The Joy of Discovery
I have no right to speak in favor of book stores. Last year, of the commendable fortune of my modest income that was spend on books, smaller portion was actually contributed to the bookstores. Amazon and Flipkart enjoyed the larger share, and the reasons were simple:
- Change in the content consumption pattern.
- Way cheaper than the book store.
- Amazing service (can you beat on click delivery of Amazon for my kindle)
- Change in style in discovering the book
Of all the above, I want to focus on the 4th point. Now we select our books from the book recommendations by fellow bloggers, by goodreads timeline, through tweets and through Facebook book crushes. I mean, when was the last time when you went to the bookstore and said, “It looks like an interesting book” and took that book home with you. If you have not done it for long time, then I will highly recommend you to do so. The pleasure of discovering the book and the happiness when it turns out to be a good read is pure gold.
Here are the books that I discovered from the book stores and reading them gave joy of an adventurous sailor:
Indian Voices of the great war: Soldiers Letters 1914-1918 by David Omissi
This book is chronological arrangement of the letters that Indian soldiers wrote back home during the First World War. These letters are translated in English from various Indian languages like Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Nepali and Tamil. This grant effort by David Omissi makes a great read.
Mark of Vishnu Stories by Khuswant Singh
Khuswant Singh spearheaded India’s short stories writing culture and made enough impact to inspire the generation. In this book, Khuswant’s 5 short stories prove his mettle in the trade and ensure you have great time reading them.
The Man Who Knew the Infinity by Robert Kanigel
This double biography on Ramanujan and Hardy, is one of the best read I had in last couple of years. While I was strolling through the history section of a bookstore, I stumbled upon this book and took it home after reading couple of pages. This book is wonderfully crafted and thoroughly researched. It unfolds the life and times of one of the most mysterious and talented mathematician of his era.
I am thankful to Avinash for such a wonderful post.
Visit Avinash at his blog avirandom.com
This is why–the incidental discovery–that we will always need bookstores in addition to the other sources! What interesting volumes. Thanks for a great guest post!
Your welcome and thank you for your kind comment.I feel that less number of bookstores will be big cultural loss for us.
Reblogged this on Avi + Random and commented:
Sharing my guest post that I contributed to Aman’s blog. Amandeep is one of my favorite blogger and it was honor to feature in his blog.
Do check out his blog if you have not done so already.
Reblogged this on bertpowers.
[…] The Joy of Discovery by Avinash Gupta […]
[…] AVINASH GUPTA– The Joy of Discovery […]
hello!,I really like your writing very much! share we keep in touch extra about your post on AOL? I require a specialist on this house to unravel my problem. May be that is you! Having a look ahead to look you.