Pink Slips before Publishing

We read books authored by celebrated writers and think they all perfected the art of writing at the very beginning. What we read is incredible, its brilliance hits us the moment we pick up the book.  But do these writers really elevate to this platform without struggling ?  

Let's break the myth. 

You will be surprised to note the number of times, your favorite author was let down before their oh-so-awesome best seller was first published!

Whatever genre the author may choose to weave his book around, there is a need for persistence and resilience to succeed – both essential to an author longing for his work to get its due recognition.
Here are 10 best known authors who treaded this difficult path to success & today, they veritably epitomize the same:

James Joyce

James Joyce's Ulysses was rejected by several publishers given on obscenity basis. It is now proclaimed to be one of the most beautifully written, widely read books.  
       
Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen

The series that has portions with a flavor to suit each section of its audience, Chicken Soup for the Soul received no less than 134 rejections before publication.

Meg Cabot

 

The series most sought after by preteen & teenage girls The Princess Diaries received a mail bag of rejection letters too. Life isn’t a always a fairy tale after all!! ;)

Richard Bach

                                                 

18 publishers thought a book about a seagull was ridiculous before Jonathan Livingston Seagull started conquering the skies with his passion for self - perfection.

James Patterson

The celebrated author, James Patterson humbled the 26 publishers who had rejected him earlier, when his book won the Edgar Award in 1977 .

Rudyard Kipling

In one rejection letter, Mr. Kipling was told he doesn't know how to use the English language. Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907

J.K.Rowling 

The enchanting series of Harry Potter & his wizarding adventures was submitted to 12 publishing houses, all of who rejected it. From being unbelievable to raking in sales of 400 million dollars is what we would probably call J.K.Rowling’s witchcraft.

Joseph Heller

                                                    

Story after story that he wrote as a teenager were rejected by the New York Daily News. But his work in humor-filled novel Catch-22 Joseph Heller must have given the New York Daily News a run for their money.

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell’s popular novel Gone with the Wind was showed the door 38 times before being published. Today, even after 75 years of its first edition, it is one of the most sought after classics.

James Baldwin

Baldwin admitted that his publisher first told him to "burn" the book because of the homosexual theme. However, upon publication Giovanni's Room was ranked number 2 on a list of the best 100 novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.

As Flavia Weedn rightly put it “If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.”  ~, Flavia and the Dream Maker, and that’s the learning curve for the writers & writers to-be fraternity.

Don't give up! If your aspirations are to become an eminent writer one day, the journey is not going to be an easy sail through. Their shall be intense struggle involved. But keep up your chin and you might soon be in the list of best selling authors.
- Librarywala



World Book Day 2011

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers." - Charles W. Eliot (1834 – 1926)

 

 And it is to celebrate the love of books that we celebrate the World Book Day today.

This quote illustrates the importance that books have always held in our lives for a very very long time. They have eternally been a source of knowledge & the most credible medium to pass down information to the future generations. And to peruse this ocean of information, to read, is a wonderful, very intellectual habit in itself.

The connection between 23rd April and books finds its way back in 1995, when UNESCO declared it as the “World Book and Copyright Day” to commemorate the anniversary of the birth and death of  one of the most renowned personalites of English Literaure - William Shakespeare. 

The cultural eye can also trace it back to 1923 when booksellers in Spain marked it so as an ode to the death of Miguel de Cervantes (the  famous Spanish author of Don Quixote’s Adventures).

This became a part of the celebrations of the Saint George's Day  in Catalonia, where men of the medieval era gave roses to their lovers and the women to give a book in exchange. 

Although, the UNESCO declared World Book Day is on the 23rd of April, various countries celebrate this occasion on different days in assorted ways.

Check out the pictures & links to get a glimpse of how colourfully it is rejoiced.

Spain:

To celebrate this day Cervantes' Don Quixote is read during a two-day "readathon" and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize is presented by the King in Alcalá de Henares.

Gozo

The Gozo Public Library celebrated World Book Day for the fourteenth consecutive year, this time.  

To see more events in in Gozo, visit http://gozonews.com/17319/world-book-day-2011-events-celebrated-in-gozo-last-week/     

United Kingdom & Ireland            

Every year various events are organised in schools, bookshops, libraries of UK & Ireland to celebrate World Book Day.  The variety and number are impressive, demonstrating how big the celebrations are all over the country.

   
www.worldbookday.com

India:

The Library Media Centre at Kendriya Vidyalaya Pattom celebrates each  World Book and Copyright Day with colossal events.  There are competitions, author meets & exhibition of books authored by Shakespeare. 

Christopher Morley once said when you give a man a book you don't give just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you give him a whole new life. There's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.

Librarywala takes this opportunity to celebrate the World Book Day 2010 in a unique way of sorts.  At Librarywala, we plan to spread the joy of reading among the underprivileged by distributing books among them. 

How you can get involved?

http://www.librarywala.com/WEB/BookDonation.aspx

DONATE your old books to the less lucky & put them to good use. We are open to comics, novels, classics - any suitable reading material.                             

Books bring delight which grows manifold when its shared especially with someone who may not have a chance to read if not for you.

Dont forget to tell us how you plan to celebrate this World Book Day. 

- Librarywala

 

And the Pulitzer Prize goes to....

The Washington Post was recently quoted "It's time to welcome a new star in the constellation of great writer-doctors," Days later, this star “new star in the constellation” bagged the Pulitzer Prize, 2011 in the "general non-fiction" category.

It was talking about none other than Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Indian–American, who received one of the most coveted awards in the United States for his work - The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
 





For information on Pulitzer 2011 winners,  see  http://www.pulitzer.org/

A Columbia University cancer researcher and a physician, Dr. Mukherjee, embodies his work in a nearly  600-page book that is part history, part memoir, and part the story of cancer research over the last few decades.

The Pulitzer citation called the book, 'An elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science.'

 

One reason the book hit the bestseller list is that it talks about such an unusual topic in such an intriguing manner. Also, that many readers know someone who is fighting cancer or has someone in the family who is undergoing treatment for it.



As Mukherjee writes in the first chapter, while describing his initial encounters as a physician with cancer patients  - "Cancer was an all-consuming presence in our lives. It invaded our imaginations; it occupied our memories; it infiltrated every conversation, every thought. And if we, as physicians, found ourselves immersed in cancer, then our patients found their lives virtually obliterated by the disease."

Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee

He also makes a reference to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel Cancer Ward : "The diagnosis of cancer-not the disease, but the mere stigma of its presence- becomes a death sentence for Rusanov (the protagonist of cancer-ward).

He looked at cancer from the very early recordings of the disease, some 4000 years ago & thus began to trace the history of cancer from its first recorded description.

All this as he struggled to answer questions from his patients, "Where are we in the war on cancer? How did we get here? What happens next?" A grueling year in a cancer training program left him 'in stunned incoherence.'

The book may not provide any breakthrough in medicine to cure cancer, nor is it any sort of counseling for the cancer patients. But we still hold it in high regard for the mere audacity of the author to write about so tabooed a topic. It definitely provides a deeper understanding of cancer as a disease & thus stems the compassion for the cancer patients.

We give a hats off to the concept & the spirit that it is written in. What about you?

 

"Leading characters in fiction" by Nitisha Pande

"Often times when we read, we experience something not short of incredible.

We laugh out loud at a Suppandi joke we’re reading at the train station. We spend sleepless nights over a novel by Stephen King. We are filled with impassioned idealism after reading Rand. We hold back tears while flipping the pages of a Nicholas Sparks novel.

That is the power of words.  It allows us, rather provokes us, to imagine. To let our imagination run wild.What turns a novel from good to great, from forgettable to memorable, is the strength with which the characters are portrayed. Some characters inspire, some make us question, but their most common consequence is, they become a part of our mental imagery. Indelible images are imprinted in our mind of the Howard Roarks’ and Jason Bournes’ of the literary world, which is why avid readers often shirk from watching the film adaptions of their favourite books.  Here’s a bunch of characters that have made their place in fiction, for eternity.

1. Sherlock Holmes

(Adventures of Sherlock Holmes –

Sir  Arthur Conan Doyle)

Detective par excellence, chemist, violin player, boxer, swordsman- these are just a few of the talents Doyle embodied Holmes with.  Even for the non-reader, Sherlock Holmes is the archetypical spy and crime solver. He has cemented his position as the most loved detective in the fiction scene.

Unforgettable Quote: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. When, then, did he come?"

2.  Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart



The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

If you check on Facebook, Objectivism is a religion. It is a philosophy by Ayn Rand,  that proclaims the virtue of selfishness. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have long been cornerstones of the fictional world, and copies of these books can be found on the shelves of every young idealist.



Unforgettable quote: “Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. But the mind is an attribute of the individual, there is no such thing as a collective brain. The man who thinks must think and act on his own. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot not be subordinated to the needs, opinions, or wishes of others. It is not an object of sacrifice.”

3.  Hannibal Lecter

(Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris)

Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter has exquisite taste, is well read, surrounds himself with utter beauty and is the meanest killing machine on the face of the literary earth. Criminally observant, he often sends tickles down the strongest spines.

Unforgettable Quote: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

4. Lisbeth Salander

She’s the central character in the outrageously popular Millennium trilogy by the Swedish author, Stieg Larsson. A social outcast, a homosexual, covered in piercings, often mistaken for a teenager this pint-sized death-pixie on wheels embodies the “female asskicker,”!
    

(the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson)

5. Atticus Finch:



To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee



With such moral upstanding values, Harper Lee’s Finch has secured his place as our all-time favourite father figure. 

Unforgettable Quote: “The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience,” he says. Amen.



- Nitisha Pande

A librarywala fan 

Paperbacks and Hardbacks V/S E-books

Reading books has always been a habit I’ve followed, rather a treasured hobby. I have always regarded a book as an art object, as an investment. However, the growing presence of Amazon's Kindle & the Nook force me to think about how a person who just can't part with books would feel about one of these gadgets.

I believe, a book lover would always prefer a paperback edition of a given book to the electronic version. And there are numerous to support it.

One, the Kindle or Nook doesn't create a feeling of reading like a book does. Admit it- that anticipative feeling while turning the pages of Jeffrey Archer’s Prisoner of Birth won't be felt as you tap your e-reader to scroll down and read more.

I remember collecting old copies of the Enid Blyton series from my grand mom’s house & devouring on them throughout the holidays. Books remain readable for many years, given that paper has a much longer life span than most digital forms whereas E-book formats continue to change through time.

Plus, you can’t rule out the possibility of documents getting lost in cyberspace. Worse off if the system of a Kindle crashes, you lose your precious books unless you have backup. 

For someone who reads pretty often, a book comes in much more handier than the e-book reader. Books are best companions on travels as they don't have a battery life - whereas, a moment of anxiety on the climax of a gruesome thriller read can abruptly come to a dissappointing halt , in case, the e-books batteries are not charged. 

As for the economy of the e-book reader, not all books are available free on the net, especially the best-sellers. In case they are, you cannot rule out copyright issues. The print versions of books often cost the same as the ones available online & there isn’t even a high cost involved in getting hold of the paperback edition. 

You can always walk into the nearest bookstore, read a few excerpts & buy it if it suits your taste. Or even better, you can rent-a-book from http://www.librarywala.com/

The smell of a book be it an old, musty book of Shakespeares’s Hamlet or a freshly printed copy of the Harry Potter series is always fulfilling. There is a sense of comfort on the touch of its pages touch of its pages both - yellow & white.

From an author’s point of view too, paperbacks/hardbacks are a more concrete evidence of their efforts as against e-books. Additionally, the potential for piracy of e-books may make publishers and authors reluctant to distribute digitally. Copyright infringement may be involved because copying is involved-sometimes without the author’s/publisher's knowledge.

E-books suit one section of the society really well - students. They are pretty much more convenient  to use, unburdening students from carrying a load of books. They are also beneficial in cutting back textbook price, offering a greener choice as opposed to a thick 1,000-page encyclopedia.

Given that these gadgets are convenient and appealing, they save space & carry the “environment friendly” tag. But as someone who has resorted to the experience of picking up a book to read, would you let these reasons take over your paperbacks & hardbacks.

Make your choice. 

What is Librarywala.com.mp4

"Cricket World Cup 2011"

The religion called Cricket World Cup, the God called Sachin Tendulkar, the team Bleeding Blue, the followers that outnumber the followers of any creed……

The Cricket World Cup – a 4 yearly phenomenon which infects people far and wide reaching nations. This time around, there’s something even more special about this episode. Its being held in the Asian subcontinent which makes us Indians even more crazy than we already are.

When the various-colored people of the gigantic populace forget their differences and bow down to the sport that swells up to assume the importance of a religion & the ruling God of this religion “Sachin Tendulkar”.

CWC 2011 is even more behemothish because one, the Indians are counting upon their God to bring home the sacred World Cup plus the possibility of this one being his last chance to do so.

All eyes shall be glued to the Master Blaster throughout the tournament. Fans & team-members, alike, are expecting him to uphold and embellish the nation’s honor, something that he has been doing ever since he wore India’s jersey.  After crossing milestone after milestone, he is now on his way to achieve the most coveted trophy in a sportsman’s career, the World Cup trophy.

People of all age groups talking about CWC'11 everywhere - at workstations, outside a paan shop, over BBM, over FB, and now over the Librarywala blog! It speaks for volumes for its(grand)self.

The feeling of competition, of defeating the opposite team and proceeding a step ahead to walking away with the trophy is so pure and untainted - even profanities aren’t taken offense to.

Yesterday’s victory celebrations at Carter road(Mumbai), India Gate(Delhi) and possibly every other nook and corner of the country stands as a concrete testimony to this. A first person account is all it takes to realize how sacred the cup is to the Indians and the sheer spirit of sportsmanship that took birth in every Indian soul, the day India played its first match.

                            A group reveling in Delhi

            

 people mounted on a hoarding frame in Mumbai

                                                                                          

One day when reveling on the roads with strangers won over any high-end start studded “private party”. The noise surpassed the human audibility meter as drums played at the loudest and hardest, songs blared from different cars, people loudly cheered & danced to the tunes of “INDIA..INDIA”. For the less loud, whistles did the trick!!!!

When some people stayed back in their car and enjoyed the view outside, some chose to sit on the window of the cars to feel the swing of the celebration while the rest jumped out when they saw the cheering people & ultimately joined the swelling crowd. Every flag that passed by was greeted with an applause –it was almost like hooting but all in good spirit.

Meanwhile, the drummers continued playing different tunes – inspired different rants (using language that isn’t otherwise accepted), but the good cheer absorbed all and sundry. 

Lucky ones, like us, managed to lay hands on the candy being distributed. The unlucky ones, ran into cops who hindered the merry making but let off in good spirit.This celebration went on till the wee hours of the morning, and would continue even further had it not been for the cops.

Blinded by the victory over our neighbors at Mohali, but brought to light by the fact that the next ordeal (at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai) shall be the final and the fateful.

Every Indian, including the ones outside of the physical boundaries of the subcontinent is waiting for the calendar to show April the 2^nd, 2011 and the clock to strike 2:30 IST. The tingling anticipation will be much more edgy, the spirit a lot more intense, the celebrations, if India reigns and wins the sacred trophy, a lot more colorful. And the town shall be painted a lot more redder than it already is!!!!

- Arjun Gupta

A Librarywala fan