The book fair is here! As I am a self-confessed bookworm and amateurish bibliophile, this is a very exciting week for me as well as other starry-eyed readers who will get to hear their favourite authors read and perhaps, in that awkward song-and-dance that happens when one meets one’s idol, exchange a few words at a book signing. I know because I am a geek like that.
Thrills related to books came early in life. As the only child of two doctors who were always being called away on emergencies, I was taught to read early. It was, as my mother theorised, an easy way to keep me occupied in the doctor’s prep room while I waited for her to finish up in the operating theatre.
She did not believe in nannies. So I’d sit there with my collection of Enid Blyton or the Tintin series, rocking my crossed legs back and forth, and read. Once, after I’d exhausted whatever I had brought with me, I read a coffee can label – and proceeded to surprise the doctors who came by to make coffee by telling them how it’s really done. I was precocious, certainly. Wellread? I was definitely on my way.
After I went away to university in Canada, I would filch from my mother’s library during my visits home. I had grown up with a certain number of Indian, Russian and Bengali classics but by then I was knee-deep in South Asian contemporary literature.
Full report here National
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