With over a three million titles on display, 340 stalls from leading publishers and distributors, this 10 day long Bangalore Book Festival (BBF) is open to public from 9th Nov till 15th Nov ( i.e. today) is claimed to be indias largest book festival….

Open to public from 11am till 8pm.
More photos here..

in association with Tranquebar Press

is launching Mridula Koshy’s irst collection of short stories, “If It Is Sweet”,

Mridula’s reading will be followed by a conversation with novelist Usha K R

Venue: Crossword Bookstore, ACR Towers, Ground Floor, 32 Residency Road, Bangalore – 1

Date and time: Thursday, 13 August 2009 at 6.30 pm

Mridula Koshy was born and raised in Delhi till she migrated to the US, where she worked as a union and community organiser. Years went by and she returned to the city that makes her think the hardest. She lives in Delhi with her partner and children. Her short stories have been published widely, both in India and abroad. She is at work on her first novel, set in Kerala, Delhi and other parts of the world. If It Is Sweet is her first book and has won rave reviews and a very wide readership.

Usha K R has been writing fiction in English for over two decades. She began with short fiction, which was published in various magazines and newspapers such as Debonair, Femina, Savvy, New Quest and Deccan Herald. Her novels include: Sojourn (1998); The Chosen (2003); and A Girl and a River (2007), which won the Vodafone Crossword Award for Fiction, 2007. Her next novel is forthcoming from Penguin India in 2010.

Ranga Shankara, in association with Penguin Books India, will play host to a book reading session by author Githa Hariharan on Sun July 26th at 11:00 AM. The session, being held to celebrate the publication of the author’s latest work, “Fugitive Histories”, will begin with an introduction by Lakshmi Krishnamurthy and will be followed by readings from her work by the author and an interaction with the audience.

Fugitive Histories exposes the legacy of prejudice that sometimes covertly, sometimes perceptibly, continues to affect disparate lives in present day India. In prose that is at once elegant, playful and startlingly inventive, Githa Hariharan portrays with remarkable precision the web of human connections that binds as much as it divides.

The entrance for the event, which will be held inside the Ranga Shankara auditorium, is free. For any further details please contact Ranga Shankara on 26493982.

–
Ranga Shankara
36/2, 8th Cross
J P Nagar, II Phase
Bangalore – 560 078
P: 080-26493982 / 26592777
E: rstheatre@gmail.com
W: www.rangashankara.org

For details, visit

http://barcampbangalore.org/wiki/Main_Page

And if you want to know in detail what a Barcamp is, go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

I have earlier been a little hesitant to join in, thinking that it would be full of tech stuff…but each time, I found more than enough to hold and kindle my interest! It’s a great atmosphere, and one can jump into whatever one finds strikes a chord (yes, there are also impromptu jam/music sessions!)

Be there….

While some prefer to buy new books, there are still many who prefer visiting the book lane ( avenue road) to these merchants / book sellers who encourage people to re-use and re-cycle ( circulate) the ‘used’ books for the needy, on a longer term this provides a great value not only to the user but the others as the cost of the books keeps coming down, a single copy is used by many thus is a noble cause for environment support too…

All these magazines are not current affairs magazines. So one is not likely to find our politicians on the cover page of any of these magazines unless they have something to do with a story on lifestyle, personal style, gadgets, culture or other such related light stuff.

My favorite among all these city specific magazines is Simply Bangalore. The quality of their content is fabulous & is truly a light read. Be it updates on the new entrants in Bangalore, the niche areas to shop/buy or some of the things people are doing in Bangalore. It is truly a wonderful compilation. There seems to ooze a certain culture out of Simply Bangalore. Bengaluru Pages out with its second edition recently is good but too early to judge its content. The one issue I happened to lay my hands on didn’t seem to have anything that is not already there say in Bangalore Times, the metro areas only supplement of Times of India. 080 is glossy & doesn’t restrict its content to Bangalore. There are a lot of general things in it as well.

With NDTV launching a city specific TV channel for Delhi called metronation, it is about time that Bangalore got one as well. And to me going on the basis of the content of NDTV Good Times (being in Bangalore have no knowledge of how Metronation is) feel they are the best bet to start something about Bangalore. Also in order would be a city specific radio station that is beyond songs. Some nice discussions on the city, its problems, profiling prominent people would be nicely received here.

The next time you’re walking down MG Road and your navigation system says “old books”, turn into Shrungar Shopping Centre. One of the shops that you will run smack into is “The Bookworm”. Krishna, the owner of this bookshop is a pleasant, young man and very, very helpful. He has a reasonably wide collection and you’re bound to find at least half-a-dozen books with comfortable price tags. Krishna’s card describes his shop as a “treasure trove for used, new and rare books.”

Location : Inner Circle, Shrungar Shopping Centre on MG Road. You can reach Krishna on 9845076757. (He has another store off Brigade Road.)

The Bangalore Book Festival is here, organized by Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Association (BBPA) and Klub Class, to be held at the Palace Grounds from September 21st to 30th, 2007. If you wish to avail a special additional 10% discount, free entry to the arena hosting more than 300 stalls then you should lay your hands on book tokens.
Hot favorites of the West, book tokens will be on sale in the city soon in the run up to the fourth edition of the Bangalore Book Festival. The festival features both Indian and international publishing houses. These book tokens entitle buyer special concessions, priced at Rs. 40 each, also double up as a pass; two persons can get into the exhibition using one token. Sale of book tokens will be closed once the festival begins. Entry is free for children and students…

Those who do not have tokens may have to buy Rs. 20 entry tickets. But will not be entitled for special concessions that tokens offer, the initiative of these tokens is introduced for the first time in the country and may be considered as a regular feature…

Further details >> Klub Class, 35/2, Park Road, Park Manor, Tasker Town, tel: 41132530-31.

As individuals transform public spaces into private places, forging islands of intimacy, she encounters the true “jadoo” of Bombay and its people. To accompany the photographs, the globally acclaimed author Suketu Mehta has written a companion piece about his boyhood in Bombay. The book also includes an excerpt from Ardashir Vakil’s Beach Boy.

Details
Book Launch at Oxford Bookstore
Thursday 2nd August, 2007
6 pm onwards
Oxford Bookstore, Leela Galleria
Leela Palace Hotel
Contact: 080 4115 5222

Tasveer presents “Next to Each Other, Bombay Jadoo”
A show of photographs from Betsy Karel’s Bombay Jadoo
followed by “Art of the Matter”: A dramatized reading on Bombay by Kimaaya
Friday 3rd August, 2007
6:30 pm onwards
Tasveer, Sua House
26/1 Kasturba Cross Road
Bangalore 560 052
Contact: 080 2212 8358

About the author: Betsy Karel, born in New York City in 1946, now lives in Washington, DC. She worked as a photojournalist in the 1970s and early 80s, winning awards. In 1998, after an absence of 15 years, she returned to photography to participate in The Way Home, a book and national exhibition on homelessness in America. During the past nine years, Karel has made numerous trips to Mumbai, creating the images in Bombay Jadoo. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Yale University Art Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the John F. Kennedy Library.