Book Selection Center

Sitting around quietly in Secunderabad for the last 14 years, Book Selection Center specializes in computer and management books. And do they ever. There must be about five million books on Java, and then another three million on how to understand those five million. They aren't kidding around about the management section either. This store is a little more course-oriented, with books on electrical engineering, zoology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. However, not all these books are as per any prescribed syllabus - a majority of them are for general reading.

Then you have your books on political sciences and economics, and the chaotically sown islands of dictionaries. A section on Indian philosophy and philosophers is a little treasure trove, with a hefty collection of books by and on J Krishnamurti.

On the way to the fiction section, depending on which way you are coming from, you are likely to trip over a stack of MAD mags. Apparently these mags don't arrange themselves on the shelves like the other mags do. They are therefore in need of a little self-help from the self-development section. Coming back to the fiction side of the store, you will find an obscene number of bestsellers from all the people that write them. There's Archer taking pot shots at King, who's thrown Wilbur Smith into the dungeons with Sheldon, who's chatting up Forsyth in the darkness.

Moving along, we come to the children's section which has a mammoth collection of illustrated encyclopedias (by the way, the Britannica set costs a hilarious Rs. 45,000), along with a sizeable amount of classics and fiction for the young 'uns.

Then there's the magazine section, with National Geographic, Motoring, DataQuest, Elle, Vogue and Cosmo. There are layers upon layers of magazines, but owing to the inherent nature of layers, one cannot see all the mags. However, they are produced magically from the stack in front of your eyes, upon request. The same policy applies to any book that you may fail to find here - if the publisher of that particular book is popular or easily accessible, they can get that book for you.

Book Selection Center has a clearance sale every now and then. But your luck with haggling will depend on the book and its publishing house.


Also see: Book Selection Center (Ramkote), Book Selection Center (Sultan Bazaar)