A book festival will commence here on Friday to encourage reading habit among the rural people and facilitate availability of quality books.
While service organisations had been organising similar fairs here for some time now, the district administration has taken the lead to coordinate the conduct of the fair for the first time in a bid to institutionalise the fair as an annual affair.
The book festival, being coordinated by the district administration, has the blessings of the Tamil University, Thanjavur Maharajah Serfoji’s Saraswati Mahal Library, Tourism Development Council, the Booksellers and Publishers’ Association of South India (BAPASI) and the National Book Trust, India. It is being conducted on the Palace Grounds here, according to Collector N. Subbaiyan who inspected the finishing touches being given to the establishment of stalls and other facilities at the venue. The festival for which the admission is free would be open on all days between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. and end on June 21. Purchases would enjoy discount between 10 and 25 per cent depending on the titles and the publishing house. There would be 120 stalls in the fair in which more than 75 publishers would be displaying their books.
