Book Fair acquisitions

Picked up the following at the annual Hyderabad Book Fair -

• The Penguin History of Early India - Romila Thapar
  
• Indian Muslims - Where have they gone wrong? - Rafiq Zakaria
• Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
• Mostly Magic - A collection of children's stories - yet another of those books which you have to buy just because they are so beautifully made.
• Batman - Knightfall - Dennis O'Neil
• The John Varley Reader
• DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction anthology
• Early Novels in India - Meenakshi Mukherjee
• Intersections - The Sycamore Hill (SF) Anthology
• The Martian Tales Trilogy - Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Mind Map Book - Tom and Barry Buzan
• Asimov's New Guide to Science
• India : Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan
• India by Al-Biruni - Ed Qeyamuddin Ahmed

Fruitful visits, I would say :D.

After watching Star Trek Voyager Seasons 1 - 4 continously over a period of weeks...

...I've decided that the album I'm going to release if I ever become a DJ would have tracks with the following names

• Energize!
• How do you know that? We Are Borg!
• Akuchi Moya - the midnight remix
• Warp 8, Mr Paris.
• Modular bipolar cellular protobionic alphanumeric hemispherical cortical encapsulator. In other words, your head.
• M-Class (M-Class, M-Class, M-Class goes the chorus)
  
• Ridged forehead fetish
  

Indian Science Fiction, this week

To start with, the Indian Association of Science Fiction Studies' annual conference starts tomorrow, 9th and goes on to the next day 10th, in Pondicherry, India.

Tehelka has a story on Indian science fiction in regional languages. The same issue also mentions writer Vandana Singh's upcoming book, The Woman Who Thought She was a Planet.

A snippet from the UK Times Online where Brian Aldiss shares a little bit of history explaining why Salman Rushdie's Grimus was withdrawn from the nominations for a science fiction award (which one, I wonder?).

Personally, I got a copy of an old Hindi movie called 'Wahan Ke Log'. The title literally translates as 'The People from There'. Haven't watched it yet, but the cover says 'Were they really from Mars?', complete with saucer shaped UFOs and a dial-and-button console.

All of you have a nice weekend, too.

Mindmapping Books

Mind Mapping is a visual modelling concept where related ideas and tasks are arranged around a central idea.

I often come across people talking about using mindmaps for the books they read. It makes more sense for non fiction books of course, and is a great way to summarize the book. The summarization can be done to any level of detail - the more fine grained you are, the more nodes your mind map will have.

I tried it on a book I read recently - Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods. I did not have the patience to go to a very fine level of detail, so it's very very brief. Nevertheless, creating one is a good way to keep the central ideas of the book in focus.

Update

Buying books from discarded/used book sales has the drawback of the buyer being at the receiving end of the decision of what he or she can buy, and the advantage of buying a lot of books. Buying new books from bookstores has the drawback of having to shell out quite a lot of money for a book, and the advantage of the grand feeling of possessing a brand, shiny book you want immediately, among other things.

My recent buying trend has seen an increase in buying a lot from bookstores, of course whenever I can spare the money. For certain books the reasons are manifold - I would rather possess and read them now than wait for 5 years in the hope of it turning up in some used book sale. And new books feeeeel good :D

Walden (a well stocked bookstore in Hyderabad) had this anniversary sale recently - the discounts didn't go beyond 15%, but I did pick up

Bollywood - A history - by Mihir Bose. This one saddened and irritated me. It is really well researched, but the loads and loads of spelling and grammar mistakes take your attention off the content. Commas seem to be having a field day, while fullstops are an endangered species. True, books printed in India do look better than they used to 10 years back if you look at the glitzy jackets and binding. What has deteriorated (yes) is the quality of editing. I say this at the risk of being accused of sweeping generalizations. It only takes a few rotten apples. As I mentioned before, even young readers' books suffer.

and, Nyagrodha - by Kalpish Ratna. I always wondered who Kalpish Ratna was, having seen it on some book spine in some bookshop - the name sounded like it could belong to an ancient Indian philosopher.Here's the funda from the back flap of the book jacket -

"Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan write together as Kalpish Ratna, a near anagram of their names. The pseudonym translates, in a piquant meld of Persian and Sanskrit, as 'the pleasures of imagination.'"

Bought The Idea of India and India Unbound - both at the Calcutta airport - I bought the second one because the first one got me interested enough in the rise of the Indian economy.

And finally, Shonkushomogro - the complete collection of Professor Shonku stories (in the original Bengali) - the enigmatic scientist character created by Satyajit Ray.