M&B BODICE-RIPPERS

A Mills and Boon cover

This is what happens when romance meets the risque, passion meets pornography. Mills and Boon, the staple fodder for lonely evenings, has adopted the manga comic format in Japan to sell itself to young readers. Manga is the unique genre of comics which has gangs, oodles of sex, and at times, even science fiction — it’s steeped in a culture of violence and gritty storytelling. Hardly M&B stuff, you’d say. But from the look of things it seems that Japanese children,and even adults, are lapping it up. Mills and Boon, owned by the Canadian publishing house Harlequin, entered the Japanese market around 25 years back and has served the readers’ craving for romance since then. But it’s only in the last five years that the novels have gone the manga way to survive in these times of short attention spans.

 

English the easy way

There’s some good news for the students of Calcutta. Learning to speak fluent English is going to be easier than ever before now. Gone are the days of shady institutions. Trinity College, London is coming to town with a prestigious certificate course in English. It will be offered through a collaboration with the well-known publishing house Orient Longman. The course, the Trinity ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), will be aimed primarily at school and college-going students. There will be two examinatiuons on the way — the Graded Examination in Spoken English (GESE) for testing the spoken language skills, and the Integrated Skills in English (ISE) which will assess a candidate’s skill in reading, writing, speaking and listening to English. The course, launched 70 years ago, has been a huge hit in whichever place it has gone to. It will be a great help for those eyeing call centre jobs.

You’ve always seen him chasing spies and romancing beautiful women, but now a new book will bring to life the teenage years of superspy James Bond. Actor, as well as novelist, Charlie Higson will pen the story of Bond’s school years.

Low on shelf life

Before you junk your 3310, or whatever you have, for a new set, read this. A new study has shown a majority of youngsters in the UK think of changing gadgets such as mobile phones almost every three years. Even TVs and DVDs don’t fare any better. Only 2% said that they would like to hang on to these for more than five years. Food for thought here?

Clean it up

A DVD player on display

If you’ve been getting your fill of smut from your DVD player at home, here’s some bad news. A new DVD set has hit the market which allows you to skip over offensive, or explicit, sections. Something like a tech nanny really. Manufactured by RCA in the US for a price of $79, the device has been programmed to blank out objectionable scenes. But how do you define what’s objectionable and what’s not? The jury is still out on that. And grumbling voices can be heard already. Producers haven’t taken to kindly to the new gizmo, but the manufacturers feel that it’s not much different from the fast forward button.

AWARD OF THE WEEK

Goes to Deepa Deb, whose father, a teacher in London, was kidnapped in the North-East by militants a month back. Deepa spoke openly to the media about how the police in Assam asked her to pay the ransom demanded by the kidnappers.