The 10-day Coimbatore Book Fair set to begin from July 22

on Jul 25, 2022

V. Kathiresan holds up hardbound copies of the well-known Tamil epic series and says, "I came here all the way from Bengaluru just to buy 'Ponniyin Selvan' at the book fair.

He attended the sixth iteration of the ten-day Coimbatore Book Festival (CBF) 2022, which got underway on Friday at the Codissia Trade Fair Complex. Electricity Minister V. Senthil Balaji, Collector G.S. Sameeran, and CBF Chairman B. Vijay Anand presided over the fair's opening. The book fair, which runs until July 31, has 280 stalls that have been set up by more than 200 publishers.

A mass reading of Thirukkural by 5,000 students will take place on July 28 at 10 a.m., the Minister announced.

T. Jeyabalasundari (77), another avid reader from of Coimbatore, stated that there is no such thing as "a terrible book, and the perception resides only with the reader's taste" and purchased "Nattrinai," one of the key Tamil anthologies in Sangam literature.

The publishers, according to several attendees at the event, need to offer additional collections in Tamil for the young ones to foster an interest in the language.

A booth proprietor named S. Sathyaraj claimed that while young adults chose romance and self-help books more, both in Tamil and English, a group of schoolchildren preferred comics and picture books in English. A larger audience over the weekend is anticipated, he added.

A variety of projects completed by children in Classes I through VIII at the government school The Illam Thedi Kalvi were displayed in a stall in the book fair. “This is to show how fast and better children learn using pictorial representations,” said volunteers.