Al-Mutannabi Street - Baghdad

Having graduated from a private college, I had to buy the curriculum unlike students of state universities whose education was free. Every Friday, I used to enjoy going to one of the most famous and beautiful streets in Baghdad.
Al-Mutannabi Street in Baghdad is a well-known book market named after the most famous poet in the Arab history, Abu Al-Tayyib Al-Mutanabi (915-965 A.C.).I used to go there with my friends and some classmates in college. I bought different kinds of books, mostly English poetry and novels. However, the half-mile long street was lined on both sides of the street with books ranging from 1980s computer manuals to linguistics textbooks, copies of the Quran, medical and engineering schools text books.
Back in 199s when Iraq was under the Embargo, this street was never empty. Even people who were starving for food used to go there; some never bought a book but came to water their thirsty souls with walking among books and knowledge hoping they could find something cheap to buy and read.
For three decades, book owners in this street were not allowed to sell any book that opposed the former regime. However, such books were still sold secretly there.
After the fall of the former regime, Al-Mutannabi Street is again filled with customers, from communists to clerics, who would once have faced jail or execution for reading some of the materials that opposes the government.The street is open for customers seven days a week but the most crowded day is Friday in which dozens of educated people, intellectuals, scholars, students, university professors, etc. come by and spend hours in this wonderful place to carry on improvement and to get knowledge despite the bad situation the country is going through. By, "www.baghdadtreasure.blogspot.com"

A salute to this bookstore

IN 20 years as a workaday writer, I have published several million words, of which only about a thousand have actually helped anyone other than myself. These were contained in an article published in a Delhi newspaper in 1992 after the city's police commissioner summarily evicted the pavement book stalls in Daryaganj, holding them to be an "encroachment" on public space. Allow me to quote excerpts from what I wrote in response:
"Without holding a brief for other forms of encroachment on government land, one can only say that the Daryaganj bookshops are episodic, not permanent; that a weekly bazaar is one of the most charming and widely prevalent features of Indian life; and that in furthering the sale of old books the Daryaganj shops are a public service, rather than a nuisance... . Should the commissioner prevail, an institution as vital to the capital's cultural life as the Siri Fort or Kamani auditoriums, will be lost forever. I shall feel the loss more keenly than most; since I was a schoolboy, a good proportion of my time, and most of my money, has been spent in second-hand bookstalls.
"... (F) or many of us, the prospect of Delhi without the Daryaganj Bazaar will be too painful to contemplate. As a petty and philistine exercise of power, the police commissioner's campaign can only be compared to Mrs. Maneka Gandhi's equally mindless drive against performing animals and their owners. That drive was undone by the ballot box, but it is unfortunately the case that bureaucratic ordinances are usually more permanent than ministerial fiats. Perhaps the only course is to remove oneself to Bombay, Calcutta or Ahmedabad."
My essay sparked a wider campaign to save the market, into which were drawn a former Cabinet Secretary who wrote novels and a high-ranking policeman who was also a poet. Thankfully, the order was rescinded, and the market returned. And thankfully, too, police commissioners in other parts of the country have not sought to emulate that act of (luckily redeemable) vandalism.
I grew up in Dehra Dun, which is a dusty, dirty North Indian town set in gorgeous surroundings. When I think of my boyhood, I think, of course, of pine forests and free flowing rivers, but also of the kabadi bazaar in town, where miscellaneous scooter parts and electric gadgets left behind by American missionaries would nestle cheek by jowl with Penguin novels, these usually without covers. My memories of other cities also always involve second-hand books. Ahmedabad for me means the Sunday Market below Ellis Bridge: Bombay the fabulously well-stocked pavement stalls near Flora Fountain; Madras the now dead bookstalls of the now burnt Moore Market; Gurgaon the capacious collection of out-of-print volumes held by Prabhu Booksellers, located deep in the town's old market.
I live in Bangalore, where is located my favourite second-hand bookstore, Select. This was founded in the late 1940s by a kindly Kurnool lawyer named K.B.K. Rao. Select has had many locations in its 50 years; it was first in Church Street, then in Malleswaram, then on Mahatma Gandhi Road. It is now in a lane off Brigade Road. I have followed it around everywhere, entering the shop with an empty bag and going away with an empty wallet. In 1979 Mr. Rao was joined by his son, K.K.S. Murthy, previously an aeronautical engineer: 20 years later, Mr. Murthy was in turn joined by his son Sanjay, who originally trained as an accountant.
It was Mr. Rao who first told me of a shop even older than his, the New Order Book Company in Ahmedabad. On my next trip to Ahmedabad, I duly went to New Order, but was intimidated by the learning of its founder and owner, Dinkar bhai, and the prices of his books. He was very superior with me, as he needed to be, for he was accustomed to dealing with the Tatas and the Sarabhais. Feeling for my pride and — perhaps more crucially — for my wallet, I chose to patronise the Sunday Market the other side of Ellis Bridge.
Last year I was back in Ahmedabad and, a working man now, walked into New Order. Dinkar bhai was dead, but his work was carried on by his wife, Saroj behn, and her assistant, Leela behn. Judging by the dust and cobwebs, I might have been the only visitor there in months. I was allowed to potter around. When I enquired about stuff on Gandhi, I was asked to come home to look at the books there: lunch was also offered. The two ladies gave me a lift, in an ancient Fiat driven by a more ancient driver. En route we made several stops, to allow Saroj behn to buy the roti and sabzi she needed for the unexpected guest.
Saroj behn was very pleased when I told her I owned a copy of New Order's very good and very scarce reprint of the set of Gandhi's journal, Young India; Dinkar bhai, she said, he planned also to reprint its successor, Harijan. In fact, some old issues of Harijan lay around the house. I demanded to see them and, when they came, bought them. The prices the lady charged made me deeply ashamed of what I had once felt about her husband.
Once, when we were on holiday, in England, my wife expressed a desire to see a "typical" English village. I took her to a place near the Welsh border, typical in its architecture — stone and thatch, untouched since the 18th Century — and in its setting — by a winding stream with leafy banks, with high hills looking on. However, it was in one respect completely untypical: for this was Hay-on-Wye, the village where every other cottage has been converted into a second-hand bookstore. It was rather naughty of me to take my wife there, but, in the end, she enjoyed herself as much as I did. excerpts from "A salute to this bookstore" by RAMACHANDRA GUHA, www.hindu.com

Foyles Bookstall, London

Frommers Review: Claiming to be the world's largest bookstore, Foyle's has an impressive array of hardcovers and paperbacks, as well as travel maps, new records, CDs, videotapes, and sheet music. www.frommers.com.

kimbofo from england writes "I had to run an errand in the West End this afternoon, so thought I'd make the most of the trip by taking a little wander along Charing Cross Road, which is lined with book stores of every shape, size and description.
My first port of call was Foyles, which has been on the same corner site since 1903. I haven't been inside this store for at least three years. It's been completely re-fitted, so it looks very modern but unfortunately I wasn't that impressed with the layout: the fiction section runs around the perimeter walls, which means you end up having to wander through several different "rooms" and then, inexplicably, the "S" section jumps across a busy customer thoroughfare to the opposite wall. If you browse like I do -- going backwards and forwards between letters of the alphabet as you recall certain authors you've been meaning to check out -- this is rather annoying. Still, it didn't stop me buying two books: a Scandinavian crime thriller -- Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner -- and a novel about the British class system -- The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell -- which my Other (nerdy) Half read when he was 12 years old!!
I then crossed the road and visited Borders, a chain I normally try to avoid because it's like the MacDonald's and Starbucks of the book world, crushing the independent stores in its wake. I was actually rather surprised to see it on Charing Cross Road because the last time I was in the West End this branch simply did not exist!
I have to say the layout of this store is even more confusing than Foyles, not helped by the fact it's arranged across four floors in what appears to be a rather odd order. That said, there were a lot of books on sale, including a wide range of hardcover fiction at half price. I purchased three books, all of which had been on my wish list for some time:" www.kimbofo.typepad.com

Additional info: Foyles Bookstall,

Address 113-119 Charing Cross Rd., WC2

Transportation Tube: Tottenham Court Rd. or Leicester Sq

Phone 020/7437-5660

Web site http://www.foyles.co.uk/

Other Additional location at Riverside, Level 1, Royal Festival Hall.

tel: 020 7981 9739

Roadside books in Churchgate-Mumbai

By Veena Venugopal: www.hinduonnet.com

AT Churchgate, a book lover can turn right and go to the air-conditioned confines of the Oxford book store, browse through a large collection of alphabetically indexed gleaming new books, pick a few and flip through them while sipping a steaming cup of Moroccan brew and watch the launch of Lion King on DVD all at the same time. Or else, he can turn left and buy a small piece of history.
The bookstalls lining the pavement of Mumbai - mostly from Churchgate to Fort — have been around for more than 50 years now. The first ones were set up closer to Flora fountain and as business and competition grew, they expanded and now occupy the entire sidewalk from Churchgate station, all the way to Flora fountain. Most of the booksellers, who squat these pavements today, are second and even third generation businessmen. Millions of people walk past these stalls everyday. For most, it is a part of the landscape but for a few hundreds, it is the place to take a welcome breather between office work and commuting.
According to Mr Santosh Kumar, who came to Mumbai from Bihar 6 years ago, as many as 2,000 people stop by and browse everyday. Out of this, only about 8-10 buy. In the nine years that he has been in business, Mr Kumar claims that sales has gone up by Rs 150 everyday, in comparison to the previous year. A large part of his clientele is students - looking for fiction. Popular authors are Jeffrey Archer and Frederick Forsythe.
Mr Rahul Singh, another vendor, who has been in the business for more than nine years, carries a more varied collection. He sells fiction, management, technology, fashion designing and even medical books. The profile of the buyers are varied - from a boutique owner in Boriville looking for tailoring books to law students looking for a cheap copy of `The Constitution of India'. Mr Singh has about 500 regular customers and he goes to great lengths to source specific books for them. Regular customers are also, the only ones given the privilege of bargaining. Others are often coerced to buy at the quoted rate.
The books at these stalls vary in price from Rs 20 to Rs 600. Mills & Boon romances and Archie comics (the biggest selling categories) sell for anything between Rs 20 and Rs 40, while hardbound coffee table books sell at the higher end of the range. Margins predictably are in the low-cost, but high-volume books and the sellers aren't likely to take the browser of high-value books seriously. "Most just want to look at the glossy pictures in these books," said Mr S. Hari, another vendor.
The nature of selling at these stalls is highly non-intrusive. Unlike, Fashion Street, there is no shouting or chanting or thrusting wares at potential customers' faces. They sit patiently waiting for the customer to finish checking out the books - sometime walking from one end of the sidewalk to the other - and making up their minds. The deal is sealed in a couple of minutes. This quiet nature, however, does not stop slinky browsers who copy designs/notes etc from these books, with no intentions of buying them, from being shooed away vigorously.
Most of the books are in fairly good quality. More than 90 per cent of the books are either bought from "raddies" (second-hand paper dealers) or sold to them directly by the owners of the books themselves. Some are bought new from book sales and exhibitions. The fascinating bit of the sourcing is the ability of the vendors to estimate what title sells and what doesn't, despite they not being English literate.
The more intriguing part of the whole transaction is that while large bookstores make the customer wait for a good 10 minutes while they key in data into a complicated software to check availability and location, in the pavement it is done in a couple of minutes with reliance on memory power and a bit of shouting across the road.
While big bookstore cafes offer 60 different kinds of tea, the roadside bookstall offers an ambience that is far superior. There is no joy greater than flipping through old books and reading not just the story that the author wrote but also many stories about previous owners and their lives. Sometimes it's an inscription on the front page about who owned the book and when or a birthday message or comments written in the margins. These books even house wedding invites, grocery lists and a medical store bill dated 1968.
The story of these books is not merely the story in these books - the more important stories are about who owned them and in what state of mind and spirits they had read them. Did the book speak to the reader? Did it give him a solution to a problem? Was it a friend during a long journey?
The stories that the buyers of these books weave in their heads are far more precious than the money spent in buying them and it is this aspect of the roadside books and booksellers that keep them alive and charming scores of years after they first appeared.