A new breed of stores started by book-lovers are cropping up to keep reading alive
Avid readers at a book store
On any given day, just take a stroll down Besant Nagar beach and you’ll find at least one person sitting glued to a book, blissfully unaware of the busy walkers or salty sea air around them. While some say that book readers are a dying breed, namma Chennai begs to differ. It was a dark moment in the city’s history when iconic bookstores like Landmark or Oxford shut down, but it wasn’t long before avid readers here started bookstores and libraries of their own, to keep the culture of reading alive.
The most recent to join the list of new bookstores is Kumaran Janarthan’s ‘Three Elephant’. “Books are my life; they mean everything to me. When the Landmark in Apex Plaza, Nungambakkam shut down, I was devastated.
But instead of mourning, I started a bookstore at the very same spot,” he says. As a result, he has at least a hundred walk-ins daily who are looking for the old store. One peek into a Hemingway book or Ponniyin Selvan can instantly cheer him up. “I feel books are my best friends. I’m thrilled to be in a city like Chennai, which still worships a good collection of books.” Kumaran says confidently.
A group of youngsters had grown weary of e-books —and so, IloveRead was born. The group’s main aim was to increase the number of public libraries in the city, and give people easy access to books. “Recently, one of the world’s biggest e-commerce platforms for books, launched its first ever physical bookstore. Even though it was in the US, I’m confident the idea will be a success in India,” says Karthika Gopalakrishnan, the library’s manager. “Yes I agree an e-book is probably more convenient in terms of size and reading at night, but nothing beats the feeling of a book in hand,” she says.
Old stores dying a natural death and new stores cropping up — author Arya Rajam remarks, “It’s all a cycle. I was heartbroken when a few bookstores shut down, but today the next-gen bookstores coming up. Though the number of readers has come down, we have a dedicated bunch who prefer browsing shelves and taking in the musty, familiar smell of books.”
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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