Of Book Sales and Grocery Stores

Come November/December and the Christian village in Bangalore goes on a book buying spree. Reason – mega Christmas book sales. The biggest book sale of them all is the Bangalore International Christian Book Fair conducted by OM Books. Thousands and thousands of books are strewn all over the Campus Crusade Hall for people to buy. Its a sale for which people make a beeline even before the sale begins and certainly during the whole week.

However, many a times when I observed the way people buy books(me included; at least some years ago), I found a strange similarity between it and the way people buy vegetables in a grocery store! Just glance at all the books, take some of them, look at the front and the back, if you like it, put them into the basket (even the baskets in these sales look a lot like the ones in grocery store) and head to the billing counter. This is a hyperbole of course. People do take into account whether the books fall somewhere in their sphere of interest and then decide to buy it. However, many a times the reason to buy a particular book stops there. One more reason may be that its a book which is being sold in OM Book Sale; alas! it has to be good since it is found a Christian book fair, right?