Ever since I started reviewing an English book every week by an eminent author for Amar Ujyala two years ago everything changed in my life. I had the choice to pick up any book by any author and deal with it in its content, language and style for the benefit of two million subscribers of this prominent daily. My day was made when a lady called from a nondescript town of Iawah, Uttar Pradesh and told to my utter shock that she eagerly awaits for my weekly column in Amar Ujyala. She said she has kept the clippings of all my reviews. There could not have been a bigger reward for a distant reviewer. I am sure that there are many such silent readers I am not aware of.
A book is an ultimate expression of creativity, imagination and experience of the author and if it is a work of fiction then its a new world created with whom one does not know how many people get identified. From Penguin to Hatchett, Harper Collins to Oxford, I started getting the latest volumes by courier. The author friends would phone me to include their book in the next column. I suddenly felt that it was a satisfying moment more than anything else in last four decades of my media career.
A news story lasts till you write your next story but a book review stays as long as the book lasts and some books last forever. I am free to pickup and comment on any book of my choice. In this proposed blog called www.profomgupta.blogspot.com I will be reviewing a book everyday. You are lucky that India publishes more than seventy thousands books every year, though 99 percent are not worth a second look. However one has a choice to pick up any book from any part of the world.
My format will be to pickup that book which has something new to add to the readers perspective ad giving him another point of view or some new knowledge or information needless to say no propaganda, no political jargon or the personal hyperbole of a megalomaniac. My approach will be interactive so that any reader of the review becomes tempted to disagree with me. Because diversity of opinions is the backbone of any civil society.
Needless to say that my leanings from the experiences I have undergone will unwittingly play an important role in the treatment of my reviews. I will not confine just to concentrate on the coordinates of a book but go beyond it by dealing with the spirit of the content and the manner which the author has gone beyond the accepted notions about the subject concerned. There is an age old tradition that every book has a preface in the beginning and a epilogue in the end. It is done to state the fact that life does not come to an end with a book. Many questions are always left unanswered and I will try to give the answers if I have. No author or a book will be a holy cow for me.
Om Gupta.
A book is an ultimate expression of creativity, imagination and experience of the author and if it is a work of fiction then its a new world created with whom one does not know how many people get identified. From Penguin to Hatchett, Harper Collins to Oxford, I started getting the latest volumes by courier. The author friends would phone me to include their book in the next column. I suddenly felt that it was a satisfying moment more than anything else in last four decades of my media career.
A news story lasts till you write your next story but a book review stays as long as the book lasts and some books last forever. I am free to pickup and comment on any book of my choice. In this proposed blog called www.profomgupta.blogspot.com I will be reviewing a book everyday. You are lucky that India publishes more than seventy thousands books every year, though 99 percent are not worth a second look. However one has a choice to pick up any book from any part of the world.
My format will be to pickup that book which has something new to add to the readers perspective ad giving him another point of view or some new knowledge or information needless to say no propaganda, no political jargon or the personal hyperbole of a megalomaniac. My approach will be interactive so that any reader of the review becomes tempted to disagree with me. Because diversity of opinions is the backbone of any civil society.
Needless to say that my leanings from the experiences I have undergone will unwittingly play an important role in the treatment of my reviews. I will not confine just to concentrate on the coordinates of a book but go beyond it by dealing with the spirit of the content and the manner which the author has gone beyond the accepted notions about the subject concerned. There is an age old tradition that every book has a preface in the beginning and a epilogue in the end. It is done to state the fact that life does not come to an end with a book. Many questions are always left unanswered and I will try to give the answers if I have. No author or a book will be a holy cow for me.
Om Gupta.
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