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Book Fair 2020 - What's new



What kind of pain would carry pleasure?

Ask me, I would say it is the pain of thirst in a reader as eyes fly across piles of books. Yes, I was at my favourite place this weekend, the one every reader waits eagerly for - the 43rd Chennai Book Fair 2020! What a great way to start the year!

I am a reader who rarely sticks to an author, but later last year, I fell head over heels in love with Jeffrey Archer's writing when I read his novel Sins of the Father, Part 2 of the Clifton Chronicles.
I was starving and knew I wouldn't have the heart to separate. I kept my search alive and was determined to stock up for the upcoming year.

My eyes scanned all stalls for interesting novels I could go home with and got my hands on everything I saw and relished it to the most. I forgot to add, today is exactly a year from my first time at the Chennai Book Fair, which is where I met Meera ma'am for the first time. Unfortunately, Meera ma'am couldn't be here this year. But, ma'am, I am very happy for you and you inspire me everyday to do better. I still remember your words, "Don't say 'I will try', say 'I will'." These words led me to publishing Solitude and eventually writing for magazines and newspapers. And as you say, the rest is Mayaakatha.

This year's book fair, what caught my eyes was the Keezhadi excavation section, which provided needed insight into this intriguing subject. I am usually crowd-o-phobic and I still am, but the excitement and suspense in me did not get dampened on the way.

In my honest opinion, I was a tad disappointed with this year's book fair, considering the vast difference in collection. Of what I remember, the book fair held last year had much more variety in collection and was a little more interesting to me. Last year, the book fair held new books form debut authors and was perked up with diversity that could match every reader's taste. I think, this year, the book fair lacked this diversity and liveliness and half the books I found this year were ones I already saw here last year.

A difference that I saw this year was the increasing number of secondhand book stalls in the book fair. One could get his hands on titles unheard of, from these stalls. A negative that I experienced is the randomness of the books. My kind request to the people in charge would be to segregate the books in these stalls either by the authors or by genres.

I was looking forward to meet more authors and people in the literature field, but I couldn't. I was also expecting more stalls of Neelam, something I enjoyed visiting last year. Nonetheless, I came home with several books I had been meaning to devour. In the last few stalls, I found a vast collection of Paulo Coelho and Jeffrey Archer.

Overall in my experience, I would say, most book stalls had a repetitive collection of bestsellers of the last two years. I was looking forward to seeing more variety and diversity, but this year's book fair, in my opinion, fell short of my expectations.

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