By Toh Hsien Min

In recent years, despite not really seeking to, I've managed to find a favourite word for each year. Last year, my favourite word was tsundoku, a Japanese word that refers to the bibliophile's fatal flaw of buying many more books than he or she can read, letting them pile up on the shelves for that mythical day when all of life's commitments will disappear and there'll be nothing to do but read. Coming across that word just at the time my own shelves were overflowing precipitated a conscious effort on my part to cut them down to size, which is as direct a case of language influencing behaviour as I know.

This year, my new favourite word is Sachlichkeit, a German word that, like Ding an sich, doesn't have an exact translation but may be rendered in English as "objectivity". What it refers to - when it doesn't refer to architectural styles - is the ability to separate the idea from the person expressing it, which enables the proper discussion of a subject with the objective of getting the best outcome. The word resounds with me because it captures exactly the source of my frustration upon encountering situations when people issues have come between people and what is ultimately best for them.

At QLRS, we like to think of the editorial policy as being one of Sachlichkeit. We look at the work and not the person, regardless of whether we're looking at poetry or prose. However, one section where Sachlichkeit is - or has to be - more the case than usual is Criticism. This is because its value is predicated upon being able to gather honest and objective commentary on published work, and perhaps because of the extent to which this ideal is paramount in the section, it has proved to be the most difficult section to put together. Few people seem to want to hazard that thin line where if you say that someone's book is no good the community assumes you have an axe to grind but if you say it's fantastic it is because you're best friends with the author. When no one wins, the community loses. New books aren't actually thought about in more depth than can be squeezed into a tweet.

So, with a new editor, Stephanie Ye, joining the team from this issue, we've decided to try out a new feature, to at least take stock of what has been published in Singapore in the most recent quarter (or in this issue's case, in the year to date). It won't be focussed on critical commentary, because we don't want our tastes to define too much what should be a space for the community, but might include some context (i.e. gossip). If nothing else, it helps us keep a log also of the books available for review; so give us a tinkle if anything catches your eye and if you're prepared to give your sense of Sachlichkeit a bit of a workout.

This issue, released into the hubbub of the Singapore Writers Festival, may be just a tad smaller than usual, but small and well-formed is, objectively, as much as we can hope for. Kai Chai has somehow, superhumanly, managed to squeeze in reading twenty-something stories and picking three very good ones in the interstices of the intense work of putting together the Festival as a first-time festival director: hats off! The poetry has been reasonably easy to deal with, because the quality of the selected work has shone straight through the pack. And the other regular features besides our newest one have continued to hold up the people element of the journal alongside the ideas. I hope we can say we've met our objective.

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