Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Book post

We can no longer get to the bookshops, but the books find their way to us

Since we moved to the hinterlands, we have lost the pleasure of browsing in bookshops, except on rare visits to Chennai or Kochi. One or two shops in Palakkad have a small collection of airport-style novels. In most of the others, as you step around the pencil boxes and water bottles, a young man emerges from stacks of notebooks to ask, Which course, madam?

A dear friend in Delhi took pity on me some years ago and offered to send me books from my favourite shop on Janpath. I asked for Margaret Drabble's The Peppered Moth and he sent me a book on Zen philosophy. Whenever my husband goes to Bangalore or Chennai he phones me from the bookshop and I shop by proxy. (Do you want The Sunday Philosophy Club? Okay. Paulo Coelho? No, no, no!) At best we find one or two titles in this manner.

Full report here Hindu

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