Foxing, browning and loose spines: what they mean
The marks you see on old books, which ones affect reading and value, and which simply show a long life.
Reading for the Puja holidays
The thick Sharadiya annuals, long novels for long afternoons and books for children home from school: what Kolkata reads in autumn.
In Bengal, Durga Puja has always been a reading season as well as a festival. Schools and offices close, families travel or stay home, and the afternoons between pandal visits are long. The tradition of the Sharadiya, or Puja annual, goes back more than a century. Every September, Bengali magazines publish thick special issues, often 400 to 600 pages, packed with new novels, short stories, poems and comics.
The annuals arrive in our shop from early September and are usually gone by Saptami. If you want a particular one, ask us to keep it aside in August. Many families buy two or three, one for the adults, one for the children, and pass them around until they fall apart. They are also a lovely gift for relatives abroad; we ship them across India and overseas.
For readers who prefer English, the Puja holidays are a good time for the long novel you have been putting off. A week off is enough for a 600-page book, and we keep a small table of long reads near the door from September, each one read by one of us, with a short note on why.
Children home from school get bored quickly, so we build a Puja shelf for ages 6 to 12, with adventure stories, detective series, comics and illustrated nature books such as Birds of Our Balcony. Bring the child in and let them choose one book themselves; we find a book they picked gets read far more than one chosen for them. We stay open until Shashthi, then close for the main Puja days.
