Basket Case

Sometime back on Twitter, in the course of a discussion on translations, someone mentioned that translations of foreign authors seem to find more favor with Indian readers as compared to translation of Indian authors from Indian languages. While many love writers like Orhan Pamuk (Turkish), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Spanish), not the same favor is accorded to Indian writers. There is a certain disinterest towards them. As is the wont of every Twitter discussion, someone soon mentioned "colonized minds" and that was that. I'm not sure about the validity of original assertion, there are too many unverified assumptions here. How popular is Orphan Pamuk in India after all? But this discussion got me thinking about my own experience of reading translations. Do I have such a preference? I think I do. Despite the multitude of languages, there is an underlying cultural continuity across India. Irrespective of the language of the story, if it is set in India, if it is about Ind...

Let me confess something. While it has been years since Pothi.com has been selling ebooks and it has been years since I have been talking and thinking about ebooks, it is only recently that I read a complete book on a dedicated reading device. The book was Lean Analytics published by O'Reilly Media. But this is not a review of that book. This post is about what it felt like reading a fairly long book on an e-reader. I read part of it on Kindle and part of it on Nook touch. The first thing I noticed was that e-readers these days are very good and you don't miss the paper version all that much. I have said this to many people who express doubts about e-readers - Try one out for 1-2 days and do some serious reading on it. I bet a lot of people would change their mind one they try out a device. The key is to not see it as a replacement of paper books - the only way they are represented in most media coverage. Instead take them up as a device on their own and see if you like th...