The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

© United Artists

Blondie, the Good (Clint Eastwood) to Tuco, the Ugly (Eli Wallach): You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

WISDOM FROM BOOKS & COMICS

Agatha Christie in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 

'The essence of a detective story,' I said, 'is to have a rare poison—if possible something from South America, that nobody has ever heard of—something that one obscure tribe of savages use to poison their arrows with. Death is instantaneous, and Western science is powerless to detect it. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

Spooky

Stamp of a Writer: Arthur Conan Doyle

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.” 

                                                                                   Courtesy: Guernsey Post

Best-sellers Indians love to read 

Indians are fond of popular fiction which used to include potboilers like Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace. If you ask the average reader in India what books he or she has read or enjoys reading, you're most likely to hear a list that’s as predictable as can be.



Jeffrey Archer is a particular favourite and gets a rousing welcome every time he comes to India where his books are sold in no time.
 
On his last trip in March 2010, the British author visited a bookstore in Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, to release his latest five-book series Only Time Will Tell and was moved by the large crowd waiting for him. "I am often asked why I keep returning to India. This is the answer," he smiled. By the time Archer left, the bookstore had sold nearly 1,500 copies. His publisher, I’m sure, was ecstatic. 

The chief reason why best-selling fiction flies off the shelves in Indian bookstores is because they are easy to read and quick to finish, which makes sense, for the urban reader spends more time commuting, be it day or night, and has little time for such luxuries as sitting down in a quiet place and reading a good book. The last thing he or she needs is a “heavy book” and a headache. 

So what would a predictable list of, say, Top 12 best-selling authors and their most popular novels in India read like? Here it is...

01. Jack Higgins: The Eagle Has Landed, The Savage Day and The Last Place God Made

02. Sidney Sheldon: The Other Side of Midnight, Bloodline and Rage of Angels 

03. Robert Ludlum: The Bourne Trilogy

04. Jeffrey Archer: Kane and Abel and everything else by him

05. Alistair MacLean: The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare and Force 10 From Navarone

06. Robin Cook: Coma, Fever and Outbreak

07. Arthur Hailey: Airport, Wheels and Hotel

08. Mario Puzo: The Godfather and The Sicilian

09. Frederick Forsyth: The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War and The Fourth Protocol

10. Ken Follett: Eye of the Needle and The Key of Rebecca

11. John Grisham: The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, The Client and The Chamber

12. Dan Brown: The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons

I've read a few books by all twelve authors but my favourite thriller writer from the list is Jack Higgins.

Jeffrey Archer photo: www.thehindu.com

JUKE BOX

If I Had A Hammer by Trini Lopez

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters ah-aaah
All over this land

If I had a bell
I'd ring it in the morning
I'd ring it in the evening
All over this land
I'd ring out danger
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between
My brothers and my sisters ah-aaah
All over this land...

The original version of If I Had A Hammer was part of Trini Lopez's debut album Trini Lopez Live which was released in 1963. This hit single was top of the charts in nearly 40 countries and sold over a million copies worldwide. If you are listening to this song, remember, Lopez expects you to sing with him.

Vanishing books: Bloomsbury finds them for you

Few things excite an avid reader more than laying his or her hands on books long unavailable or out of print. Aware of the growing hunger for titles that are out of sight but not out of mind, publishing houses are rushing to fill our literary void, and their cash registers, by reviving or relaunching many rare books in ebook format—and even print if you want.

Last week, London's Bloomsbury Publishing announced the launch of a new digital global publisher, Bloomsbury Reader, which incorporates "an expansive and growing selection of titles in ebook (and print on demand) for the first time: many titles, previously unavailable in print for some years, are now being made available to a new generation of readers through this digital initiative."

Hey, the old generation of readers is still reading these books!

It’s very thoughtful of Bloomsbury, isn’t it? To bring the works of Monica Dickens, Edith Sitwell, H.R.F. Keating, Graham Masterton, V.S. Pritchett and many others back into our alphabet lives. Now these books can once again sit proudly on our bookshelves or lie flat in our palmtop Readers. At least we have a choice.

New works by leading contemporary writers will also receive digital publication through Bloomsbury Reader.

In the interest of the reading public, at large or wherever, I am reproducing below the rest of the happy announcement by Bloomsbury Publishing:

Authors whose works have been out-of-print and are now being revived include Charles Dickens’ great granddaughter Monica Dickens, politicians Alan Clark and Ted Heath, poet Edith Sitwell (and her younger brother Sacheverell Sitwell), HRF Keating and V.S. Pritchett.

Contemporary writers include Ministry of Sound founder and entrepreneur James Palumbo, who is releasing his second novel Tancredi with Bloomsbury Reader, as well as digitising his first book, Tomas.  

The list includes a selection of authors and estates represented by The Rights House and other literary agencies. The digital imprint will be run out of London and New York, and will publish books currently unavailable in print where all English-language rights have already reverted to the author or the author’s Estate and where there is no edition currently in print. Bloomsbury Reader actively welcomes approaches from other Estates keen to see an author’s work returned to circulation.

Stephanie Duncan, Digital Media Director Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, and Publisher of   Bloomsbury Reader, commented: “I’m delighted to be reconnecting this extraordinary selection of authors and books with their original fans, and bringing them into the lives of a new generation of readers. This is a significant time for digital publishing, and the Bloomsbury Reader initiative introduces a new dimension to its development.”

Bloomsbury Reader’s authors whose works are being made available from September 2011:

Other authors whose works are being transported into the 21st Century by Bloomsbury Reader include: Ruby Ayres; travel and fiction writer Hilaire Belloc; British writers E.M. Delafield, Rose Macaulay, Matt Chisholm (real name Peter Watts), L.A.G. Strong, Margaret Potter, Edward Crankshaw, John Moore, Eric Linklater, Margaret Irwin, Bernice Rubens, Phyllis Bentley, Maggie Makepeace, Storm Jameson, Angela Lambert; Chaim Bermant; Liam O'Flaherty; purveyors of supernatural fiction Gerald Bullet, and Anthony Masters.

Politician Fitzroy MacLean; biographers Roy Jenkins, Ronald Clark, and Frances Donaldson; writer and one of the men behind the creation of ITV, Norman Collins; and novelist, Ivy Compton-Burnett.

British  officer and writer David Fraser; elder  brother of Evelyn, Alec Waugh; actor Dirk Bogarde; poet Cecil Day-Lewis; crime and espionage writers Edmund Crispin, Adrian Alington, Gavin Lyall, Rupert Croft-Cooke, HRF Keating, Margery Allingham, Nicholas Freeling, Harry Carmichael and Hartley Howard (both pen names for Leo Ognall). Non-fiction writers Prof. F.W.J. Hemmings, Guy Chapman, Arthur Marwick, Russell Miller, and children’s fiction writer Bill Naughton.

Other authors include fiction writers Martin Armstrong, Pamela Haines, David Lytton, Dion Henderson, Graham Masterton, Angela Huth, Ann Bridge; novelist, journalist, and screenwriter Ray Connolly; and biographer Russell Miller.

If you want to read more, go to http://www.bloomsbury.com/whatsnew/details/291

Postscript: One of these days I’m going to have to go looking for the original editions of some of these books. It will be fun competing with Bloomsbury.