Today was the last day of Alfaaz, the literary festival at college. The last 2 days have been horribly busy, so I missed a lot of good stuff. I did make it to the book fair, though. I browsed around, found a lot of popular stuff, and some less common stuff, particularly from Yoda Press and Undercover Utopia. The former had some really interesting books. I picked up Rahul Roy’s A Little Book on Men and A.R. Venkatachalapathy’s In Those Days There Was No Coffee. There was more interesting stuff (particularly a “Sexualities” series of which the Rahul Roy is a part), but with budget constraints and what have you, this is what I could get. Apparently they have their books at Blossoms so not all is lost.
I just finished the Rahul Roy book (yes, 1 hour). It’s a short, illustrated, book. Very visual. I guess the intention is to analyse masculinity and its social roles and personal influences in a way that is accessible to people who don’t read much, or at least not much literature of this kind. Of course, the analysis is not very deep (I would have preferred more), but I think the experiment w.r.t. presentation style paid off. The book provides a reasonable amount of food for thought and pointers towards more works on the matter. Good stuff.
My second choice might make sense to some who know me. Being a Tamilian whose only real cultural predilection is coffee (something I do rue sometimes), I found both the title and the topic apt. The book is something of a cultural history of Tamil Nadu. Looks a little more heavy than I want to read right now, but will get to it soon. Happy purchase.
While the Book Café guys wrapping up, they decided that they’d give out a few free copies of Al Raines’ Soul Search Engine (signed!) and November Rain. grin
And the funny part is I went to the fair once, left without buying anything, thought “what the hell” and went back to actually buy the books, which is when this happened. Oh sweet indecision.
I know there’s something I’m forgetting, but maybe I’ll remember and make another post of it.
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You’re listening to Feist!