As I entered the Coimbatore Book Fair 2017, organised by the Coimbatore District Small Scale Industries Association and Booksellers and Publishers Association of India, I was surprised by the number of people searching for books. There are more than 200 stalls with books in different languages and subjects. Genres like philosophy, spirituality, self-help, food, history, fiction, children’s writing, general knowledge were available as were academic and general knowledge books and entire collections of Reader’s Digest.
Manasa, a standard I student, was flipping through books of fairy tales unmindful of the crowd around her. “Jack and the Beanstalk is my favourite,” she said, talking about her plan to buy six new fairy tale books and to create a home library of all her favourite books.
Various genres like sci-fi, romance, and thrillers were also available in plenty. Popular series like Hunger Games, Divergent, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter were being offered at discounts. Manimekalai from the Asian Book Centre said, “We go to almost all the book fairs conducted in the state and usually get a good response in Coimbatore.”
There were also stalls that offered second-hand books at half the price or even less. Many readers felt they had hit a jackpot when they found books they had been searching for. College students Kokila Shree and Mahalakshmi were arguing about which of Kafka’s books they should buy at the Book World stall. Both were extremely happy to find a diverse collection of books. While Kokila was overjoyed to find the books of her favourite authors like Dan Brown, Markus Zusak and Mary Higgins Clark, Mahalakshmi was hunting for books on philosophy. “Earlier I never tried reading philosophical books, but one of the stall keepers last year recommended Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, which I thoroughly enjoyed.” This, she said, was one of the interesting aspects of books fairs, as it introduces a person not just to new authors but also to genres they may not have explored.
The fair is also a place where people who share similar tastes and ideas meet and bond. Kavitha, a housewife, met Rajeshwari while searching for Perumal Murugan’s Tamil novels. “Since we have similar reading taste, we now suggest books for each other,” says Kavitha enthusiastically. She indicates this might even be the start of a lifelong friendship as they have planned to meet in other book fests as well.
CBF 2017 is a treasure trove not just for English readers but also for Tamil ones, as more Tamil publishers have participated this year. Many books from other languages have been translated into Tamil making it easy for readers to access the works of foreign authors. Ethirveliyedu and Kalachuvadu have the translated foreign authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Orhan Pamuk, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy and Indian authors like Arundhati Roy, Meena Kandasamy, and Kamala Das into Tamil. Veluswamy, a retired Professor of Commerce, reminisced about his love for Russian literature and was happy to see many youngsters at the fair. Buying books is the most profitable investment, he said.
As I left the book fair, it struck me that Francis Bacon’s famous quote “Reading maketh a full man” was indeed an apt one.