The Flying Circus of Physics began one dark and dreary night in 1968 while I was a graduate student at the University of Maryland. Well, actually, to most graduate students nearly all nights are dark and dreary, but I mean that that particular night was really dark and dreary. I was a full-time teaching assistant, and earlier in the day I had given a quiz to Sharon, one of my students. She did badly and at the end turned to me with the challenge, “What has anything of this to do with my life?”
I jumped to respond, “Sharon, this is physics! This has everything to do with your life!”
As she turned more to face me, with eyes and voice both tightened, she said in measured pace, “Give me some examples.”
I thought and thought but could not come up with a single one. I had spent at least six years studying physics and I could not come up with even a single example.That night I realized that the trouble with Sharon was actually the trouble with me: This thing called physics was something people did in a physics building, not something that was connected with the real world of Sharon or me. So, I decided to collect some real-world examples and, to catch her attention, I called the collection The Flying Circus of Physics.
books
Remaking ebooks from existing pdfs, djvu
Suppose you have an ebook or an article in pdf format, which unfortunately is not cleaned. By not cleaned we mean
- Single page scan with edge darkening, pages not aligned that is text is rotated differently , page size different, library and use marks marks etc.
- 2-in-1 scan: Two pages simultaneously scanned together, the central spine dark band, pages not rotated properly, edge and wear marks, library marks etc.
In this case we cannot use the tools like scantailor for cleaning the images directly. For this we first need to extract images from the PDF file and then do a processing on these images. One can do extract the images one by one and process them, but then we can do it in a better way also.
First we split the pdf file into single PDFs by using the most versatile pdftk
For this in the terminal type
$ pdftk file.pdf burst
It will create as many pdf files as there are pages. with names like pg_0000.pdf etc.
Now next task is to convert these pdf to images, for this we use the convert command, but we don’t want to convert files one by one by
convert pg_0000.pdf pg_0000.tiff
But this is not very useful for large number of files, we want to make this in one go. So we do the following
$ for i in $(ls | grep pdf;);
do
convert -density 600 $i $i.tiff;
done
Lets see what these commands do:
ls
will list all the files in that directory
ls | grep pdf
This will filter out the files with pdf in the filename and provide us with a list
On this list we can do a lot of operations as we do in on any other list
for i in $(ls | grep pdf)
is calling each member of this list that we generated and treating it as variable i
and for each memberwe
do
the following
convert -density 600 $i $i.tiff
and after this is over the task is
done
We can set the dpi for the output images by passing the number, above it is set as 600. The output images will be named same as the input pdf files.
Now we can happily run scantailor on these images to clean them up!
PS:
Instead of a PDF if you have a djvu file we have another approach.
Step 1
Convert the djvu file into a multipage tif file, by using ddjvu command.
$ddjvu -format=tiff -verbose -quality=uncompressed input_file.djvu output_file.tif
With this command we will get a tiff format, with same resolution as the original djvu file.
Once the multipage tif file is there, it can be split into its original pages by tiffsplit command.
$tiffsplit input_file.tif
And we are done. Now we can happily run scantailor on these tiff files.
Free Software Tools for scanning and making e-books
How to give a new life to books which are out of copyright!
Here is a short summary of the Free Software tools that I have found useful for converting hard copies into readable/searchable formats in GNU/Linux!
Typically the making a soft-copy from a hard-copy involves following steps:
Step1:
Scan the Hard copy using a scanner / camera. This step generates image files
typically .tiff, .png or .jpeg. Some scanning programs also have option of directly generating to .pdf
Basically at this stage you have all the data, if you compress the folder into a comic book reader format .cbr or .cbz format you are good to go. But for a more professional touch read on. The main step to scan the books properly. Some do’s and dont’s
Align the pages to the sides of the scanner.
If the book is small size scan 2 pages at once.
If the book is too large adjust the scan in the image preview side so that only one page is scanned.
If these steps are done properly there is a little that we have to do in the second step. And we can directly jump to Step 3.
Preferably scan in thebinary grayscale form, unless there are colored images in the text. This will help reduce the final size of the file.
Scan at minimum 300 dpi, this is the optimum level that I have come to after trials and errors with different resolutions, their final results and the time taken for each scan. Of course this can differ depending on what is that you are scanning. Many people do the scanning at 600 dpi, but I am happy at 300 dpi. Note: The 300 dpi images can be upscaled in scan-tailor to 600 dpi.
First of all for the scanning itself. Most of the scanners come with an installation disk for M$-Windows or Mac-OSX. But for GNU/Linux there seems to be no ‘installation disk’. The Xsane package allows quite a few scanners which are detected and are ready for use as soon as you plug them in.
The list of the scanners which are supported by Xsane can be found here:
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html
When we bought our scanner we had to search this list to get the compatible scanner.
What is the problem with the manufacturers, why do they not want to sell more, to people who are using Free Software?
If your scanner is not in the list, then you might have to do some R&D before your scanner is up and running like I had to do for my old HP 2400 Scanjet at my home.
Once your scanner is up and running. You scan the images preferably in .tiff format as they can be processed and compressed without much loss of quality. This again I have found by trial and error.
Step2:
Crop the files and rotate them to remove unwanted white spaces or
accidental entries of adjoining pages from the images that were obtained. When the pages are scanned as 2 pages in one image, we may need to separate the pages.
Initially I did it manually, it was the second most boring part after the scanning. But I have found a very wonderful tool for this work.
Imagemagick provides a set of tools which work like magick in images, hence the name I guess 🙂
This is one of the best tools for batch processing image files.
Then I found out the dream tool that I was looking for.
The is called Scan-Tailor, as the name suggests it is meant for processing of scanned images.
Scan Tailor can be found at http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/ or directly from Ubuntu Software Centre.
Step by step scan tailor cleans and creates amazingly good output files from relatively unclean images.
There are a total of 6 steps in scan-tailor which produces the desired output.
You have to choose the folder in which your scanned images are. Scan-tailor produces a directory called out in the same folder by default. The steps are as follows
Step1:
Scan the Hard copy using a scanner / camera. This step generates image files
typically .tiff, .png or .jpeg. Some scanning programs also have option of directly generating to .pdf
Basically at this stage you have all the data, if you compress the folder into a comic book reader format .cbr or .cbz format you are good to go. But for a more professional touch read on. The main step to scan the books properly. Some do’s and dont’s
Align the pages to the sides of the scanner.
If the book is small size scan 2 pages at once.
If the book is too large adjust the scan in the image preview side so that only one page is scanned.
If these steps are done properly there is a little that we have to do in the second step. And we can directly jump to Step 3.
Preferably scan in the
Scan at minimum 300 dpi, this is the optimum level that I have come to after trials and errors with different resolutions, their final results and the time taken for each scan. Of course this can differ depending on what is that you are scanning. Many people do the scanning at 600 dpi, but I am happy at 300 dpi. Note: The 300 dpi images can be upscaled in scan-tailor to 600 dpi.
First of all for the scanning itself. Most of the scanners come with an installation disk for M$-Windows or Mac-OSX. But for GNU/Linux there seems to be no ‘installation disk’. The Xsane package allows quite a few scanners which are detected and are ready for use as soon as you plug them in.
The list of the scanners which are supported by Xsane can be found here:
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html
When we bought our scanner we had to search this list to get the compatible scanner.
What is the problem with the manufacturers, why do they not want to sell more, to people who are using Free Software?
If your scanner is not in the list, then you might have to do some R&D before your scanner is up and running like I had to do for my old HP 2400 Scanjet at my home.
Once your scanner is up and running. You scan the images preferably in .tiff format as they can be processed and compressed without much loss of quality. This again I have found by trial and error.
Step2:
Crop the files and rotate them to remove unwanted white spaces or
accidental entries of adjoining pages from the images that were obtained. When the pages are scanned as 2 pages in one image, we may need to separate the pages.
Initially I did it manually, it was the second most boring part after the scanning. But I have found a very wonderful tool for this work.
Imagemagick provides a set of tools which work like magick in images, hence the name I guess 🙂
This is one of the best tools for batch processing image files.
Then I found out the dream tool that I was looking for.
The is called Scan-Tailor, as the name suggests it is meant for processing of scanned images.
Scan Tailor can be found at http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/ or directly from Ubuntu Software Centre.
Step by step scan tailor cleans and creates amazingly good output files from relatively unclean images.
There are a total of 6 steps in scan-tailor which produces the desired output.
You have to choose the folder in which your scanned images are. Scan-tailor produces a directory called out in the same folder by default. The steps are as follows
- Change the Orientation: This enables one to change the orientation of all the files in the directory. This is good option in case you have scanned the book in a different orientation.
- Split Pages: This step will tell whether the scans that we have made are single page scans, single page with some marginal text from other page or two page scans. Most of the times the auto detection works well with single page and two page scans. But it is a good idea to check manually whether all the pages have been divided correctly, so that it does not create problems later. If you find that a page has been divided incorrectly then we can slide the margin to correct it. In case of two page scans the two pages are shown with a semitransparent blue or red layer on top of them. After looking at all the pages we commit the result.
- Deskew: After the pages have been split we need to change the orientation for better alignment of the text. Here in my experience most of the auto-orientation works fine. But still it is a good idea to check manually the pages, in case something is missed.
- Select Content: This is the one step that I have found as the most useful one in the scan-tailor. Here you can select the portion of the text that will appear in the final output. So that you can say goodbye to all the dark lines that come inevitably as part of scanning. Also some library marks can be removed easily by this step. The auto option works well when the text is in nice box shape, but it may leave wide areas open also. The box shape can be changed the way we want. If you want a blank page, remove the content box, by right clicking on the box.
- Page Layout: Here one can set the dimensions for the output page and how each page content will be on the page.
- Output: Produces the final output with all the above changes.
The output is stored in a directory called Out in the same folder. The original images are not changed, so that in case you want some changes or something goes wrong we can always go back to the original files. Also numbering of the images is done.
So we have cleaned pages of same size from the scanned pages.
Update: The latest scantailor has image -de-warping facility. See the amazing thing at work here:
Step 3:
Collate the processed files in Step 2 to one single PDF. For this I have used the convert command.
Typical synatax is like this
convert *.tiff output.pdf
This command will take all the .tiff files in the given directory and collate these files into a pdf named output.pdf
http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
Alternative to Step 3
Another alternative is to use gscan2pdf for joining the image files into pdf and doing the OCR which can be tesseract or cunieform. gscan2pdf is also able to scan files and stich them into pdf , but I would recommend that you use scantailor as one of the intermediate steps.
Also using gscan2pdf gives you an option for editing the files, if, for example, you might want to remove some marks from the images. For this it opens the image in GIMP.
Step 4:
OCR the PDF file.
Now this is again tricky, I could not find a good application which would OCR the pdf file and embed the resulting text on the pdf file. But I have found a hack on the following link which seems to work fine 🙂
http://blog.konradvoelkel.de/2010/01/linux-ocr-and-pdf-problem-solved/
The hack is a bash script which does the required work.
Alternate
gscan2pdf can do OCR for you using cunieform or tesseract as backends. The end result is a searchable text, but it does not sit on the image, as it would happen in a vector pdf, but is embedded on the page as “note” at the top-left-hand corner.
Step 5:
Optimize the PDF file generated in Step 4.
Here there is a nautilus shell script which I have found in the link below which does optimization.
http://www.webupd8.org/2010/11/download-compress-pdf-12-nautilus.html
Step 6:
In case you want to convert the .pdf to .djvu there is one step solution for that also
pdf2djvu -o output.djvu input.pdf
The tips and tricks here are by no means complete or the best. But this is what I have found to be useful. Some of the professional and non-free softwares can do all these, but the point of writing this article was to make a list of Free and Open Source Softwares for this purpose.
Comments and suggestions are welcome!
Sophie’s World
I had heard about Sophie’s World from quite a number of sources. Finally I got a worn out copy from Fort for 100 bucks. Finished it in the next couple of days. This was about two years back. It is one of the best bedside introductions to philosophy…
Embedded in mystery and weirdness.
The best part of the climax is a p”hilosophical party”, which I also wish to have…
Quotes:
Who are you?
“You are me.”
“I am you.”
You can’t experience being alive without realizing that you have to die, she thought.
Where does the world come from?
How could it be “the easiest way”?
… the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…
Why was it so difficult to be absorbed in the most vital and, in a way, the most natural of all questions?
So it is easier to ask philosophical questions than to answer them.
Actually, we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat.
and anyway it would be pointless to chase after someone who was determined to get away.
It all has to do with habit.
Do you think it can do what it does?
A philosopher never gets quite used to the world.
She understood that people had always felt a need to explain the processes of nature. Perhaps they could not live without such explanations. And that they made up all those myths in the time before there was anything called science.
… nothing can come from nothing …
Once we have determined what a particular philosopher’s project is, it is easier to follow his line of thought, since no one philosopher concerns himself with the whole of philosophy.
How can I “see” a flower, for example?
You probably wouldn’t admire a friend who was good at everything if it cost her no effort.
She decided that philosophy was not something you can learn; but perhaps you can learn to think philosophically.
Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world?
Why did people quit playing when they grew up?
“I’m not playing!” Sophie retorted indignantly, “I’m doing a very complicated philosophical experiment!”
Do you believe in Fate?
Is sickness the punishment of the gods?
What forces govern the course of history?
Who had the right to call other people’s belief superstition?
One day we will meet, but I shall be the one to decide when and where.
Thus the “fortune-teller” is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable.
This is characteristic of all forms of foreseeing. And precisely because what they “see” is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers’ claims.
Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It
reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal—and that no man can escape his destiny.
…wisest is she who knows she does not know…
Is there such a thing as natural modesty?
Wisest is she who knows she does not know…
True insight comes from within.
He who knows what is right will do right.
But today, most people think it is “natural,” even though
it is still strictly forbidden in lots of countries.
But the more she did, the more clearly she saw that knowing what you don’t know is also a kind of knowledge.
But didn’t all knowledge come into people’s heads from the outside?
The history of ideas is like a drama in many acts.
In order for democracy to work, people had to be educated enough to take part in the
democratic process.
“The question is complex and life is short.”
Modesty—or the lack of it—is first and foremost a matter of social convention.
“You can seek him in the present, you can seek him in the past, but you will never find
his equal.” on Socrates
So it is no easy matter to distinguish between the teachings of Socrates and the philosophy of Plato.
Socrates saw his task as helping people to “give birth” to the correct insight, since
real understanding must come from within. It cannot be imparted by someone else. And only
the understanding that comes from within can lead to true insight.
Something within him left him no choice.
A “philosopher” really means “one who loves wisdom.”
A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little.
…it troubled him that he knew so little.
“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.
All he knew was that he knew nothing—and it troubled him. So he became a
philosopher—someone who does not give up but tirelessly pursues his quest for truth.
Can you live a happy life if you continually do things you know deep down are wrong?
“We don’t learn anything there. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers is that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils.”
“It’s not him who’s disturbed. But he likes to disturb others—to shake them out of their rut.”
… several tall buildings had risen from the ruins …
We still speak of Socratic or Platonic philosophy, but actually being Plato or Socrates is quite another matter.”
Plato’s four tasks.
First you must think over how a baker can bake fifty absolutely identical cookies.
Then you can ask yourself why all horses are the same.
Next you must decide whether you think that man has an immortal soul.
And finally you must say whether men and women are equally sensible.
… a longing to return to the realm of the soul…
Because even though some horses were as brown as bears and others
were as white as lambs, all horses had something in common.
All she knew was that dead bodies were either
cremated or buried, so there was no future for them.
Why are horses the same, Sophie? You probably don’t think they are at all. But there is
something that all horses have in common, something that enables us to identify them as
horses. A particular horse “flows,” naturally. It might be old and lame, and in time it will die. But
the “form” of the horse is eternal and immutable.
Because clearly, the mold itself must be utter perfection—and in a sense, more beautiful—in comparison with these crude copies.
… the girl in the mirror winked with both eyes…
Was it the path she had taken earlier?
How could a person who had never seen a live chicken or a picture of a chicken ever have any “idea” of a chicken?
What came first—the chicken or the “idea” chicken ?
Are we born with innate “ideas”? What is the difference between a plant, an animal, and a human?
Why does it rain?
What does it take to live a good life?
…a meticulous organizer who wanted to clarify our concepts …
You’ll have to content yourself with the fact that you are not the only one who can’t exceed your own limits.
Everybody is more or less peculiar. I am a person, so I am more or less peculiar. You have only one girl, so I am the most peculiar.
Common sense and conscience can both be compared to a muscle. If you don’t use a muscle, it gets weaker and weaker.”
The world is me, she thought.
And as you know, when a thing gets bigger and bigger it’s more difficult to keep it to yourself.
It is the only way to become more than a naked
ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum.
… going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way…
Sorry. My lips are sealed.”
But she had been nervous, and when you’re nervous its comforting to break all taboos.
“It’s easy to know better after the fact.”
We shall become better acquainted by and by
But philosophy is not a harmless party game.
One generation ages while another generation is brought forth.
Life is both sad and solemn. We are let into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other—and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.
“It’s not a silly question if you can’t answer it.
“Does all this really matter?” “Does it matter? You bet it matters!
“Smart. But not so smart really.”
“Is it really as simple as that?”
For the wages of sin is death.
That was a serious slip of the tongue.”
“But a slip of the tongue is never wholly accidental.”
…such stuff as dreams are made on…
She knew her mother knew that Sophie knew her mother wouldn’t believe it either.
“No, there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“Well, nearly everything that’s important comes either from Greece or from Italy.”
That was actually quite a lot in the space of one second.
carpe diem’—‘seize the day.’
‘memento mori,’ which means ‘Remember that you must die.’
But any display of magnificence presupposes a display of power. It has often been said that the political situation in the Baroque period was not unlike its art and architec
… he wanted to clear all the rubble off the site…
“You begin to work out your own philosophy.”
‘How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?’
Blossoms in Bangalore…
Well, Blossoms in Bangalore? I was in Bangalore during the spring and start of summer 2010, and have seen quite a lot of them. Here is a sample!
But it is not this blossom that I am talking about. But there is a special Blossoms in Bangalore. It is round the year blossom of books! With the bibliophile that I am, the book is like a three storied candy shop.
But anyways, I came to know about this “candy shop” from Tanu. She told me that you MUST VISIT this place.
http://www.blossombookhouse.com
Okay, then me and GN directly landed from the airport to the Blossoms Book House in Church Street. The store has a unique feature to store your bags, they have small lockers and you lock your bag and keep the key!
That apart the book store is one of the best that I have ever visited, no questions about that.
The lower floor has books on philosophy, nature, films, music, architecture, media. General reading etc.
The second floor is full of literature. This is a floor I have had not found time to visit in my two trips there.
The best is the third floor. It has books on science, mathematics, computers, psychology, history and biographies among others.
And the popular science section is amazing!
They have all the titles arranged according to author names: like in a library and they maintain a computer catalog of these books. I got some really good titles here. Many of Mir books, Dover editions which were out of print. And that too at a reasonable if not cheap price always. The most commonly found book is Contact by Carl Sagan. I must have seen at least ~ 20 copies of this book in different editions in this store.
The best part is that along with new books they also have old and second hand books. Which really sets the day for you. Out of print and rare books to be found here!!
Apart from that I met long forgotten volumes, it was like meeting old friends unexpectedly in a strange place. (Perhaps they were happy to meet me also 😉
We could not just finish in time, it was already their closing time. And I did not feel how the three hours went by. Me and GN were just collecting, filling basket after basket by books. Finally the time came to leave, and books amounted to two cartons! How were we supposed to carry? They suggested that they will send it by parcel to Mumbai! So were are done!
No matter what kind of books you read, you are sure to get them here!
The next time story was no different. And we were in till there closing time again!
I wanted to spend an entire day there, but could not. May
be will try next time.
But if you are in Bangalore its a MUST VISIT.
A paradise and candy shop for bibliophiles!!
Saurav is planning a visit to Bangalore just for Blossoms!!
[Blossoms photos by Tanu, please get some shots from the inside!!]
Other Candy shops:
http://me-damitr.blogspot.com/2009/05/candy-shops-for-bibliophiles-3.html
http://me-damitr.blogspot.com/2009/05/candy-shops-for-bibliophiles-2.html
http://me-damitr.blogspot.com/2009/05/candy-lanes-for-bibliophiles-1.html
For actual blossoms
http://me-damitr.blogspot.com/2008/05/summer-and-spring-special.html
Candy Shops for Bibliophiles 3
After the initial post on bibliophilia [here], and book shops in Nagpur [here] and Pune [here] we now come to the third in this series. The city of Mumbai [formerly known as Bombay] . There is too much to write about Mumbai, the way it was, it is and it will be in the future to come. Since it is my current location since about three years, and it is to be so for the coming few years, I have developed a special bond with the city. When I was in Pune, I had come quite a few times to Mumbai, with one of my friends who belonged here. It was during my visits in those years that I came to know about the Old/Used book markets in the city.
The first one which I will describe is in the heart of the Mumbai, The Fort area. Currently there is no Fort in this area, but there was in the early days of Nineteenth Century. The Fort has long gone since then, for making space for civilian and other buildings, and now only the name remains.
There are too many things in the small area which are of interest to me. I cannot maybe describe them all in this blog. Maybe, The Fort, needs a blog entirely for itself. But lets not divulge too much into it, as right now the thing that we are interested in are the Candy Shops for Bibliophiles. The Fort area presents the bibliophiles with a wide opportunity to shop, right from the old/used books to one of the quite old shops in Mumbai the Strand Books.
I recommend that you start from the CST [Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus formerly known as Victoria Terminus or VT] and take on the D N Road [Dadabhai Nowrojee Road]. Start walking from the Western end of the road, the end at which Mc Donalds is present. Almost right up to the Flora Fountain, one finds a sort of subway created by the arches of the buildings of Victorian architecture.
Along these corridors there are a lot of proper book stores. Some notable among them are the Computer Book Shop, Bookzone, Ashish Book Stores.
See the map below. Ashish Book Stores also have a annual exhibition in which you get lot of books at heavily discounted prices. Usually the book fair is at the Sunderbai Hall, near Churchgate.
On the other side of the road is the Sterling Book Stores, which will give you an enormous variety of technical books to get. They have substantial sections on Physics, Mathematics, Philosophy and Psychology. In most of these shops you will get about upto 10-15% discount on the list price.
Along the corridor you may find one or two old book sellers. One at very beginning and one may be in the middle of the passage. They were frequent a few years back. I got my copy of Albert Einstein : Philosopher and Scientist here in these shops. In fact a lot of old booksellers were present till a few years back, most of them now being removed, I guess in the anti-encroachment drive. But the walk through these ‘corridors’ is worth for the books that await you at the end of this walk.
You can drop by to the Khadi Bhavan, which is on the way to do some nice shopping. If you take a left turn at the Khadi Bhavan Chowk, it will lead you to Strand Booksellers. They have good collection of books on all subjects. You won’t find too technical books here, but books for general reading are more than abundant. Every year Strand people have the Strand Book Festival, which is a must visit. The book fair is usually during January end of February beginning, at the Sunderbai Hall, Near Churchgate. Huge discounts are on the offering in this mania of books. So make it a point to visit it!!
Now, if you go straight this will lead you to the American Express Building. Along side the walls of this building are the old book sellers. A few years back they were quite spread out, some of them had shops along the walls of the High Court building also. But now they have been contained in this small pocket here.
The sellers here are quite knowledgable about the books that they keep. They know the books by title and author. Some also make it a point to keep the books according to authors. The books most of the times are neatly classified by geners or subjets. They know almost all books by Arthur C Clarke and Carl Sagan. The more popular a book, more are the chances that you might find them here. But sometimes you get jewels here. I got my Why’s of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner here.
The book sellers also have a library system, which means that after reading the book you can return the book and get some amount back. But who wants to depart with a book, especially if you are a bibliophile? The most common books that you will get here are the novels of all kinds. Bargaining can be done, and you can get books in quite cheap rates, especially if you are a regular.
The best time to visit is a late Sunday afternoon. When you can have all the time to browse through endless piles of books, to find what you are searching for.
One thing that you might miss on a Sunday is that many of the proper book shops mentioned above including Sterling and Strand, and the Khadi Bhandar are closed on Sundays. But the advantage to go on Sunday is a drastic reduction in the crowd that is present on the weekdays. So if you want to visit them all, the best day is a Saturday.
Till last year some sporadic old book shops were also present along the footpaths, of the Old Bombay University Building, the side on the opposite to FabIndia and Globus, near Kala Ghoda end. Here some of the sellers used to sell books for a cheap but fixed price. Some of lots would have Rs. 10/20/30 for a book. Sometimes I have found quite interesting titles here. But recently in a last few months I did not find these stalls. Maybe they were removed from there permanently. I have also found similar shops along walls of the Post and Telegraph Office. But they are not always there. If you are lucky you probably might get them.
While returning to CST do not forget to visit the Fort Book Distributors, opposite the main entrance to CST [Legend 2 in the map]. This is a unique proper book shop which also sells old/used books at quite cheap prices. They also have exhibition and sales of books at different places in Mumbai, so keep an eye out for them in the newspapers. My last visit to their FBD Book Fair was quite fruitful.
So much for the south part of Mumbai. In next post I will cover the Old Book sellers in the so called college district of Mumbai, the Matunga Area.
Till then happy book hunting!!
Update: As per comment of Square Peg below, I have not mentioned the New and Secondhand Book Shop. Yes! It is there from quite some time if I remember correctly since early days of last century and I did not know about it.
Only recently I came to know about it from < a href="www.arvindguptatoys.com/">Arvind Gupta. And I have not mentioned it. I was going to… but procrastination has its own strange ways in which it works…
So here it is :
The New and Second Hand Book Shop:
For this wonderful shop go to the Metro Cinema Square. There is a shop of musical instruments opposite Metro Cinema [well not exactly opposite, but across the street]. So when you keep your back towards Metro and are standing in front of this Music Store, start walking along the road towards right. After a few shops you have a lane going to left of the road. Just at this corner is the New and Second Hand Book shop. But beware the entrance is a bit small. Two times it happened that I went and saw that the shutters were down so just came back. Third time when I went there, I saw somebody coming out of what I thought was a closed shop. So this is where I discovered the entrance to the shop. They are open till 7 in the evening and closed on sundays.
Visiting the shop makes you feel as if you are visiting an old library. The shop has books lined up nicely according to subjects. The shelves have subject labels on them. Browsing through the shelves can, at times, become tedious. The section on social sciences is quite large. You get 30% discount on all the new books. For the old books the prices are mentioned on the cover and on that you get additional 30% discount. Most of the books are more than reasonably priced; they are cheap :). Also don’t forget to visit the second floor also.
So do visit this shop, till then happy book hunting…
[Map coming soon]
Candy Shops for Bibliophiles 2
After looking at the bookshops in the heart of India we now turn to the second chapter in this series. The Oxford of the East. Pune [पुणे].
Pune has a large student population. The are some very good colleges in Pune. Apart from the standard colleges, there are a large number of courses being offerred by different institutions. Academically speaking I am a product of Pune. Both my alma mater are here. The first one being grand old Fergusson College and then the Department of Physics at the University of Pune. Coming to Pune from Nagpur was a transitive phase for me.
Well here I experienced lot of things which I would not have had, had I been not here. Anyways coming back to the main issue. Since Pune has a large student population, there are a large number of bookshops, publishers to support them.
The most famous area is the Appa Balwant Chowk [अप्पा बळवंत चौक] , popularly known as ABC. This area is in the heart of Old City. The area around ABC is literally overflowing with old and new book shops. But alas most of the books that you get here are the standard ones, Nirali, VBD, Manali types. But anyways, this is what most of the students are looking for. And also you can sell your old books here. With some booksellers there is a library system available, you can get about 50% money back when you return the books after you have used them. Only rarely you will stumble across books which do not form a part of any standard syllabus. You can bargain here.
Open throughout the day.
But apart from this there are a few other sellers which I want to tell you about. They are Mr. Prabhakar and Co. Major chunk of my own collection comes from them. These booksellers do not have a permanent shop as such but are basically street vendors. They sit at the Deccan end of the Sambhaji Bridge [संभाजी पुल ], also known as the Lakdi Pul [लकड़ी पुल ]. Be careful not to take your two wheeler on this bridge, this only a three and more wheeler bridge!
Mr. Prabhakar with his road side stall, at Deccan End of Sambhaji Bridge.
Their shop is not open throughout the day but only in the evenings. Just near sundown they get their books and start displaying them along side the footpath.
Now if you are a true book-lover this is the time to get the books. Keep an eye out for the books that they are taking out of their bags. As soon as you find something interesting keep it aside. That is the strategy that I had adopted when I was in the town. I have myself got quite a few good books from them. I hope you too, along with a lot of Mir/Russian titles. They are open all days of the week in the evenings till about 8:30 pm.
If you are a regular they may also keep some books in reserve for you, as they did for me. Also over a time they knew what kinds of books I was after, and as soon as I appeared they showed me those ones. The books are reasonably priced, most of the times I did not have to bargain. So much for it. Try them out and I hope you won’t be disappointed.
Apart from these there are few proper bookshops in Pune which you can visit.
They are:
International Book Store, Deccan Gymkhana, just opposite to Mr. Prabhakar.
They have some good sections on technical books, literature, and humanities. Also there is an annual sale, in which many books are sold very cheaply, so keep an eye out for that. 10-15% discount on the list price. Legend 1 in the map.
Popular Book Shop, Deccan Gymkhana, along the same side of the road as International. As the name suggests mostly popular books, the kind of ones which you will get in Crossword. But worth a visit. 15 % discount on the list price, but no discount if you pay by card. [Legend 2 in the map.]
Just around the corner from Popular Book Shop is the famous Good Luck Restaurant, one of the few Irani Cafes left in the city. Don’t forget to have some mouthwatering delicacies there. Do try Bun-Maska there! [Legend 4 in the map]
Universal Book Stores, Kelkar Road
As soon as you leave the Z Bridge coming from Deccan take a left turn, and if you go straight for about 50 meters, you will find Universal Book Stores on the right hand side of the road. This is _the_ technical book store around. You can get almost all books in print here. Plus upto 20% discount on the list price. Here is where I first saw Gravitation by Misner, Wheeler and Thorne in a shop.[Legend 3 in the map.]
Finally, Manney’s Book Store in Clover Centre, Camp. This is the most comprehensive of them all. You get books on all subjects under the sun. And they have a huge collection of them. Perfect combination of quality as well as quantity. Upper floor is for technical books. Just to look around the complete shop, will take quite some time. You DON’T get any discount. Pay as per the list price, but a must visit.
PS: Just next to Manney’s is The Place, one of the better joints for sizzlers in the city, so after a long shopping at Manney’s treat yourself with beers and sizzlers here.
Photos of other sites along with maps will be added soon.
The 5 Φ’s of Life
Life as I see it, has five essential `F’s’. Many people may not agree to them, but then this is my blog, so I will tell, whether you like it or not. I will give my reasons for each one, why it is esential according to me. You may agree, or disagree, or give no opinion, it does not matter. Since this blog is more like a personal diary, which I will not link to anybody, I think it is safe to write things here, which I would not like to be in public.
[But then am I not contradicting myself, when I am putting my personal thoughts in a public place?]
So the five F’s
- Phood: Food is essential for our survival, this represents a living organisms most basic needs. This is what distinguishes us from non-living matter. But the food just should not be for sustenance. It should also be enjoyed. What is the point in eating something that you don’t like? No I don’t mean that we get to eat everything that we like, [I am definitely not suggesting that if you don’t have breads then you should eat cakes], but with whatever we have to eat, we should be enjoying it. If you make the food [not like the plants] but in the more human sense of the world. When you “make” food you get joy of creating something wonderful, if you do not then I am sorry for you. Also the cook should have the complete freedom to do with the food .
- Philosophy: This is what distinguishes us from the other living beings, we have to have a philosophy of our own, or at least one that is taken from others. But what is essentially needed is to critically look at the aspects of life.
- Phuck: Well what to say about this? I guess you understand my feelings!
- Physics: Physics according to some people is the pinnacle of our achievement. Since I am a physicist by training, I have included physics here. Physics has given me a skeptical attitude towards things in life. Though this is not the only path which will lead you here nor that everyone who is a physicist by training will go along this path, but this was my path, hence I list is here.
- Photography: I have included photography for two reasons.[I am still an amateur [literally and figuratively], as I have not been paid for anything that I have done so far.] One is that photography enables you to store moments, that you have for an extended period of time, and that too in a form that you can share with other people. The other reason is about the art of photography itself. When you are behind a camera, you start to see things differently, from differently perspectives and angles. Is this what not a skeptic needs? Photography in a way provides me with practical tools of implementing many philosophical ideas which would otherwise remain abstract.
Of Bibliophilia…
Well the other day while surfing the net I found some thing about me. Something about the things that I do has been so clearly defined,I never even wondered that there could be people who have defined and categorised terms like this one.
This is one attribute that I certainly have. Collecting and reading books is a passion that I nurtured from my childhood. The ones that I had and read in my childhood were the comics. I read a whole lot of them, covering entire series. So when I went to collect `old’ comics at the Sita Bardi old book sellers, I did got interested in the other books they were selling. So I started buying them also. Initially the budgets were very low, so….
The major ones that I brought in this time were the Russian published Mir titles. I collected a lot over the years and they form one of the most prized collections that I have.
When I shifted to Pune visiting the Deccan `bridge’ became almost a ritual. Almost all the books I acquired during my stay in Pune were brought from Mr. Prabhakar and co. I don’t even have a photo of these guys, maybe next time I go, I will get one…
Update: This is the photo of Mr. Prabhakar that I took in the last trip..
I became one of the regulars there. And so were others….
Also another incident happened in Pune, which really made me in this regard. Me and Samir went to a certain prestigious library, where we were told by the librarian “We don’t need people like you in our library.” Well this really changed my attitude towards possession of books. Books are the key to the code of that knowledge, why it should not be open to all in a free society…
Ebooks are going to change this. You don’t loose an e-book when you give it to someone.
There is another thing that is a bit strange which has happened with me many times. It is cannot be certainly be put in rational sense. The idea that I have is that books call me! Yes you read it right. I many times feel incredibly attracted towards a book when I see it. I mean, I feel that I have to have this book, there is no compromise…. I don’t know how to explain this, but the books that I have got by this `intuition’ have proved to be immensely useful to me one way or the other. They have at times opened an entirely different world altogether for me.
Some of the titles that I got by this `intuition’ are Larry Collins, Dominique La Pierre – Freedom at Midnight, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett – Mind’s I, Martin Gardner – Why’s of a Philosophical Scrivener among others.
I did not know before that such books even exist. Let alone their content. But when I saw these books I felt this very strong `urge’ that the book is saying, “Take Me with You.” Maybe you are wondering that this guy is nuts, maybe I am but this is what I have experienced.
My life is taking me westwards, literally. Nagpur to Pune, now Pune to Mumbai. Further west is the sea, where do I go from there?
Leaving Pune among other things I had one pain of leaving `the bridge’. Because I had become addicted to go there. Even if I had less money, had no other work, I had to go there. I dunno, maybe it had become an OCD.
Also another thing that I want to tell is about what I feel when I am going through a stack of books at the book seller. I have got used to the shops that I visit frequently so that I know where to look what I want. In exhibition it is many times much more messier, as the organizers themselves don’t know what the stock of books is. Also when I scan a set of books I look for certain features that I cannot describe, maybe it is like the irrational Logic of Scientific Discovery which Karl Popper proposes. But here again I can find books which others cannot spot.
When I came to Bombay, I became a regular at the Fort and Matunga areas. It has been quite some months since I have visited Matunga, but fort I do frequent a lot.
Each time I go I have another subject or theme which is added in the books that I look for. The broader subjects include
Physics, Mathematics, Astronomy, Electronics, Chemistry, History, Philosophy, Art, Education, Science fiction, psychology and so on…
Also with the ebooks, this collection has been taken to altogether another dimension, now I have about 7000 e-books [and counting]. In this case maybe the bibliomaniac definition is true for me.
Try these and I hope that you won’t be disappointed
ALL CREDITS TO THE ORIGINAL UPLOADERS!!
Space [both mental and physical] really becomes a problem when you have such more books to handle than you can. Anyways it has been and I guess will be a problem for me throughout my life. But I am happy that I have this problem.
Till then wish me another book…
Old Ex Libris for me!