Category Books

What is a secondhand book?

A used book or secondhand book is a book which has been owned before by an owner other than the publisher or retailer, usually by an individual or library. Some new book shops also carry used books, and some used book shops also sell new books. Though the original authors or publishers will not benefit financially from the sale of a used book, it helps to keep old books in circulation. Sometimes very old, rare, first edition, antique, or simply out of print books can be found as used books in used book shops. A number of small towns have become centres for used book sellers, most notably Hay-on-Wye in South Wales. They act as a magnet for buyers, and are located in country areas of great scenic beauty.

Used bookstores (usually called “second-hand bookshops” in Great Britain) buy and sell used books and out-of-print books. A range of titles is available in used bookstores, including in print and out-of-print books. Book collectors tend to frequent used book stores. Used bookstores can range in size offering from several hundred to several hundred thousands of titles. They may be brick-and-mortar stores, internet-only stores, or a combination of both. A book town is a locale where numerous bookstores are located and serve as the town’s main attraction to tourists.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Who wrote the book “Visible Speech” (1867)?

In 1867, Alexander Melville Bell published the book Visible Speech: The Science of Universal Alphabetics. This book contains information about the system of symbols he created that, when used to write words, indicated pronunciation so accurately, that it could even reflect regional accents. A person reading a piece of text handwritten in Melville Bell’s system of characters could accurately reproduce a sentence the way it would be spoken by someone with a foreign or regional accent. In his demonstrations, Melville Bell employed his son, Alexander Graham Bell to read from the visible speech transcript of the volunteer’s spoken words and would astound the audience by saying it back exactly as the volunteer had spoken it. Melville Bell’s system was effective at helping deaf people improve their pronunciation, but his son Graham Bell decided to improve upon his father’s invention by creating a system of writing that was even more accurate and employed the most advanced technology of the time.

Melville’s works on Visible Speech became highly notable, and were described by Édouard Séguin as being “…a greater invention than the telephone by his son, Alexander Graham Bell”. Melville saw numerous applications for his invention, including its worldwide use as a universal language. However, although heavily promoted at the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf in Milan, Italy in 1880, after a period of a dozen years or so in which it was applied to the education of the deaf, Visible Speech was found to be more cumbersome, and thus a hindrance, to the teaching of speech to the deaf, compared to other methods, and eventually faded from use.

 

Picture Credit : Google

What is the summary of Nyxia by Scott Reintgen?

Emmett Atwater is one of the 10 teens recruited by Babel Communications to participate in what is advertised as “the most serious space exploration”. It’s a very, very lucrative proposal: $50,000 a month for each participant – too tempting an offer for Emmett to refuse. With an aim to help out his family – including paying for his mother’s kidney transplant – Emmett signs on. He’s put on a mission to mine ‘nyxia’ or black gold, a valuable substance from planet Eden. Babel Communications is committed to finding the fittest survivor among those who have signed on, because life in Eden isn’t going to be bliss. They pit the participants against each other with brutal, grueling tasks to be done. Nyxia’s power is that it can be turned into anything. Emmett turns it into a facemask that can translate languages, thereby allowing him to communicate with the others. It’s through these interactions that Emmett discovers that the only thing common among all the participants is that they’re broken. Each is escaping a trauma too much to bear. The leader of his team is a girl named Morning. Emmett and Morning begin a friendship that demands that one of them be sacrifice. Who will it be?

 

Picture Credit : Google

What is the summary of Dove Arising by Karen Bao?

Phaet (pronounced ‘fate’) Theta’s ancestors have moved to the Moon to escape the ill effects of climate change and the inhospitable living conditions on Earth. Life in the lunar colony is confined, regulated and controlled by an anonymous Committee and the Military. Phaet lives with her mother and siblings. Since her father’s death nine years ago, Phaet has withdrawn into a silence that she rarely breaks. She reacts to almost nothing, leaving people to wonder whether she feels anything at all. She’s most at home in the greenhouse where she works. She wants to become a bioengineer. Life goes on until her mother, a fearless journalist, is forcibly quarantined for ‘medical’ reasons. Suddenly, Phaet, whose name means ‘dove’, faces the tough task of protecting her siblings from the filthy environs of the Shelter. Intelligent and motivated, she begins working out with Cadet Wes Kappa. She forces herself out of her thoughts and starts to engage with the world outside. Will she be able to rescue her mother and overthrow the current regime?

 

Picture Credit : Google

What is the summary of skyward by Brandon Sanderson?

Seventeen-year-old Spensa lives alongside other humans on planet called Detritus, which is in ruins thanks to constant attacks by aliens known as the Krell. Spensa dreams of becoming a pilot, a much-revered group of people dedicated to protecting Detritus. However, she’s haunted by her father’s reputation: He was a pilot who was branded a traitor and killed by his own team when he sought to abandon an intense battle with the Krell, Spensa, seen as nothing more than a coward’s daughter, is determined to not allow anything to stand between her and the flight academy. She gets a near-perfect score during the entrance examination – despite it being rigged against her – prompting her father’s former wingmate to agree to train her. During the course of her training, Spensa bonds with her classmates, practises and perfects fighting techniques, repairs a crashed spaceship that has a computer with artificial intelligence, goes to battle, loses some of her friends, tries to abandon battle, is branded a coward and grounded. Instead of wallowing in her defeat and misery, Spensa climbs back into her spaceship and travels into space and intercepts some sensitive communication of the Krell.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Who is the author of the case of the candy bandit?

Archit Taneja was born in Bangalore, every different from the Bengaluru that we know of now. After living in different places throughout his childhood, he finally ended up again in Bengaluru for work. “One thing that hadn’t changed about the city, until very recently, was the big store for children’s clothes and toys. Men dressed in bizarre mascot costumes at the store traumatized me as a kid, and then as an adult. I think it finally shut down a few years ago. The memories still remain, but the closure helped,” says Archit, adding he is soon going to pen down his next – a young adult horror book based on this traumatic memory.

That’s Archit Taneja for you – building on experiences around him, bringing on humour by the tonnes, a scientific approach to case-solving and speaking in a tongue that has everyone from middle readers to young adults (YA) hooked. Wait. And gaming. Read him and you’ll know how important it is to his writing. He has the “Superlative Super Sleuths” series under his belt, featuring the super awesome duo Rachita and Aarti who solve cases involving candy bandits and careless aliens. The series is going to have author book by the year-end.

Archit says he started writing when he was 14 or 15, mainly to vent out the teenage angst that most kids have at that age. “It was mostly emo stuff and really terrible humor that I never dared to share with even those closet to me. Reading, strangely, didn’t inspire me to write. I recollect me and my likeminded friends pillaging through the horrible jokes section of books in the library, while our peers were busy either reading more serious stuff or doing other things that the popular kids did,” he says.

But once he was in his 20s and slightly more confident about himself, he shared a couple short stories with a few close friends, one of whom suggested he do a writing workshop with the publishing house Duckbill. He attended it on a whim, and ended up really enjoying it. The rest, as they say, is history. Or rather mystery, since Duckbill went on to publish the “Superlative Super Sleuths” series.

Writing like Archit Taneja

Archit has some great tips for young writers and he dishes them out in his trademark style:

  • Do not be discouraged if you feel your writing style doesn’t stand out or if you don’t have a fancy vocabulary. That is just one aspect to writing, and you can still tell a good story if you excel in other areas.
  • When it comes to writing, you should embrace you weird. What makes you unique is probably what will reflect the best when written down.
  • Children’s/YA books by Indian authors are still far from the limelight. Books by foreign authors still dominate Indian readers. We are still waiting for an Indian author who changes the landscape in this genre. You could be that author!
  • Writing something can require a lot of labour. There would generally be a driving force that makes you want to continue working on the project. It could be something that inspires you, something that you really enjoy and want to put into words. It’s possible that the driving force dies mid-way and you don’t feel like finishing the thing. For example, if you’re a massive fan of a television show, and the new director ruins the show by messing up the plot or changing the character’s personalities in the next season, you obviously don’t relate to the show anymore, and just hearing its name makes you cringe. At such a critical juncture, you should remind yourself that your fan fiction is its own entity now, and it is independent of external events, so you should not stop. Also, you’ve spent so much time on it already, it would be just stupid to stop now. This example can be extrapolated to other scenarios.

The writer’s routine

Archit says he is not sure if he has a consistent writing style. “If I’m feeling profound, which happens if I have just read or watched something profound, or stayed up beyond 2 a.m., I try to write more descriptively. Otherwise, I just end up telling the story in simple words. In whatever style I write, I attempt to achieve goofy or quirky humour, with possibly a scientific/technological bent to it,” he reveals.

Archit mostly ends up writing on weekends. “If I think of something interesting on a weekday, I end up taking notes on my phone to expand on them during the weekend. The writing happens in one- or two-hour bursts, interleaved with unhealthy food snacking and random video-watching on the phone. A lot of web browser tabs are opened to search on topics,” he says.

Bet you didn’t know that Archit is obsessed with the cartoon “Adventure Time”. At one point, he was the No. 1-ranked player in India in the “Adventure Time” section of a popular quiz app.

 

Picture Credit : Google