Student Assignment:

Hatrick for St.George’s Anglo-Indian!

“If the New year is on its way,

Can Book fair be far away?”

(inspired by Shelley)

At the start of the new year, the 34th Chennai Book Fair kickstarted at St.George’s Anglo-Indian School, Chetput for about two weeks from 4th to 17th January where the swarm of book lovers rushed to grab their books. A visit to the book fair makes the visitor to get exposed to a variety of books and get to know more about the upcoming publishers. Book fair makes the student community to grab their self-learning books within one roof.

The book fair was organised by the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI) were 348 shops were on display including Cambridge University Press (CUP), Oxford University Press (OUP), Pearsons, Wiley India, British Council Library (BCL), American Library (AL), Max Muller Bhavan, National Book Trust (NBT), Kalachuvadi Publications, Kalayedu Publications, S.Chand Publications, etc. Thus, one could say that the book fair catered to people with tastes and buying capacities with books on academics, religion, literature, culture etc., kept on display and prices ranging from, say, a mere Rs.25 to a few thousand rupees.

One of the hottest features of this book fair was that the sizeable portion of the stalls was represented by regional language publishers. One could see that the publishing technology and the content of Tamil language publishing has improved in leaps and bounds.

Many publishers use the book fair to launch their new publications. This book fair too saw 34 new launches being released on a single day by a single publisher – Manimegalai Publishers.

Various events took place on a daily basis on this podium.

STALL ARRANGEMENT:

This year, the stalls were arranged systematically with the aisles being named after famous literary personalities like Vivekananda, Bharathi, etc. The names of each of the stalls were displayed in hoardings put up near the entrance, making it easy for the visitors to navigate among the stalls.

My Itinerary:

I have been visiting the book fair for the past three years at St.George’s School. I usually buy books on varying topics with a major chunk of them being related to academics. This year my focus was entirely on academics. I had planned visiting the stall set up by CUP, OUP, Wiley India, Pearsons, and Distributors like UBS and TBH. I had a few books in mind which I had selected in the catalogue through the internet.

Due to space constraint, these publishers had not kept all their books on display. They were more focused on engineering books, exam preparatory books like TOEFL guides, GRE, etc. Unfortunately the books that I wanted to buy were not available in the stalls. So I took their visiting cards with the promise from them of giving me usual 20% discount.

Other Attractions:

One of the major attractions for the kids in the book stall, was the ‘Gift Book House’ were the illustrative ways of teaching were made available. The book by name “The Pirates of the Caribbean” was given in a 3D view, which makes the beginners to implement/inculcate reading.

Friendship @ Facebooks.com – Daya Kudari

This book is one of the essentials for the present Facebook users or any social networking users conveying the limits and to make healthy relationships on Facebook. I was really amazed on seeing this title, but then I really understood the concept behind this title when I skimmed through the book.

1001 movies – You must see before you die:

As I am a movie freak, I really was attracted towards this book. The selection of movies in the book was good and of my choice.

Most against:

“Value Education”:

This book is made exclusively for undergraduate Arts and Science students, which I find a little weird. The frequently asked questions were given which I really felt it to be unnecessary to purchase.

Submitted by:

Madhumita, R.

I BSc Zoology (Reg) on 01/02/2011