As most people in Karnataka know, The Bangalore book festival is back in the Palace grounds. I have made it a habit to visit every year if I am in the country, and unfortunately that was not the case for the last three years. People told me this year it is much better than previous years, and I have to say I had high expectations.
It was a quite pleasant experience - of course, we have to forget the bad language of people supposed to help us park - with lots and lots of options for Kannada book lovers. That was the part I loved most - every major Kannada publisher was there, with a considerable variety of books. So I was able to collected a few works missing my bookshelf in Kannada. Nice to know they have started to re-publish books like Rangannana Kanasina Dinagalu - not seen in print for a long time.
English would have been better - I kept seeing the same titles in every other shop, and was hard put to find rare books in English. I was rather hoping that Bangalore readers would be exposed to a somewhat wider reading world than they would from a usual visit to Sapna or Crossword, but for me that was not the case. The single English book I bought is the one available in every major bookstore - Ramachandra Guha's new book Makers of modern India.
Arts was the most disappointing section, though - it failed me completely in digital photography, and the usual display of Ravi Varma's paintings had a few more not-so-famous artists added to their list. I must say expansion in arts - both books and paintings - has been very little over the years.
Only one place selling ebook readers was there, and I am hoping the empty stalls will be occupied over the course of the exhibition with more tehno-enthusiasts. Not that I am a fan of ebook readers - quite the opposite, in fact - but that is the changing page of reading, and Bangalore bookworms deserve a display of available readers.
Overall, I must say it is pulling crowds, and is showing signs of succeeding beyond most other book fairs of today. The face that I spent only 1/10th of the budget I had gone with probably shows how much scope is there for expanding the range of works, even by the standards of a rank amateur like me, but overall it looks like it is doing its job.
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