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Miscellanea
International Book Fair 2006
Now that the International Book Fair 2006 is over, it is about time we took a look at this exciting affair that concluded last Sunday. The first thing I noticed at the venue, Karachi Expo Centre, was the children — dozens and dozens of them going in and coming out of the two halls, clutching bags and books, chattering away excitedly about their purchases. It was enough to pique my curiosity and I quickly stepped into all the activity.
It truly was books galore, with publishers and book dealers coming in from across Karachi as well as Lahore. There was a surprisingly large number or religious bookstalls, dealing in Islamic books, selling not only texts but also audio cassettes, CDs and even digital references among other things.
But the greatest part of the fair catered to the younger lot. I’ll only talk about some of the most interesting stalls I came across. Bolti Kitabain by Javed Publishers was one such venture that really took the fair by storm. The concept involves computer-aided learning, where every book under the umbrella of Bolti Kitabain is accompanied by an audio-visual CD that explains the text in the form of cartoon stories. It really was fun watching their display on a projector where a little animated girl moved from place to place, singing and talking.
Right across this stall, a bunch of kids were sitting on the carpeted floor, colour pencils sprawled all around, sketching away vigorously as parents stood around in a circle. This was part of a drawing competition organised by Gohar Publishers, who had a prize for all the participants, including the runners up! An associated company of the Hamdard Kutab Khana, they were offering colourful school books for children.
An interesting stall by Paper Centre had intriguing imported books to offer by Playmore publishers, including attractive story books and interactive activity books that looked delightfully ticklish.
It was heartening to see The Citizen’s Foundation operating a little stall for donations, while long multiple rows of stalls displayed countless books by Paramount Publishers as well as their client Indian publishers.
Two gorgeous series of books were on sale by Maqbool Books and Children Publications, that comprised abridged versions of classic stories, illustrated to make for a wondrous reading experience. These included stories like Stories from Baghdad, Mullah Dopiaza and Sheikh Chilly etc (Maqbool Books) and Anecdotes of Mulana Roomi, Sheikh Sadi and Woodland Tales etc (Children Publishers).
Of course, the fair would have been incomplete without the presence of Oxford University Press (OUP), Cambridge University Press, Feroz Sons and Liberty. They all had an attractive array of literary as well as fun and activity books that drew the crowds in multitudes. The CBS Publishers, India offered reduced price editions of important text books while the Vanguard stall had a good display of collectible books as well as endearing old works like those of Dr Seuss.
There were numerous interesting, valuable and delightful stalls at the fair, but it is impossible to put them all down in this little space. Perhaps the best bit about the book fair was that most publishers had made a conscious effort to offer books and other products at very reasonable prices, never going overboard.
It was also nice to see enthusiastic children, parents as well as scholars taking an avid interest in the stalls and actually purchasing their favourite books with zest. If only the entrance had been regulated for ‘families only’, the crowd within would have been further filtered. But in a nutshell, the book fair should definitely be held in Karachi more frequently and on an even larger scale.
Mehreen F. Ali
Postage stamp exhibition
The three-day annual exhibition of rare postage stamps was held at Iqra University last week. The exhibition was organised by Philatelic Society of Pakistan.
In the exhibition, some 40 exhibits were put on display in which some had single frames and a number of them had five-frame panels. This year the organisers has divided the exhibition into three categories — traditional stamps, postal history and thematic — in which hundreds of stamps were put on display.
A member of the Philatelic Society of Pakistan disclosed that members of the society belonging to different cities of the country like Lahore, Peshawar, Sukkur, Multan, Rawalpindi were here to participate in this three-day national event. He said that a large collection of stamps were from Bahawalpur and were put on display for the first time.
People who visited this three-day exhibition had a chance to look at the first stamp from the year 1636 and also the first stamp of Great Britain, the ‘Penny Black, which was printed in 1840, besides a large number of other historical stamps from different parts of the world.
Text & photo by Abu Ammar
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