Judging the book by its author

There was a time when one sought out different and life-changing books. Today, everyone seems to be reading the same new books…

How do you do it? Your colleagues, neighbours, family and friends, how do they all do it? “I follow my nose,” says Dan Rhodes, author of Gold, “I am always on the hunt for the next book that's going to rock my world … my favourite thing is still going into a shop and coming out with something I'd never heard of. ” But if you stand in any bookstore, you're unlikely to see many people using their noses, they just head straight for the “new” Salman Rushdie or the “latest” Chetan Bhagat or the “most recent” Shobhaa De or the “new bestseller” from Paulo Coelho: it's a matter of judging every book by its author.

Seeking questions
I remember that in the days when I first began to buy books, almost all the people I knew were looking for one that would somehow alter the way life felt or the way they conducted themselves in life, because we believed that books could change life. Maybe that was the Catcher effect — most of us had read Catcher in the Rye and Salinger's other books in our late teens, at the same time that we were beginning to buy our own books; Salinger undid everything we had believed about writing and heroes and even about reading. So maybe when we searched long and hard in bookstores — reading page after page of the book, not content with what the flaps were saying — we were looking for something that could stand up to Catcher, a book that could make us look at what else life was about.

Full report here Hindu

Coelho's new book to release on April 22

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho's new novel, The Winner Stands Alone is to release worldwide on April 22. And for a change this will be date of launch for India too. prior to this, Coelho's books have come to India fairly after it has been launched in the West.

Coelho's Brida was launched last year. The book will be available in leading bookstores across India and the world from April 22 onwards.

Coelho, whose bestseller The Alchemist has been or is a #1 bestseller in 74 countries, received the 2009 Guinness World Record for the most translated author of the same book. Now, in his 12th novel once again returns to the themes that have inspired millions around the globe: the search for our true self, the fear and price of fame, and how wealth, excess, and superficiality can lead to the loss of relationships and spiritual values.

Brida was a huge success in India. According to Lipika Bhushan, Marketing Manager HCI, “We sold a whooping 75,000 copies of his earlier title Brida and are looking to double the figure with The Winner Stands Alone.”

The Winner Stands Alone is set in the exciting worlds of fashion and cinema. Taking place over the course of twenty-four hours during the Cannes Film Festival, it is the story of Igor, a successful, driven Russian entrepreneur who will go to the darkest lengths to reclaim a lost love—his ex-wife, Ewa. Believing that his life with Ewa was divinely ordained, Igor once told her that he would destroy whole worlds to get her back. The conflict between an individual evil force and society emerges, and as the novel unfolds, morality is derailed.