yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

A book I recently read, and enjoyed About the book Title: The Lost Bookshop  Author: Evie Woods Publisher: One More Chapter (Harper Collins)  First Published: 2023 ISBN: 978-0-00-860921-4 Pages: 434 Genre: Fiction Price: 599/- What I liked about the book Has 3 parallel stories spanning 2 timelines The author is good with words and has enjoyed writing the book Frequently mentions other books and authors  Characters converse with historical personalities (including authors)   The section where story turns sad was touching  Page turner with the pace picking up towards the end  Different from what little I have read recently Magic realism  Few lines that stood out  It was such a terrible excuse, it must have been the truth It is only in something’s absence that you realise how much space it takes up At least in children’s books nothing terrible happened, and if it did, it always got fixed by the end People don’t like it when you tell them things you s...

More days at the Morisaki Bookshop Author: Satoshi Yagisawa Translator: Eric Ozawa ISBN: 978-1-786-58432-8 First published: 2024 Pages: 163 More about Days at the Morisaki Bookshop here A sequel after long A sequel that lives up to its expectations A sequel that continues to bring out special in the ordinary, in the day-to-day life A sequel that flows easy A sequel that teaches without being preachy A sequel that I did good to get without thinking too much Few glimpses Sharing your thoughts with someone seems so simple, but at times it can be surprisingly difficult. Even more so when it’s someone you care for so much for. But if you find the courage to do it, it’ll bring you closer together. When you’re sad, don’t try to hold it in. It’s ok to cry a lot. The tears are there because you’ve got to go on living. You’re going on living, which means there’ll be more things to cry about.  People forget all kinds of things. They live by forgetting. Yet our thoughts endure, the way waves ...

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop Author: Satoshi Yagisawa Translated by: Eric Ozawa Pages: 169 First Published: 2023 Publisher: MANILA PRESS A book after a while A book which I savoured during a train journey A book which celebrates books, bookstores, bondings A book which caught my attention at the Delhi Book Fair A book which reminded me of  Harmony ,  Jaipur Journals , and of course Murakami A book which underscored how the Japanese authors have mastered the art of simplicity Thank you Navjeevan Singh Few glimpses "No matter where you go, or how many books you read, you still know nothing, you haven't seen anything. And that's life. We live our lives trying to find our way." "It's only in secondhand books that you can savour encounters like this, connections that transcend time." It is important to stand still sometimes. Think of it as a little rest in the long journey of your life. This is your harbour. And your boat is just dropping anchor here for a l...

  Books and us Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai   Published at Teacher Plus. We thank colleagues at APS and Teacher Plus, friends at CIHTS and Harmony, Richa and others who have held our hands in this journey.    We have written about our journey with books in our school in the July 2020 and February 2022 issues of Teacher Plus . In this article, the final in the series, we move beyond the rooms and walls. We look at ourselves. The only way to grow is by looking inwards Tim Noonan We sensed the need to visit and observe other book places to broaden our horizons. Things fell in place and we secured a membership of the library at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies ( CIHTS ) at Sarnath. To say that this library is different from the book room in our school is an understatement; be it the objectives, the collection it houses, systems in place, or the aesthetics. A love for books, however, is common to both spaces and this has enabled us t...

    Books in the time of COVID   Anshumalika Rai and Nimesh Ved   This piece finds place in Teacher Plus’ February 2022 issue. Thanks are due to the team at Teacher Plus and colleagues for the questions (below) and more.   In the July 2020 issue of Teacher Plus we shared the initial steps of our journey of launching the Book Room. A few months after the launch COVID struck. In this article we talk about our experiences during the COVID times.     A colleague from a sister unit, during one of his visits, asked - as we discussed a book that had just arrived – to the students of which class will you give this book to read?   One of us responded thus - we do not tell the children which books to read, they decide . As we revisited the conversation, we realized that we had moved a few steps towards understanding children, books and the two together. This conversation had taken place after the students began coming regularly post - ...

  Book fairs and book stores as learning spaces Nimesh Ved and Anshumalika Rai Published at Deccan Herald. Thanks to the team there, to the book store teams that allowed us to put in time with books and to friends who accompanied us to the book fairs. Trips to book-stores and book-fairs during recent times have had us wonder why these are not looked at as learning spaces. Not as much as they warrant for sure. We have come across children and teachers at book-fairs but these appear more of exceptions given our numbers and the immense potential these spaces harbour. But first, what we do at these spaces. Let us begin with the book-fairs. The sheer numbers of books we see at the annual book-fair at Dilli we have not come across elsewhere. Images of people squatting on the floor, chatting excitedly about books and carrying bags full of books have stayed with us since. The smaller book-fairs, like those at the university campuses in Banaras, were different. Here we noticed ...

Friends, Conversations and A Bookstore in Banaras  Warm thanks to the Purple Pencil Project .  Why does he not stock books in Hindi and those for children? A friend I had gone with to the Harmony Bookstore asked me. I pointed her to Rakeshbhai - the curator and owner of this deceptively quaint bookstore. “If I keep Hindi books I need to have a range and number that does justice to the customers and the collection; it makes little sense to have only few books in Hindi,” – Rakeshbhai responded. Similar for books meant for children. “I can suggest bookstores” he added. The Lonely Planet refers to Rakeshbhai’s labour of love as ‘The best bookshop in Varanasi, with a particularly good selection of titles on Varanasi and the Mughals’. Another website praises the ‘poetry collection’. Dayanita Singh too, referred to it as ‘a story in itself’. Illustration: Prashant Mirinda After one of my initial visits (which was incidental) I came across an article by Rakeshbhai where h...