Kalam, Advani selling well but Jhumpa, Rushdie hot favourites

As the lean season sets in and publishers dish out titles to woo buyers, book lovers in the metros feat on the latest from Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, and Khaled Hosseini.

Indian origin writers like Lahiri and Rushdie rub shoulders with John Grisham and Jeffrey Archer on the shelves in book stores and have been selling well, book sellers say. P.M.Nair's 'The Kalam Effect' and L.K.Advani's 'My Country, My Life' continue to do brisk sales in book stores although the buyers of these titles are mostly bureaucrats and diplomats, says Uday Gupta of a popular book store in the capital.

"The trend is the same across the four metros", says Sumit Choudhury of the Kolkata-based Oxford Book Stores that has branches in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. So, Husseini's 'Kite Runner' and his second novel 'A Thousand Spendid Suns' continue to be picked up by book lovers along with John Greisham's 'Appel' and in the non-fiction section 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne. Also selling is the biography of Russi Mody-'The Man Who Also Made Steel', by Partha Mukherjee, he says.

V.S.Naipaul's authorized biography 'World Is What It Is' by Patrick French is also selling well, says Uday Gupta of Book Mark, a popular bookstore in the capital's posh South Extension. Jeoffrey Archer's 'Prisoner of Birth' is the latest favourite with fiction lovers, he says.

Books by politicians, bureaucrats and ex-spies are purchased mostly by diplomats, bureaucrats, says Gupta.

Indian publishers do not have strategies to release titles to suit 'peak' or 'off-peak' seasons, says a publisher.