The Book Fair

The Colombo International Book Fair is mad big and kinda awesome. They estimate that like a million people come there, which seems high, but not impossible. We went to check it out yesterday and during the afternoon it’s not mobbed. It’s actually quite charming. They play old school Sinhala music (before Octopad) over the loudspeakers (blissfully no Rihanna) and serve warm sago and some other cool gelatinous drink, among other things. There’s also a model farm hidden in BMICH. Oh, and books.

Albino painting a fat man, Colombo Book Fair

There’s lots of books. Mostly Sinhala, some English, not enough Tamil. They deffa have 50 Shades Of Grey, but I didn’t find anything I was very interested in. The Sinhala section was more expansive and interesting, lots of comics and stuff. They even had a whole stall dedicated to Martin Wickramasinghe (Madol Doova).

eBook Reader (Android Tablet) with Harsha in background. Apparently prices are dropping to around 10k for tabs

Another highlight was The Book Hub booth, where we ran into both Harsha Purasinghe of Microimage and Dumindra Ratnayake, CEO of Etisalat. They’ve produced a platform for eBooks, to both buy and sell. It’s pretty cool and should see a lot of growth, inshallah.

So, the Book Fair is nice, and not thronged the way I thought it would be. It runs till the 26th, I recommend checking it out.

There’s a fuller writeup and many more photos on YAMU.

Posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2012 in Books, Colombo, YAMU.

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4 Comments »

2012-09-20 18:54:29

Another bullshit fair in Colombo. Sri Lankans just buy books but rarely read what they buy. I went to the book fair last year at the BMICH. It was nothing but a bigger version of the delkanda sunday pola. Just aimless people wondering about aimlessly. WE should have not gained so-called independence from the British. This is the worst mistake we made. Had we gone along the lines of of Hong Kong we could been like them. Clearly we don’t have any skills to develop a country, let alone run it on a day to day business.

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2012-09-20 20:12:41

Here we go again…
Go back to the UK and resume licking their boots. Although I believe their society has developed to the extent that they wouldn’t welcome you anyway.

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David Blacker

2012-09-21 09:29:07

You learned all this at the book fair? Lol.

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tastyjujubes

2012-09-21 22:39:34

Is it true that Frederika Jansz got the boot?

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