“I am looking for a different sort of read this winter. And look what I found,” exclaims Shruti, a class XI student and an avid reader. She shows a copy of ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’. “This is the latest by my favourite author J.K.Rowling and she has written it as Robert Galbraith.” Many such exciting new arrivals are on sale at the sixth edition of Best Books exhibition organized by Turning Point book shop. With nearly 50,000 titles in 15 different genres, the expo has become a regular haunt of book lovers.
“We have brought in an exclusive collection of foreign authors in English. We wanted to introduce them to the Madurai readers, though people have been reading Tamil translations of them,” says Janaki Raman, the supervisor. “Children books move fast as this is Christmas vacation for them.” From activity books like word building and fun maths to the evergreens like Geronimo Stilton, Enid Blyton, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Famous Five, the collection for children is wide and enticing. “The Chhota Bheem comic series containing 90 titles is the latest craze among kids,” informs Janaki Raman. There are comic books on other Indian superhero characters apart from a set of 300 volumes of Amar Chitra Katha sold at an offer price of Rs. 11,250.
The expo features a wide range of encyclopedias, dictionaries, language books and competitive exam guides for students and job aspirants. New arrivals in English fiction include Abdul Kalam’s My Journey, John Grisham’s Sycamore Row, Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret Hero, Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus, Stephen Hawking’s My Brief History, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland and Jackie Collins’ Confessions of a Wild Child.
This year’s exhibition has also introduced lots of Tamil titles. “Though we don’t have much collection in Tamil at the shop, we didn’t want the Tamil reading crowd to stay away from the expo,” says Janaki Raman. From Kalki classics like Ponniyin Selvan and Sivakamiyin Sabatham and mythological tales like Chanakya by Aswini Sharma to modern literature, the range of Tamil books has something for everyone. Anthologies of Tamil poems are interesting additions to the expo this time around. ‘Kirukalgal’ by Parthiban, poems by Bharathiyar and Bharati Dasan and short poems by Vairamuthu are the hot picks in the genre.
A separate section of self-help books on beauty tips, cooking techniques, home, lifestyle and gardening are also on display for women. The exhibition offers an attractive discount of 10 per cent on all books and 50 per cent on children’s books.
The expo is on till December 9, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Lakshmi Arasu Kalyana Mandapam, K.K. Nagar.
