A year?Already?
It was a quiet birthday…especially for a one year old.
We launched FriendsOfBooks a year ago, with a quiet email to friends and well wishers. The email went out late at night. We had been working on the website for a long time but as the launch date approached the days and nights had become seamless. We were buying books, cataloging them, getting the bookshelves up and painted,bargained with vendors to bring down costs, signed contracts and juggled a hundred assorted errands that one learns nothing about at graduate schools or corporate jobs. The website went up, the email was sent and we collapsed on the bed.
Next day, like a kid on Christmas morn, we checked the email to see if anyone had registered. It was 10 in the morning….and we already had deliveries to make!!!
That was then and this is now…and what a year it has been!
Along the way, we’ve added thousands more books, extended services to all over India and made friends with complete strangers over emails for, about and of books.
Our “birthday” came and went a few days ago. In the mad dash to get the FriendsOfBooks Online Bookstore up and running before the Delhi Book Fair opens, we forgot to order cake and buy funny hats. The whistles too will have to wait as we step forward with our new gift to book lovers. Happy to report things were more sane and we have “matured”…though not in a
un-fun way…into a year old start-up.
Thanks book lovers and members of FriendsOfBooks for making this year fly by! and thanks as always for all the support and kind words you send our way.
Risen from the bed!
Hello and yeah, yeah, yeah…its been almost two months since the last post and there is no excuse- None whatsoever!
So since it rained where we are (Delhi) yesterday, and new buds shot out of our parched plants and tiny new sprouts of fresh ideas pop, pop, popped out of our heads, you’ll see many new changes on FriendsOfBooks….but that’s for later.
Last few evenings have been completely dedicated to the TV set. No sireee, we’re not into watching Rakhi Sawant doing Sach ka Saamna (though that’d be quiet a show!).We’ve been following the curves and contours of the Tour De France. Now that Contador has conquered, we’re back to thinking TV is …mehhh….borrring.
While we resolve our now on/ now off relationship with the TV in our office, here’s a poem from the man who says it straight and says it best when it comes to TV and the little people…and oh, all the CAPS are his,not ours. Enjoy!
Television
The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set –
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink –
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK — HE ONLY SEES!
‘All right!’ you’ll cry. ‘All right!’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
‘How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY … USED … TO … READ! They’d READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching ’round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start — oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
(Courtesy:www.poemhunter.com)
What’s gender got to do with it?
If there was a penny for every time we had to tell a journalist “No, people read all sorts of stuff, not just crime fiction”, we’d be rich…in dollars.
There are some stereotypes that come with the territory. People assume that the large part of our readership would be bored housewives ( we know this because we’ve been asked this by both journalists and other curious Georges!). It isn’t true any more than any of the other stuff they say about desperate housewives. Our reader base and its reading choices continue to confound us. Though it is generally true that women read more than men ( both in number of books per month and number of female readers vs. male readers), it is also a fact that men read more non-fiction than women do. Women however read a wider variety of fiction (both in terms of genres and writing from around the world).
The CEO of one of the top publishing houses (no, I won’t name him) and I were discussing reading tastes and he said , quite astutely, that “Indian blokes only want to read management books”. Now, I wish I could have countered him on that , but alas his observation about his market is just as true in our neck of the woods. Reading it seems is very intrinsically linked then with performing better at work, being more successful or rich and less as leisure. It’s by no means a conclusive study, merely an observation – Men and women read very differently in India.
And just when one is ready to put these observations down on paper and commit them to the long memory span that blogs are, out comes an article such as this one. Every bit your average male reader admitting (bravely?) that he like his Twilight series just as much as the next err…teenage gal. So while cynics amongst us try to put readers into nice and tidy demographic brackets, will the real readers stand up and tell us what exactly they read and why?
