Rope of Ash, Shahnon Ahmad, 1965

• Malaysia, #2
• $8.50 on Amazon
• Read March 2019
• Rating: 3/5 (as always, a measure of my personal reading enjoyment, not a qualitative judgement)

The Last Days of the Storyteller, Anwar Ridhwan, 1979

• Malaysia, #3
• $3.99 (kindle edition), Amazon
• Read February 2019
• Rating: 3/5

Excitingly, we’ve reached 2019, the point in my reading experience where I thought it would be a good idea to publicize this blog on instagram and thus devoted myself to meticulously curated photos of the books I was reading. Was this a good use of my time and creative energy? Was it a bit silly to be sitting in a hotel room in Ireland, five months pregnant and jet lagged, trying not to wake up my napping toddler while I drew dozens of tigers and then carefully arranged the finished drawings in approximately 800 different configurations in order to get the perfect shot of a mid-century Malaysian novel that I now only vaguely remember? I mean, maybe? Probably better than actually scrolling on Instagram, something that has eaten up more hours of my life in the past five years than I want to admit, even to myself. Either way, I was kind of delighted to find all of these bookstagram photos in my camera roll. Maybe I’ll start doing it again.

It came as a bit of a surprise to remember that I bought both these books from Amazon. I don’t buy from Amazon anymore, at least not if I can help it. I don’t want to sound sanctimonious, and I know that for many people there isn’t much alternative to Amazon, but I cannot willingly support Jeff Bezos, who is hoarding every greater quantities of wealth while other people are hungry and homeless–and meanwhile he’s just renting Venice for his wedding. Not to mention the part-time, minimum wage warehouse workers and delivery drivers, and the impact on the planet of next-day delivery, excessive packaging, and such cheap and readily available goods that it’s easier to just buy new things than find, maintain, or repair the things you’ve already got. I even cancelled my goodreads account recently (goodreads is owned by Amazon), and migrated my book lists over to The StoryGraph, which is independent (and woman-owned!).

Of course, every time we use the internet we’re using Amazon Web Services, which is actually Amazon’s primary income stream, so it’s kind of inescapable, but at least I can try not to give him any extra.

By this point you can probably tell I don’t have a lot of material for this post, but here goes: Rope of Ash and The Last Days of the Storyteller both examine the effects of modernization on rural Malaysian communities. I honestly couldn’t tell you anything about Last Days of the Storyteller beyond that it’s about a traditional oral singer of tales, who is dying, along with his way of life. It was fine. I can’t say it changed my life. I think Rope of Ash was better, and certainly more memorable, if only for the prominent featuring of a man-eating tiger, who might also be a metaphor for the novel’s secret villain. It’s about a small farming village, where one family is in conflict with the rest of the community because they refuse to break with tradition and increase their rice planting frequency from once a year to twice a year. The family become outcasts, and the other villagers fear them, purportedly for their violent tempers and irrationality…but things are not quite what they seem. The story changes as you see it from different perspectives, surprising the reader with unpredictable twists and turns.