A festive notebook

I did most of my Christmas shopping online back in October so I was free to wander through the shopping centres festooned with Christmas decorations and under balconies with the much-maligned hanging Santas (which I am very fond of) without the stress brought about by having to buy gifts. The streets were certainly buzzing, though I don't know if the people milling about were merely window-shopping or making the tills ring.

Although a few establishments had pre-Christmas sales or special offers, I didn't find anything to be of particularly good value or too enticing to resist. Most of the window displays were bland, and special offers were not special at all. Discounts were niggardly to the extreme. And freebies?

Practically unheard of.

Then I read about the Ħamrun St Joseph Band Club where the barman is treating patrons who buy drinks to a three-course meal.

That's bruschetta, antipasto, pasta and turkey on the house as long as clients shell out for the alcohol. A similarly wide array of appetisers are given out for free in many village band and political party clubs.

I find it ironic to see how many other businesses are flailing around trying to attract new custom and retain their client-base, while the każini have nailed the formula - generous freebies and personalised customer service. You don't need marketing gurus like Seth Godin to tell you that - just a readiness to serve and an eye for the market.

• I enjoyed reading Meta l-Milied Ma Ġiex to my daughter. Written by Clare Azzopardi, it's a big book about a Grinch-like man-in-the-moon character who wants to do away with Christmas for the rest of the world because he can't get into the spirit of things. The illustrations are gloriously bright and feature scenes from local villages, making it attractive to young readers as well as their parents.

The best thing about the book, though, is that it's in Maltese. This book and others like it, dispel the myth that there are no good books in Maltese. The last few years has seen the publication of several interesting books by local authors.

I found the first two books in the Fiddien series to be far more intriguing than some of the Harry Potter ones, and It-Tielet Qamar was equally captivating for lovers of the alternative universe genre. Karl Schembri's Il-Manifest Tal-Killer was turned into a play, Pierre Mejlak wrote Riħ Isfel, and Ġużè Stagno delighted us all with Ramon u ż-Żerbinotti.

My personal favourite - Immanuel Mifsud - published a collection of stories about the dark realities of the lives of ordinary people, and I've heard positive comments about Trevor Zahra's latest books.

All of these are a far cry from the Maltese books of yesteryear, which impressed me (perhaps mistakenly) as being mostly swashbuckling tales set in the time of the Knights, horrifically cryptic plays about characters suffering from existential angst, or collections of poems about carob trees and canaries. I found them to be only marginally appealing and would only memorise chunks of them for exam purposes. Few of them managed to move me or engage my interest and I dismissed Maltese literature for many years.

Now that some good books are being written by local authors, I am dismayed to see that much of their effort goes unrewarded. Even the event which passes as a showcase of Maltese literature - the National Book Council Awards - hasn't helped matters much, with some very questionable choices bagging the main prizes. Of course - the awards don't necessarily determine what makes good reading, but they do serve as a publicity platform for the books entered.

Publishing a book with a small print run (as is usually the case with most Maltese books destined for a limited market) is quite expensive, so ignoring the very decent works of local authors works as a disincentive to further publication. And we get to miss out on the good stuff.

• The shooting incident at the Mqabba Nationalist Party Club provoked the usual debate about gun control. Predictably enough, the "Guns don't kill people. People do" pro-gun slogan got an airing.

The people trotting out this frequently-repeated sound bite are missing the point. While it is true that there has to be a person pulling the trigger, a gun makes it easy to kill or maim a large number of people in one go.

A knife-wielding hothead may kill or injure other persons but he has to get close to them to do so. A person with a gun can attack from a distance, making it difficult for him to be identified or seen, let alone disarmed.

Moreover, he can claim multiple victims - as can be seen from the Mqabba incident and the tragic Los Angeles Christmas party shoot-out where a man dressed in a Santa costume killed eight people.

Explosives apart - firearms are the only other type of weapons which can be used for such devastating attacks, and that is why gun ownership should be controlled.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt