We don't have many chain book stores in Chandigarh. But we do have a unique bookshop-cum-library named The Browser which my wife and daughter visit quite frequently. Personally I read very little fiction now. I have read most of the classics from the 19th and 20th century. I still look forward to a new Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Amitav Ghose, Orhan Pamuk or J.M.Coetzee but with far less enthusiasm than before. Fiction seems wordy and bloated. I prefer the romance and beauty of reading the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Fernando Pessoa, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz and T.S.Eliot.
The saddest part of the reading landscape is the dumbing down of content. I have been to the bigger chain stores at domestic airports and metros a few times and their shelves were full of what can best be described as time-pass-fairy tales and self-help-hogwash. The representation of good, readable fiction was less than 5%. Primarily what these bookstores sell (and unfortunately what the public desires) is mass marketed sex, violence and erotic fantasies. On domestic and international flights I can't help glancing at the books which the suave and sophisticated jet set are reading. Their reading material may represent many languages of the world, but judging by their paperback covers, everybody seems to be reading the same uninspired, indigestible mush.
mush - is a thick cornmeal pudding usually boiled in water or milk. It is often allowed to set, or gel into a semi solid, then cut into flat squares or rectangles, and pan fried-Wikipedia
