Feb 01, 2010 11:22 AM
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Its that time of the year again for book lovers ! The time when they leave all else and to flock at Milan Mela Grounds (opp. Science City) for the Annual Kolkata Book Fair Jamboree.
There are over 500 book stalls including over 100 on platforms. If you enter through Gate No.6A, they’ll hand over a map & list of participants which can be very useful in case you want to visit a few of your choice on priority. Like last year, the stalls are organised in two parts viz., (1) the built up platforms (4 of them), housing the bigger publishers and retailers and (2) the rest of huts housing the smaller & regional publishers. Most of the renowned publishing houses like Penguin, Macmillan, Cambridge, Oxford, Orient Longman (now Orient Blackswan), Rupa, etc are present as are the 'technical' ones like Tata McGraw Hill, Narosa, Sage & Wiley.
This year the focus is on Mexico & its culture. The face of Che Guevara stares at you out of every other stall. By way of authors, the focus seems to be on Stephanie Meyer, Mukarami and Pamuk. For some funny reason, you can spot books by these guys in almost every corner of every stall. Personally I found the renowned retailers like Starmark, Oxford and Crossword a big letdown as their stock mainly consisted of ‘FMCG’ kinda books. Penguin has by far the best collection, especially if you can afford it.
After the Classics in yellow paperbacks from Penguin (selling for 80-90 bucks) that have
dominated the market for the last 2-3 years, another group of publishers viz.,
Bantam/Pocket Book/Signet have come out with Post-Classic Era titles like Ivan Denisovich, 1984, Short Works of Mark Twain, Of Human Bondage, etc selling for 115-135 bucks, with proper printing & proper yellow paper (I hate paperbacks in white paper), that'll be sure to delight you.
You’ll see lots of roadside vendors dealing with watercolor paintings (some rather nice ones) and sketch artists who’ll draw your portrait for a fee. In case you’re interested in Indian Art, you can visit the CIMA Gallery which displays not only contemporary paintings but catalogues as well.
Must visit:-
(1) Bookline - Not only has a decent collection (they have a copy of Complete Grateful Dead Lyrics), it has 3 large tables stacking bargain/seconds where you can get some rather interesting stuff like "Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix" by Charles Cross (who also authored Heavier than Heaven, a Biography of Kurt Cobain), BBC Mastermind and "Jack, The Ripper", something I had been looking for since times immemorial. A must visit for books on Music.
(2) One World – Has a reasonably good collection of fiction and a good one on Philosophy. I found a copy of the Complete Father Brown but having had "Select Father Brown Stories" already, I had to smother the idea of buying it.
(3) Chuckerverty, Chatterjee & Co.- Again a good collection on display with a separate section (unofficial) on Poetry ranging from the Complete Eliot, through Baudelaire to selected Poems by Pound (a rare commodity these days). They even had "Complete Short Stories" by Faulkner, retailing at 650 quid.
If you are the kind who takes his own sweet time, you had better start early at 12 so that
you can finish by 4-5. You can have scoops of ice cream to keep yourself cool but for proper food, you had better take your own tiffin. The stalls mostly provide substandard and stale food and you seriously run the risk of food poisoning.
With Book Fairs, its always the same story. You end up buying left, right and centre. Being a seasoned campaigner dont help as the urge to buy a coveted title is all overpowering. I bought a copy of Complete Walt Whitman only to find a fully illustrated copy of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (remember Macavity ?) staring at me in the next shop. At 750 bucks, I could hardly have afforded it, especially during the times of recession. But guess I have the spirit of the protagonist in "The Duchess and the Jeweler" (was it O'Henry or was it Woolf) who buys fake pearls for a fortune and to repeat that stunningly stark phrase, becomes "that little boy in the alley where they sold dogs on Sunday".
