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Paperback to the future
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Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has created a big splash in the waters of the publishing world. So great is the impact that Vijayawada feels the ripples too, says G.V.RAMANA RAO
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Members of Bookwormz engaged in a debate over "The Da Vinci Code''. Photos: Raju. V
"DAN BROWN! Never heard of him till The Da Vinci Code. It was very different from the other paperbacks I read. I am back into reading again," says Ramesh Rao, a student of mechanical engineering.
Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, is a suspense story swathed in art and religion. The real meaning behind Leonardo Da Vinci's art may be subject to interpretation but there cannot be a dispute over the real-life places in the book that are known to historians and tourists throughout the world and the book inspires travellers to visit them.
The French translation of the sensational American thriller, "The Da Vinci Code'' already sold four lakhs copies in just six months, monopolising the number one slot in the best-seller lists.
The book opens with the discovery of a body in the Louvre Museum. It is identified as that of the curator. A cryptic message is found alongside the body. Thus begins the tale of an involving murder, religious intrigue, and a quest for the Holy Grail.
The book has the right kind of stuff that has caught the imagination of thriller buffs. It is the fastest selling paperback in Ashok Book Centre, a bookshop that stocks a good range of these books. "We sold, on an average one book a day since copies of the book arrived here a couple of months ago" says Ashok Kumar, the proprietor.
Bookwormz take fancy
The `Code' has caught the fancy of the `Bookwormz', an all women's book club which usually goes for more "serious stuff". Sita Venkatesh, a member of the book club, made a keen study of Leonardo's paints at the Louvre when she went on a visit to Paris recently. The book impressed her enough to surf the Internet for more information on the Da Vinci Code.
"Once in a while, such an exceptionally good paperback revives the interest of the readers," says Ashok Kumar. The silver screen and the small screen keep the interest of readers alive. J.R.R Tolkien masterpiece `Lord of the Rings' has been there for years, but the movie has got many paperback buffs to invest in it.
Genesis
The paperback revolution began in the early 1950s. They began proliferating into well-printed, inexpensive books on every conceivable subject, including a wide range of first-class literature. Also known as pocket books, they swept the world, forcing book borrowers to start buying them and in the process, created a new section of book readers on a scale never known before.
The low price of the paperback, which moved books for the first time into the area of impulse buying, is essentially due to the large number printed, and not, as is often supposed, to the use of paper instead of a hard cover for the binding.
M. Aparna, a statistics lecturer, says that she was not much of a reader. She preferred pouring over her textbooks whenever she found time.
The Harry Potter films got her to read the books that have been made into films.
Sidney Sheldon rage
Avinash Jain, a businessman, has over the years read all the books written by Sidney Sheldon. He has already read the latest one in the market "Are you afraid of the dark?" He however, wants to try and read Robert Ludlum's "The Borne Supremacy".
A movie based on the book is running in a theatre in the city now. This book is sort of a sequel to Ludlum's "The Borne Identity" about a spy with amnesia. Jain is an avid fan of Matt Damon, who has been cast in the lead role in the film versions of Ludlum's books.
He developed an interest in Ludlum books after seeing the film versions. "Ludlum's books are thicker compared to that of Sheldon's, but the movies got me interested," he says.
The movie channels that keep screening re-runs of films based on books also keep people interested in the paperback novels. "Publishers show greater interest in a book if the film wins awards or does well at the box office," says Ashok Kumar. The sale of the award-winning biography of mathematician, John Nash, written by Sylvia Nasar, Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, has increased after it was made into a film starring Russell Crowe.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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