If December is the party animal’s favourite month, January belongs to the city’s bookworms. With Kolkata Literary Meet 2014, in association with The Telegraph, just days away (January 23, 25-30) and the 38th Calcutta International Book Fair right after it, Metro takes a page out of Calcutta’s reading list.
Bestsellers in bookstores in 2013
Fiction: • The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri • Inferno by Dan Brown • And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini • The Oath of the Vayuputras by Amish • The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith [aka JK Rowling] l Asura: Tale of the Vanquished by Anand Neelakantan
Non-fiction: • The Secret Hero by Rhonda Byrne • I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb • The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli • Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana by Devdutt Pattanaik •An Uncertain Glory by Amartya Sen and J. Dreze • Reimagining India by McKinsey & Company •Turning Points by APJ Abdul Kalam •Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha • Jugaad Innovation by Navi Radjou
Children and Young Adults: • The Diary of a Wimpy Kid — Hard Luck by Jeff Kinney • The House of Hades by Rick Riordan • Thea Stilton: The Journey to Atlantis by Geronimo Stilton • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins • The Amazing Voyage by Geronimo Stilton
Courtesy: Starmark, Crossword & Oxford Bookstore
Bestsellers ONLINE in 2013
According to the Junglee.com Online Shopping Search Trends Report 2013, of six Indian metros, Calcutta accounted for 62 per cent of searches in the entertainment category, which includes books. The most searched books in Calcutta were: Inferno by Dan Brown, The Shiva Trilogy by Amish and Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. While Calcutta shares the enthusiasm for books like Inferno & the Shiva Trilogy with the rest of India, readers here also have a huge interest in poetry, with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (Letters Home) rating high on searches. When told about Calcutta’s penchant for poetry, Sahitya Akademi Award-winning poet and novelist Jeet Thayil remarked, “That’s hardly a surprise!”
Flipkart: •The Shiva Trilogy by Amish • Inferno by Dan Brown • And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini • The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Amazon.in: • The Shiva Trilogy by Amish • The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri • Inferno by Dan Brown
 |
READER’S CORNER
In 2013, I bought two PG Wodehouse titles, a Sylvia Plath collection and Ruskin Bond’s Book of Humour. I also picked up The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I love browsing at Starmark, South City, and can never come away without buying a book or two! I buy a lot at Flipkart too.
Sayantani Adhikary, senior research fellow, Jadavpur University
In 2013, I bought Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, The Complete Works of Khalil Gibran, A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul, The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman, Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani and Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I mostly buy from bookstores, but I bought The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri for my wife on Flipkart.
Devraj Chakravorty, 39, works in financial services
Among the 2013 releases, I bought And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini and Best Kept Secret by Jeffrey Archer. I also picked up second-hand editions to complete my Eric Segal collection.
Raya Ghosh, 3rd-year political science, Scottish Church College
Compiled by Samhita Chakraborty
