Bangalore Book Festival 2007

The annual Bangalore Book Festival is on all this week, at the Palace grounds. The Book festival this year has been organised to co-incide with the Dasara festivities – and will last the entire duration of Dasara, which is the NadaHabba or State Festival of Karnataka.

Added attractions of the festival, apart from over a million books on show, are the cultural programmes that happen everyday – ranging from children’s dance programmes to carnatic jugalbandis.

The added sweetener for Book lover is the hefty discounts offered on all titles – including the latest releases – I bought Dev Anand’s autobiography at a neat 140 Rupee Discount!

There over 300 stalls in the book fair – with a sizeable representation of all classes and languages of books. I had gone there with my family – and there was something for everyone. My parents were rather delighted to find the range of Kannada books and magazines on display – and they bought quite a few, with discounts ranging from 10 to 20%.

There was a stall with Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings displayed – and with reproductions available for sale as well – at reasonable prices – starting from as low as 50 Rupees!

There was this gorgeous paiting – printed on Canvas, which I thought would fit right onto my wall, but at 4,000 Rupees was slightly beyond my means – so I bought a paper reproduction of the same! (Unfortunately no web link seems available!)

There are also various book publishers – Tata McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall India, Navkarnataka, Cambridge University Press, and many more!

For the spiritually minded, there are various stalls from publishers and spiritual organisations alike – Ramana Maharshi Ashram, ISCKON, etc., – although notable absentees were Art of Living Foundation.

Exclusive stalls on Islam, Gandhiji, on rare books etc., were among the niche stalls

Kannada Language book, littérateurs profiles are available in a wide range – stalls from Navakarnataka, Sahitya Parishad and the like display the best of Kannada literature available – so if you want to discover Kannada literature, head straight to the Book Festival.

Update: Another Book Festival is on at Palace Grounds, off Mekhri Circle. 2 & 4 wheeler parking is widely available, and hassle free. Open on weekends till 9pm from about 11 in the morning