Pune Book Fair 2009

Venue: Ganesh Kala Kreeda Manch, Nehru Stadium, Pune, Maharashtra India

Start Date 03-JUN-09 End Date 07-JUN-09

Event Profile:

Pune Book Fair would be an ideal opportunity for you, To showcase Books & Periodicals to a large urban market in this region, To get feedback on latest release, To interact with the concerned for development of dealer / distributor network and for trade representations.

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Highlights:

Pune is today emerging as a major market. Apart from the local Publications, every major Publication House across the country is eyeing to grab their share of the market in this region. The educated urban market promises to usher in an era of growth for this sector.

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Visitor's Profile:

The exhibition is expected to be visited by over 40,000 people comprising largely of Institutional representatives, library managers, govt. officials, book seller and enthusiastic readers from all over this region.

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Exhibitor's Profile:

The display at the fair would include Books, Periodicals and Journals Published both in and outside India, Books & Periodicals, News Papers, Journals & other Publications, Educational Institutions & Coching Classes, Teaching Aids & Educational Materials, Stationary, Library & other Services, Govt. Organisations.

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Organizer:

Gateway Fairs Private Limited
Expo Centre No. 102, Isha Vaastu, 2nd Floor, 449, Somwar Peth,
Pune, India.
Tel: +(91)-(20)-26054915
Fax: +(91)-(20)-26054917

For more details/enquiry regarding Stall booking, visitor registration, sponsorship and general enquiry Pls Click........


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A book, entitled What is India released

By Our Reporter

SHILLONG: A book, entitled What is India, compiled and published by Salil Gewali and Bimal Bajaj was released by Governor of Meghalaya, RS Mooshahary, at the Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture, Shillong on Sunday.

Speaking on the occasionMooshahary said "There are various means and avenues to unravel the truth and Indian philosophy is the most effective and provides a viable source of greater harmony and fulfillment."

He highlighted upon the hunger for seeking the truth which is the ultimate and transcends all other aspects of life.

'India has a very rich repository of knowledge ranging from Astronomy, Science, Mathematics and Spiritualism that command the admiration and inspired the greatest of the great philosophers and scientists such as Voltaire, Hegel, Emerson, Schopenhauer, Schlegel, Niels Bohr , Oppenheimer, Schrodinger, said Salil Gewali in his speech. THE SHILLONG TIMES

Book on Majuli released

Correspondent
DULIAJAN, April 7 – A book titled The Majuli Island: Society, Economy and Culture written by Dambarudhar Nath, Professor of the Sri Sri Aniruddhadeva Chair, Dibrugarh University, was formally released by Prof KK Deka, Vice-Chancellor of Dibrugarh University on Wednessday at the Dibrugarh University auditorium.

The book published by Anshas Publications, New Delhi on behalf of the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad University of Asian Studies, Kolkata is a research work by Dambarudhar Nath, Professor of History, Sri Sri Aniruddhadeva Chair, Dibrugarh University carrying a systematic study on the society and culture of the river island in a historical perspective. Importance of the book lies in the fact that although the scope of the work is confined to Majuli alone, it is a contemporary social history of the State as a whole; and it visualizes the challenges faced by the heritage institutions of the country and the way they have responded to the new situations. In this context questions like Christianity, erosion, urbanization and economy, satra and society relationship are some of the major aspects dealt with in the book.

One of the significant aspects discussed in the book is the island’s political history. Not to be seen in isolation, this aspect of its history has been rightly correlated with the contemporary history of Assam as well as the whole country. It is in this perspective that the personality of Late Pitambardev Goswami of Garamur Satra and Late Dattadeva Goswami of Auniati Satra have been brought to the light in the social and political history of the country. ASSAM TRIBUNE

A Better India

A Better India

NR Narayana Murthy is among the most admired business leaders in the world today. He has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution that transformed Indian business and industry after the 1991 economic reforms into a dynamic, energized, pro-active community that can benchmark with the best in the world. Narayana Murthy and his company lnfosys also command respect worldwide for their work ethics, values, transparency, their quest for excellence and commitment to quality, and above all for their vision.

A Better India: A Better World brings together Narayana Murthy’s views on issues that audiences around the world like to hear him speak on — from effective models of corporate and public governance to corporate social responsibility, from globalization and competing in a flat world to entrepreneurship and leadership challenges, from issues crucial to national development to good values and betterment of the education system. In A Better India: A Better World Narayana Murthy also unveils an ambitious blueprint for a vibrant, developed, egalitarian future that today’s youth must build tomorrow. There could be no better time than now to adopt Narayana Murthy’s bold, honest and positive approach to resolving the conflicts, dilemmas and downsides that face us today. A Better India: A Better World is a visionary document for our times

What is the key to a better India? Can we reach the benefits of development to everyone of our citizens? Is it really possible to make the world a better place — and how? With one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world and an array of recent achievements in technology, industry and entrepreneurship, India strides confidently towards the future. But in the world’s largest democracy, not everyone is equally fortunate. More than 300 million Indians are still prey to hunger, illiteracy and disease, and 51 per cent of India’s children are still undernourished.

What will take for India to bridge this great divide? When will the fruits of development reach the poorest of the poor, and wipe out the tears from the eyes of every man, woman and child, as Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt? And how should this, our greatest challenge ever, be negotiated?

In A Better India: A Better World, Narayana Murthy shows us that a society working for the greatest welfare of the greatest number must focus on two simple things: values and good leadership. Drawing on the remarkable Infosys story and the lessons learnt from the two decades of post-reform India, Narayana Murthy lays down the ground rules that must be followed if future generations are to inherit a truly progressive nation.

NR Narayana Murthy is the founder chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, a global software consulting company with headquarters in Bangalore. He serves on the boards of Unilever, HSBC, NDTV, Ford Foundation and the UN Foundation. He also serves on the boards of Cornell University, Wharton School, Singapore Management University, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore and INSEAD.

(Penguin Books India) source: THE SENTINEL

Maudiegirl

Nobody —and the whole of Boteju Land agreed — could cook like Maudiegirl. She wielded a wizard’s wand not only in the kitchen but also over domestic problems, however large in magnitude; from predicting the sex of an unborn child to knowing more than a dozen ways to cook eels; from cutting a goat in the right way to setting failing marriages straight; from nursing the ailing to health to keeping the best kitchen, Maudiegirl had a solution to every little problem. Her home was her castle and the kitchen her domain.

In the fourth serving of his Burgher chronicles — Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen — Carl Muller reverts to his favourite family, the von Blosses of his first Burgher book The Jam Fruit Tree. A hungry family and a wonderful cook, a kind paedophile, a cantankerous mother-in-law, a disloyal husband, good-for-nothing uncles, prudish Pentecostal, Dunnyboy’s exhibitionism, Sonnaboy’s show-of-strength — the author captures the hallmarks of the von Blosses’ days and ways in his quintessentially irreverent, witty and heart-warming style.

Grandmama’s Kitchen features many of Maudiegirl’s famous recipes making the book a treat not only for Muller fans but also for the senses!

Carl Muller is an unusual man. He is no academic; kicked out of three schools, he never went to university and served in the Royal Ceylon Navy, the Ceylon Army and the port of Colombo as a pilot station signalman. In advertising briefly, he was also involved in the travel trade, and donned the robes of an entertainer. A pianist and a journalist, Carl Muller has a large number of published titles, ranging from poetry to science fiction, under his belt. But it is his Burgher novels that have earned him special acclaim, especially the first one, The Jam Fruit Tree, which won the Gratiaen Memorial Prize, 1993, for the best work of English literature by a Sri Lankan. He has also won the State Literary Award for his historical novel, Children of the Lion.
He lives with his wife, Sortain, in Kandy.

Business Standard praises Muller thus: ‘‘He tells his tale with a gentle humour often bordering on tenderness, but couched in the vigorous rugged localese. Almost immediately we find ourselves empathizing with Muller’s roistering band that sins and prays with equal zest.’’

Kalakeerthi Ashley Halpe, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Peradeniya says: ‘‘Powerfully matriarchal, presenting the Burgher women of old as a force to be reckoned with, Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen gives us lovable Maudiegirl, firmly ensconced at the centre of the von Bloss universe, her children and her neighbours, her stubbornness and her dedication to the running of her home, however crazy things may be, her home-brewed wisdom and, above all, her cooking. The recipes are a vital part of the book’s rich life, no less than the throbbing energies of railway Burgher families that Carl Muller renders with his inimitable gusto in this evocation of the von Bloss world. Carl Muller has paid his grandmother, upon whom the character of Maudiegirl is based, the greatest tribute ever.’’
(Penguin Books India) THE SENTINEL

Books, libraries and fairs

— H N Das Ever since the invention and the spread of computers learned societies have worried that the use of books will slow down. Some have even feared that conventional physical books will disappear being replaced by e-books, which have now become thin and highly simplified after the invention of e-ink and the reader device called PRS-505.

It is true that the internet has become ubiquitous. Tremendous amount of information is being stored, retrieved and disseminated through the internet. In his book Business @ Speed of Thought Bill Gates had predicted the emergence and extensive use of a digital nervous system for business and other purposes. He mentioned, in passing, that “every retail (book) store needs to take the Internet into account”. He further elaborated that “the success of the Amazon. Com book-store which exists only on the Internet impelled Barnes & Noble to combine its successful physical book stores with a strong presence in cyberspace and to team up with Bartelsmann, a leading international media company, in an online joint venture.” But Bill Gates did not predict the end of the physical book.

Those of us who belong to the generations born before the cyber-age and had become almost addicted to physical books, in hard cover or paper back, can never shed the pleasure of reading the printed word. For us holding a book or looking at an almirah full of books is a pleasure. Even those who have grown up in the past two decades read physical books beside spending time on the internet.

The number of books published and sold have increased. Printing has become easier and quicker through DTP This is demonstrated by the way books hit the market now a days. A few days after Barack Obama’s election the book “Change We Can Believe In”, was not only published in New York but reached Mumbai. I picked it up from the Taj book store and completed reading before the New Year. Most people must have noticed that in the book-stores even today physical books far outnumber the audio or the video cassettes of the same books.

The situation is similar to the habit of newspaper reading not going down in the age of audio and television. Everyone seems to wait to see the news in “black and white.” I have tried but do not seem to be able to curtail my subscription to the large number of local and metro dailies, beside the usual quota of magazines, inspite of the realisation that in my seventees physical decline has caught up with me. There are quite a few who are having the same predicament.

Looking back on the days of our educational and service careers we sometimes compare notes among our friends and marvel at the number and variety of books we have read in Assamese, Bengali and English. Talking to younger people I find that they still read the books of the classical authors beside the fiction and the non-fiction writers of the twentieth and the twenty first centuries. They mostly read in English but some do read in Assamese also. However, reading of the original texts by the great Bengali writers has diminished considerably among today’s Assamese youths compared to our time.

I often meet young people who prepare for IAS, ACS and other competitive examinations. The top few among them are very well read. They not only read books but use the internet liberally. Then there are those who are intelligent but not very well read. They have to be told what more to read. However, a large number of youths concentrate only on text books. They do not seem to be interested in reading other books. Talking to young university and college teachers I get the impression that they are very well read. Today’s teachers seem to have a much wider horizon. Beside their own subjects they also read books and articles on current affairs, cinema, theatre and about art and culture.

In our days book fairs were rare. Now a days book fairs are held every year in every city and town. Some enterprising publishers have gone even into the rural areas. Fairs provide a window to new books. People do have a tendency to buy books when they visit book fairs and exhibitions. In Kolkata both rich and poor buy books. They save money all the year round in order to buy books at the fair.

I have literally grown up with books. Even as a toddler I used to visit the old Curzon Hall Library on the banks of the Dighalipukhuri with my father. That was the time when our erstwhile neighbour Haramohan Das of Panbazar used to double up as a part-time Librarian in the evenings. He was a school teacher and a writer of eminence. As I grew up I read most of the Assamese books and a few of the Bengali books in that library. I took up the English books later in my school days. I found particular interest in the glossy and illustrated publications on lands and peoples, books on ancient, renaissance and modern art and the compendiums on motor cars and aeroplanes. I read quite a few books by great authors without really understanding their contents. But story books and novels interested me immensely. Books by political personalities, including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli (former Prime Minister of UK) were my preferred reading. Disraeli’s novels were boring but, all the same, I read these to learn about English food habits, aristocratic social mores, details of landscape and his version of scintillating political intrigues. I hope that these books are still preserved in the State Library, which has absorbed the old Curzon Hall Library.

I was not alone in being totally addicted to books. There were others from among my friends from the Cotton Collegiate and the Anglo-Bengali High Schools of Panbazar. Many of them achieved eminence in their later careers. We are still in touch with each other. A few years ago the highest circulated Kolkata news paper Ananda Bazar Patrika commented that our Adda, which is more than 65 years old, is unique.

One library which helped me immensely in my post graduate studies is the USIS Library in Kolkata. They had a system of sending books by post for brief periods. The only stipulation was that these must be sent back by the user at his own cost by post. I was also a regular reader of books and journals in the Gauhati University Library. In a recently held National Seminar on Digitalization and Networking of Libraries I clearly stated that my Gauhati University Library tickets are some of my very proud possessions.

In later life I have occasionally used the National Library at Kolkata and the British Library at London whenever I could visit these places. During my posting at New Delhi I had used the USIS Library and the Indian Council of World Affairs Library quite frequently. But the most intense use of library facilities I made was in Adelaide during my two and a half years stay there (1975-77). In that city both the University Library and the South Australian State Library were excellent.

I was fascinated by the microfisch for reading books from tapes which was then a novelty. They also had the system of obtaining books, which the library did not have, from other libraries elsewhere. When I got the opportunity to build up the Assam Adminstrative Staff College Library in the 1980s I used my earlier experience to advantage.
(The writer was Chief Secretary, Assam, during 1990-95) ASSAM TRIBUNE

Book lovers set for treat as publishers go on promotion spree

New Delhi, Feb 26 (PTI) Two leading publishing houses of the country have come forward with their own ways to promote writings of prominent authors and also inculcate reading habits.

For all those waiting to unearth a mystery or thriller classic in a book-store maze, HarperCollins India is offering a Chills and Thrills Festival '09 that will promote writings of thriller specialists Agatha Christie and Sydney Sheldon, Sam Bourne, Michael Crichton, Jack Higgins, Alistair MacLean, and military writer Mukul Deva among others.

"Readers can walk in their preferred bookstore and find their favourite author in the chills and thrills section in the store. They can take with them memorabilia along with copies of their favourite author," a HarperCollins release said.

"The festival will be packed with large doses of mystery, detective fiction, whodunits, crime and war thrillers," it said.

The publication house is also holding online contests and organising schedule book readings by Mukul Deva on his books "Salim Must Die" and "Lashkar" in several cities.

On the other hand, Penguin Books India is organising a special promotion of its range of books throughout the year. PTI

Bestseller

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A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties (number one best selling new cookbook, novel, nonfiction, etc.). The New York Times Best Seller list is one of the best-known bestseller lists for the US. The New York times does not include sales from Internet retailers or box stores such as Walmart or Target. It is not uncommon that a book that appears as number 1, will fall short in actual sales. The New York Times Best seller list only tracks National and Independent book stores.

In everyday use, the term bestseller is not usually associated with a specified level of sales, and may be used very loosely indeed in publisher's publicity. Bestsellers tend not to be books considered of superior academic value or literary quality, though there are exceptions. Lists simply give the highest-selling titles in the category over the stated period. Some books have sold many more copies than contemporary "bestsellers", but over a long period of time.

Blockbusters for films and chart-toppers in recorded music are similar terms, although, in film and music, these measures generally are related to industry sales figures for attendance, requests, broadcast plays, or units sold.

Particularly in the case of novels, a large budget, and a chain of literary agents, editors, publishers, reviewers, retailers, and marketing efforts are involved in "making" bestsellers. SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA