+Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right”
=Wee Lilin’s “Forever”

*PERFORMANCES*
+Palace Theatre’s “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”
+Garrick Theatre’s “When We Are Married”
+Duke of Yorks Theatre’s “Ghost Stories”
+Elizabeth de Roza’s “What the Dog Knew”
+The Finger Players’ “Turn by Turn We Turn” (preview)
=SMU StageIt’s “.RED”
+NUS Scholars Program's "Hay Fever"
+PANGdemonium’s “Closer”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Tate Modern’s permanent collection and “Gabriel Orozco”
+Tate Britain’s permnanent collection
+Wellcome Collection’s “Medicine Man”, “Medicine Now” and “High Society”
+Singapore Art Museum’s “Collectors’ Stage”

January Texts

*POETRY*
+Derek Walcott’s “Omeros”
+Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s “The Arrivants”
+Clive Murphy's "Orts and All: More Ribald Rhymes and Gay Doggery"

*FICTION*
+Jean Rhys’s “Sleep It Off, Lady”
+Jacob Ross’s “Pynter Bender”

*NON-FICTION*
+Dava Sobel’s “The Planets”
=Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Roz Chast’s “Theories of Everything”
+Troy Chin’s “The Resident Tourist, Part 4”
+Alan Moore’s “Tom Strong” Books 5 and 6
+Neil Gaiman’s “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?”

*FILMS*
=Mark Lee and Boris Boo's “The Ghosts Must Be Crazy”
+Alex van Warmerdam's “The Last Days of Emma Blank”
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”
+Philip Noyce's “Salt”

*PERFORMANCES*
Elysa Wendi and Shu Jing Xing's “Ah Ma and Ah Niang”
+Sean Tobin and Natalie Hennedige's “What Did You Learn Today?”
+Helmut Van den Meersshaut's "Entre Nous"
+The Necessary Stage's “Model Citizens”
=Gene Sha Rudyn's “Al-Ikhlas”
+Young & W!ld 2's “Swordfish+Concubine: The Fall of Singapura”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Achinto Bhadra's "Another Me: Transformations from Pain to Power"
=Lim Shengen's "Void: Utopia"
+Little Dröm Store's "School of Hard Knocks"
+Leung Chi Wo's "Something About Education But Not Exactly..."
+Evil Empire's "OH!: Open House"
+"Art Stage Singapore"
+Asian Civilisations Museum's "Art of the Congo River"
+Victoria and Albert Museum's Permanent Collection