Motilal Banarsidas, Bangalore

I had reason to be in Jayanagar a few months back, with 15 odd minutes to spare. I was across the road from the Motilal Banarsidas bookstore, and my feet found their way, along with the rest of me, to the store. I have been to the store a few times before, and every single time have exited the store with a book in tow - that is also the story of my ingress and egress from most other bookstores I frequent, come to think of it. I had posted photos of the store in 2007 (blog post), so I am not going to write about its history or stuff...

Since I have started reading Dr. Bibek Debroy's translation of the unabridged Mahabharata, I have been fascinated more and more by this book, An Index to the Names in Mahabharata by S. Sorensen, 8120820118, 9788120820111 at Mlbd Books. For a book written more than a hundred years ago, it is a stupendous work that has not been rivaled or surpassed. As far as I can tell, there is no other book of its kind attempted since. If you may be wondering why should there be a book on the names in the Mahabharata, then you should take a close look at the unabridged epic.

Strand Book Stall Sale, July 2013

Valuing Waning Nostalgia

The Strand Book Stall sale used to be a much bigger, better attended, and eagerly expected event than it is now. People's reading habits have not decreased. Online bookstores have proliferated that offer books at 20%, 30%, 40% off and even greater discounts. This is of course great news to both the casual reader and the bibliophile - so no complaints there. The flip side of this trend has been the slow decline of traditional bookstores like the Strand Book Stall. Crossword and Odyssey continue to hurt. Crossword is trying to find new niches by opening small stores inside stores like Shopper's Stop.

Bangalore Comic Con, 2013

The 2013 edition of the Bangalore Comic Con (@ComicConIndia) was held at the Koramangala Indoor Stadium - the same venue as last year, on June 1 and 2 (today is the last day). Unlike last year's event, which was the inaugural edition, this second event was perhaps an order of magnitude larger in attendance - it seemed like every school and college student was there. I felt like an outlier in terms of age - till I saw Vinay's photo from the event.

Blossom Book Shop, Bangalore

The Blossom Book House, on Church Street in Bangalore, is my kind of a bookstore. Aisle upon narrow aisle, shelf upon shelf stacked with books, not an inch of space devoted to cute displays, but books, old, new, the really old, shiny books, dusty books, books you have never heard of, books you will never read, books you never imagined you would see in any bookstore, least of all in a used-bookstore in Bangalore - The Starr Report for instance. See this Wikipedia article in case you don't know.

Oxford Book Shop, MG Mall

I had read or heard that the Oxford Bookstore at the 1 MG Mall in Bangalore was huge. That was the attraction for me to visit it. I was wrong. The bookstore is not that big, though the ambience is nice, the bookstore is quiet, and there is a coffee store right inside the store for you to enjoy a cuppa whilst the children browse the aisles. There is a small but nicely done up kids area, and on small wall a set of beautiful coffee table books put up.

DC Books, Bangalore

I had a few hours to kill in Koramangala earlier in the week, thanks to a shopping spree planned by the ladies. Now, spending three hours at a mall is as much fun as listening to any of our TV media stars pontificate. However, to see if there were other ways of spending the time, I asked people for recommendations on bookstores in the area, apart from the usual suspects like Landmark at the Forum Mall, Sapna Book House, and Crossword. Sameer (@zenx) suggested DC Books. They are "among India’s top five literary publishing houses of India" and started "in 1974 by Dominic Chacko Kizhakemuri" (link). They have an outlet in Koramangala and I decided to pay them a visit with the kids.

Their store is on the ground floor of a house, and while they do have shelves stacked with books, their store seemed to serve more as a warehouse and distribution center than a retail outlet. Which is fine by me. I want the books, and do not care much for the display.

They have books in English and Malayalam. They are located out of a house, and one bedroom is devoted entirely to Malayalam books.

There were a couple of people in the store, mostly busy in inventory work, but were courteous and friendly, and did not mind that we spent more than an hour in the store, flitting between the "verandah", the living room, and the dining room, browsing books, sitting down on the floor to read some others.

In this photo below, you can see the bedroom at the end - which is their Malayalam-specific room.

While we were there, a Flipkart employee also walked in, printouts in hand, large bag in tow, sat down and started going through his printout. I asked him if he was picking up books for delivery to Flipkart customers. He replied that he wasn't, and was in fact there to take delivery of books to take to the Flipkart warehouse. I suppose that Flipkart may be proactively procuring books to stock at its warehouse, in anticipation of orders for these books that sell regularly.

We finally left the store with three books in tow. If you are in that part of town, I would recommend the store for a visit. It provides for a different experience from both the mega bookstores like Sapna as well as the smaller ones that stock magazines, pens, stationery, and some books.

The store is located at the intersection of the "80 Feet Peripheral Road" and "1st Cross", and contrary to what Google Maps shows, they are located right on the main road.

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 © 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Landmark, Orion Mall, Bangalore

Landmark, the Chennai-based chain of bookstores (and now a part of the Tata conglomerate) has been struggling, at least in Bangalore. They had opened their second store at the Garuda Swagat Mall, but had to close it down owing to differences with the management of the mall. They have opened their newest store in Bangalore at the Orion Mall in Rajajinagar. This is located on the ground floor and opened in September 2012, and has a different layout for the books section than its Forum Mall store. In October 2012 they also changed the layout of their Forum Mall store also to match the Orion Mall layout.


View Larger Map of Orion Mall



While the floor space devoted to books has shrunk dramatically from what used to be the case till a few years ago, the new layout is designed to be more appealing, more "contrasty" (lots of bright white and yellow lettering on black), and more discounts - you can see "3-for-2" stickers pasted all over the aisles. They have also tried, and I would say successfully so, to arrange books more thematically, and that attracts more eyeballs to those books.

Photo taken while seated on the floor, dog-tired, waiting for the family to finish  up.

They have also added a wall of "bestsellers" that are categorized into "Fiction", "Non Fiction", "Management", "Kids", and so on - again with several of those bestsellers available under the "3-for-2" discount scheme.

It will be interesting to see how their books business compares with Crosswords, which has been focusing more on its books business as opposed to Landmark that seems to be adopting a strategy of selling books at often steep discounts as a way to attract shoppers to spend on other, possibly higher margin, items in the store, like perfumes, chocolates, and the like.

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Crossword Bookstore, Koramangala

Of all the myriad pleasures that life sends our way, one of the more enjoyable one has to be the discovery of a bookstore. One such bookstore I, we discovered recently is the Crossword store in Koramangala. This is not a new store, and has been around for close to a couple of years. However, since we had not had occasion to travel by that road in some time, it had escaped attention. Coming back from a friend's party one weeked, a Saturday, I espied this store, bright, shiny, welcoming. However, it was late that day, so Sunday turned out to be the day to visit this store.

The Sunday we went turned out to be a good day, since the store was not crowded - a dozen or so customers were strolling the aisles. Parking was not a hassle - and keep in mind there is not much by way of parking available outside the store, unless they have parking in the basement - which I could not spot. The store itself is large - perhaps the largest Crossword bookstore in Bangalore, larger than the one they have in JP Nagar, larger than the one they have on Bannerghatta Road, the Airport. I had tweeted their handle, @Crossword_Book, but didn't get a response.

The children's section is also large, spacious, and a couple of sofas and stools can be put to good use. Indeed, you can spot parents and children there, poring over, reading, flipping over books. There is a Cafe Coffee Day store inside the store next to the children's section.

The other reason I liked this store is the curation - yes, I don't think, and I may be wrong, that all Crossword stores get the same selection of books to carry; that would be not only impractical because all stores are not the same size, but also because each store should and must carry books based on the human intervention and judgment. In that respect, the Koramangala store impressed me with not only with the selection of books, but also with the placement and choice of books to highlight.

Their India shelf had the usual suspects listed, including Nilekani's "Imaging India" and Shashi Tharoor's "Pax Indica", but also the well-reviewed "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo.

We stepped out of the store after more than an hour, richer by two Amar Chitra Katha 3-in-1 collections and one Judy Moody paperback, i.e., kids' books.

I should add that there are at least three bookstores I know of that are larger in South Bangalore. One is the Landmark store at the Forum Mall. While the Landmark store sells a whole lot more than just books, their books section is quite large. The second and third are the Sapna Book Store. One is their store in Jayanagar, which, while cramped, offers a very large collection of books - both academic as well as others, while their other store is in Koramangala, and is billed as India's largest book showroom. I have been there and had blogged about it last year (link).



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 © 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Bangalore Comic Con Express, 2012

A chance call to my friend Pratap to get a clarification on a bookstore turned into a most enjoyable visit to the Indoor Stadium at Koramangala where the Bangalore Comic Con Express, the "the traveling version of the Indian Comic Con, the annual Comics Convention at Delhi." (http://www.comicconindia.com/Express/)

Entry is free, parking is a little haphazard, but if you get in early enough, or in the afternoon, you can find parking. Parking is also free, by the way. The indoor stadium is small enough to allow you to cover the entire floor within an hour if you are with kids, and in a couple of hours in any case. I counted more than 40 stalls there, and apart from comics, there were also several stalls of comic accessories, and also a couple of stalls of retail stores like Landmark.

One of the largest stalls was of Amar Chitra Katha, and they have come out with some new comics, like "The Blue Umbrella", based on the short story by Ruskin Bond, "Jim Corbett", "Thanjavur", "Salim Ali", and a couple of others. What was the icing on the cake was a 10 percent discount on purchases at the stall.

Amar Chitra Katha stall

Commando Comics Collections

Fan dressed as Ravana

Fans dressed as characters from the Tintin movie

The mini-event on while we were there was the launch of the second Shiva book by Vimanika, "Shiva - The Legend of the Immortal"

Yes, an unexpected and fun weekend event that both adults and children enjoyed!

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Strand Book Stall, Mid-year sale, Bangalore

The Strand Book Stall is having its mid-year sale, just for this weekend. It is taking place in the compound of the Wesley Tamil Church, which is located behind Garuda Mall on Magrath Road in Bangalore.

This is the hall where the book sale is taking place.

This is the Wesley Tamil Church; it has an unassuming but elegant facade.

 The hall is to the right of the church. Behind the hall you can see the massive Garuda Mall.

On the road that connects Magrath Road to Richmond Road, you can see a couple of signs that point you to the Wesley Tamil Church compound and the sale.

The hall is is not a very large one, but still big enough to have four aisles.

As always there were some good and interesting books to be spotted in the collection. This is one that I had not heard of before, but will do so now.

Paul Theroux is a noted author, and this is a book with a very striking cover, shall we say. Most people will recognize the photo as that of Goddess Kali, but one can imagine that many in the west would find the cover rather striking. I have not read the book, so cannot say whether the cover has any bearing on the plot, or it is more by way of exercising creative instincts. In any case, I have added A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta to my wishlist.

The day was very hot and dry, and quite unlike Bangalore summers. This has been a particularly long and hot and dry spell in Bangalore, and with no respite from the short but refreshing showers that provide much-needed cooling down of the city. That heat could probably explain the low attendance at the sale. I could also point to the explosion of online sales of books via vendors like Flipkart, IndiaPlaza, Infibeam, and others. What is not in dispute is that online sales have been hurting traditional retailers.
Nonetheless I would also suggest improvements that Strand could have made to their sale. The books had been laid out in one long, continuous heap, arranged very broadly by theme, but not much more to guide visitors by. They could have selected the 500 bestsellers and given them prominence. These bestsellers should have been surrounded by similar books. The visible placement of bestsellers attracts people's attention - they do not have to hunt around the whole hall searching for books. The hunt is something that appeals to some people, and there's nothing wrong in that, because the hall had enough books to satisfy the motivated hunter of books also. For the majority of the people however, a better thought-out placement would have helped.

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© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Hudson News at Changi Singapore Airport

http://www.changiairport.com/shopping-and-dining/shopping/hudson-news-and-magazines

© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

NewsLink, Sydney Airport, Australia

The NewsLink books and convenience store at the Sydney International Airport. Michael Connelly's latest, The Drop, and Isaac Walterson's Steve Jobs were among the prominently placed tomes.

NewsLink Pty Ltd (or LS travel retail Asia Pacific - formerly known as Lagardère Services Asia Pacific) is an Australian company responsible for providing convenience items and travel products in airports and train stations in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Fiji. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewsLink]

http://www.lsaspac.com/ls_home.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewsLink

© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.