Book lovers miss big names, but not fun fair

NEW DELHI: When it comes to book shopping, the Kumars are hopelessly old-fashioned. "I like touching the books before buying them," admits Shreela Kumar, 10th grader at Convent of Jesus and Mary, while running her hand over the hardcover Anne of Green Gables. She cracked the book open at the fair itself, sitting cross-legged on the floor by a pillar with her haul?including Michael Crichton, Stephen Fry, Lee Child?all around her.Three hours of browsing with her parents at the Delhi Book Fair yielded over a dozen books.
"Most were bought from shops offering those ?pick-one-for-Rs 100' kind of deals," says Shreela adding, "There are fewer stalls this time." The Delhi Book Fair, which opened on Saturday and will continue till August 31 at Pragati Maidan, is mainly a retailers' do. Apart from those publishing educational books and non-fiction of the lifestyle, cooking, self-help variety, general publishing in English is represented mainly by dozens basket-sale-type deals more familiar in Daryaganj.
There's Big Book Bazaar that's selling three "imported" children's books for Rs 100 and art books for Rs 50 and New Year diaries for Rs 50 each. Nanda Book Service has some stocks going for as low as even Rs 20. Student Book Centre has helpfully divided its stock into sections like "intense reading" (Michel Foucault, Joseph Conrad, Harper Lee), "serious reading" and "classic novels."
Pooja Khanna from Rohini says her husband, Jintendra Khanna, a businessman, buys most of his books online. "We came for the collection," says Pooja. There are, according to ITPO's Sanjay Vashistha, 225 participants and 39 stationary dealers in the fair.
Manvi Dikshit and Deeksha Yadav, third-year English students at Hindu, picked six and four books from such sales but were disappointed by Penguin's absence. "We want more second-hand book dealers. We got really good deals at Penguin last time," says Yadav. "This time there are fewer independent publishers. I couldn't spot Oxford University Press either."
But Harper Collins had a stall for the first time. "We've been participating in the World Book Fair," says Iti Khurana of Harper Collins. "We're participating in the Delhi edition for the first time. It We're trying this as it
is good for branding and visibility." National Book Trust added 20 members to its club. Nearly 30 activities are scheduled for the week, including book launches. Suhail Mathur, 25, is signing his first book 'The Bhairav Putra' — "historical fiction with a dash of mythology" — at the fair.
The fair's special theme, 'literature in cinema,' is the subject of an exhibition in Hall 8?film posters, stills, text on books and movies they inspired. Behind-the-scene shots of Pather Panchali and Aparajito are a delight.