An hour in Landmark

I took some time off to wander around Landmark, Nungambakkam this morning. I go often, usually with visitors or with a specific agenda. It's always a pleasure to wander around books without an agenda or time-limit. It's not often that I do that without also spending money.

I increasingly spend more time in the non-fiction section than the fiction, mostly because I am in the middle of some project and so the subject is on my mind, but also because I am increasingly loath to spend money on fiction. The Precious Ramotswe novels by Alexander McCall Smith are a delight but almost INR 600/- for fiction is more than I can afford. And I realised today that I want to be very sure I will enjoy a book before I pay for it. Take the two together and there's not a lot there that I will pay for. But that's not what I wanted to blog about.

I was looking at the women's studies shelf, or whatever they call it at the moment. It's a melange of books that includes V.Geetha's "Theorizing Patriarchy" alongside Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and "Women who run with wolves." Whatever. But searching for something that I might enjoy as much as I did "Reading Lolita," I noticed two trends.

One, books about friendships between women seem to use Jane Austen a part of their plot. Women read Austen. They write about Austen. They recreate Austen. Now I love Jane Austen's books and have no trouble understanding why others do, but it's just curious that so many books seem to make people loving Jane Austen's work central to their plot.

I also noticed that a lot of books are about mothers looking for children, fighting for children, etc. Or the book about the beauty parlours of Kabul. Or women in West Asia writing about their struggles with what western publishers see as a bad situation with marketing potential. Why not, is one reaction, and "hmmm" is the other.

I also noticed that the shelf with "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" magazines has grown in size. Interesting, I guess. Magazines are glossy, people are glamourous. And I feel like Rip Van Winkle, rediscovering the universe, one bookshop visit at a time.

And perhaps the strangest thing was that I was not tempted by a single new work of fiction. Not one. I came back with Agatha Christies that I have read before, confident that they would be totally paisa vasool. And that others visiting our home would be happy to read them too.