Last two weeks went super busy with office work, reading, library visits and few events.

Reading:

Completed reading the original book and rewritten version of “பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்?” “Why women became slave?” by originally written by Periyar. That book describes why Indian women are still slaves of family, society due to various reasons like marriage, childcare etc.

The sad part is, even though that book was written few decades ago, it is still relevant.

Like any other devotional books/stories are retold for every generation, this book should also be rewritten,
once in every 10-20 years and it should be told on all modern formats like audio books, drama, shortfilms, shorts etc.

Reviewing and editing that rewritten version is one of the most satisfying action I did this year.
Hope we can release this as a print edition and free ebook edition. Checking with few contacts to publish this. Will share the progress soon.

Still reading the book “Attention Span”. May take few weeks to complete.

Easter:
Kids got some 4 days holidays due to Easter. They all went for a Easter egg hunting event.

HeartComonos:
At HeartComonos, a social non profit organization, is conducting many free events here. Participated on a Bollywood dance event with family. Celebrated its lead Hardy’s birthday, along with fun filled dancing.
Helped to capture the wonderful moments with Camera.

Library visit:

On the weekend, we visited Mississauga Central Library. It is one of the best places, as a family, we like to go anytime. Just being surrounded by million books itself a great feeling. Viyan is reading a lot. Iyal is still trying to read. Paari is yet to learn reading, but he can turn pages of books one by one for many hours. There are good comics books available. Both Iyal and Paari are creating their own stories, just by seeing and turning the pages. What else we need for kid’s mind to be filled with imagination?

Upcoming talk on Open Licensed Tamil dataset collection:
On May 05 2025, I will be giving an online talk on curation of open licensed tamil dataset.
Preparing for the talk along with collecting open data in Tamil.

KanchiLUG meets:
Every sunday IST evening hours, ( my mornings) are going useful with interesting discussions on Linux,
Free/Open Source software etc.

check https://kaniyam.com/events and subscribe to the calendar there for more interesting events.

Tamil Skills contest for kids:
Last saturday, attended a contest for kids with viyan. Good to see that around 100+ kids participated on the contest on Skills for Tamil reading,writing and speaking. viyan participated with last min preparation.
Next year, hope all three kids will attend. Happy to see many friends like Natkeeran, Suba, Kent, Selvanayaki madam.Took care of capturing some wonderful moments of the events.

After the event, spent few hours in a library at Toronto Downtown. I skimmed on few books on black/white photography, Instagram posting, video making and Toronto Photographers collection etc. Discussing many things with viyan is one of my favourite things. When we travel along, we talk about many things like world history, war, mythology, comics, manga, atheism, Tamilnadu political history etc.

ComicCon Mississauga:
Sunday, attended an event for Comics and Toy Collections. Around 100 sellers were selling old comics books, unopened hero toys. There were many kids buying those stuffs. I was wondering to see, there were many adults standing in line, exploring the old comics and toys, and buying them with wide open eyes.

First they create a cha rector, then bring as comic books, then toys, then computer games, then graphic novel, then text novel, then movies. This is how all the childhood characters are becoming immortal. The business behind this is very huge. Thinking why we the Indians can not bring such huge cycle of business, even though we have tons of stories. Among all the mythological stories, there are very little for children. We have to create more stories and do business with them.

Nithya’s Video series on GenAI

Nithya started text series on GenAI at Kaniyam.com and a video series on her youtube channel, in Tamil. We had some good outdoor shooting for the intro video. Released the first video here

Writing weekly notes after a long time. Life is going super busy.
We crossed a horrible winter, in the last few months.

Winter

The winter made me to live a minimalist life.
Was doing only the very essentials things for life.

The cozy lifestyle helped to do the activities very slowly.
Spent good time with books, movies, indoor games with kids and friends.

Winter days went with long office calls, many indoor events like daily dance, birthday parties, Deepavali celebration, new year party, library/museum visits, dance show by nithya & friends, movie times, Photoshoots, chess club hours, PyKids classes ( Python for kids), Python for adults, Few conferences, weekly tech meetings, community events by HeartComonos etc.

See Nithya & Friend’s folk dance here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XYVAq60y0

Finally, Spring is here now. It is a mixture of winter and summer. But, we are getting few warm days, which are making us to walk on the roads and play in the parks. Waiting for full summer days.

Books
Completed reading முகங்களின் தேசம் ( Country of Faces ) by ஜெயமோகன் ( Jeyamohan ). The author travels across many Indian states and documents his experiences. There are many heart melting moments while reading the book.

https://www.commonfolks.in/books/d/mugangalin-desam

Travel only can give tons of learnings of nature and people. The author is blessed to travel often. The very simple people around India, are helpful to others always. On giving food, shelter etc. I hope this will be same, all around the world. Thanks for all the people who make the world as a wonderful place to live.

Currently reading – Attention Span – by Gloria Mark. It is a book on the research of how the internet, smartphone and social media are designed to take all our attention and how to regain ourself from these.

Reading the book “பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்?” (How women become slave?) written by Periyar to compare/review/edit of a rewritten edition of the same book. The author of the new edition is following me for more than 6 months. Hope will complete and release soon as a low price print book.

Movies

Watched “A Minecraft Movie” with kids. They enjoyed a lot. It is a good watchable one. The 3D is not effective. I still remember how the 3D illusions were coming near to our nose, on the movies like “My dear kuttisathan”

Good bad ugly. The worst movie of Ajith kumar, as per my view. It is only for the fanboys, to enjoy some 3 hours joyful concert of Ajith in theatre.

Theatres should plan to show good music shows, concerts, sports matches, to give more vibe moments for the audience.

Amaran and Officer on Duty are good movies to watch on TV.

Nithya watched a Korean movie, “Forgotten” with her friends, on a movie night. Seems, It is a sad movie, but the discussions she had after the movie are good.

Meetings

Attended Python for Tolkappiyam meeting and KanchiLUG meet.
Asked for a talk on how to contribute for various Free/Open Source Software.
KanchiLUG team should bring more contributors to FOSS.

Did some video shoots of nithya, in nearby places of our building, as we see the good warm weather outside. She is working on a text and video series on GenAI in Tamil. Read the text content at https://kaniyam.com/tag/genai/

I started to write a tutorial on Python in Tamil, in a funny way.
Read it here – https://kaniyam.com/category/let-us-learn-learn-python/

Thanks Swaroop, for releasing your wonderful book “A Byte of Python” https://python.swaroopch.com/ in Creative Commons License.

Social Reading

I have to agree that I waste many hours on mindless scrolling on social media. Have to regain my hours from the phone and social media.

I go to social media, to read content and to know what others are doing.
In the search of little good content, we spent more time. The signal-to-noise ratio is too high nowadays.

I started to focus more on newsletters and RSS feeds, where there is no advertisement. We can get displayed only what the writers are sharing.

I am hosting a tech blogs aggregator here – https://blogs.kaniyam.cloudns.nz at my selfhosted homelab.

I am collecting the websites, blogs in the topics of Literature, books, tech, photography in Tamil. Thinking to host one more public website to deliver all the contents from these sites in a single place, so that readers can enjoy reading them without any distraction.

Emacs

Discussed with a tamil author, on the problems of text editors with huge tamil content. Wondered to know many text editors are showing wrong word count for the tamil text. Explored VSCode, it is good, but bulk.

Working with KanchiLUG friend Thanga Ayanar, to bend Emacs as a very simple text editor.

Read the explorations here – https://forums.tamillinuxcommunity.org/t/need-help-to-make-emacs-as-fullcsreen-edtior-like-writeroom/

What are you doing? Share the things you do as weekly notes like this, in your blog.

Writing weekly notes after a long time. Life is going super busy.
We crossed a horrible winter, in the last few months.

Winter

The winter made me to live a minimalist life.
Was doing only the very essentials things for life.

The cozy lifestyle helped to do the activities very slowly.
Spent good time with books, movies, indoor games with kids and friends.

Winter days went with long office calls, many indoor events like daily dance, birthday parties, Deepavali celebration, new year party, library/museum visits, dance show by nithya & friends, movie times, Photoshoots, chess club hours, PyKids classes ( Python for kids), Python for adults, Few conferences, weekly tech meetings, community events by HeartComonos etc.

See Nithya & Friend’s folk dance here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XYVAq60y0

Finally, Spring is here now. It is a mixture of winter and summer. But, we are getting few warm days, which are making us to walk on the roads and play in the parks. Waiting for full summer days.

Books
Completed reading முகங்களின் தேசம் ( Country of Faces ) by ஜெயமோகன் ( Jeyamohan ). The author travels across many Indian states and documents his experiences. There are many heart melting moments while reading the book.

https://www.commonfolks.in/books/d/mugangalin-desam

Travel only can give tons of learnings of nature and people. The author is blessed to travel often. The very simple people around India, are helpful to others always. On giving food, shelter etc. I hope this will be same, all around the world. Thanks for all the people who make the world as a wonderful place to live.

Currently reading – Attention Span – by Gloria Mark. It is a book on the research of how the internet, smartphone and social media are designed to take all our attention and how to regain ourself from these.

Reading the book “பெண் ஏன் அடிமையானாள்?” (How women become slave?) written by Periyar to compare/review/edit of a rewritten edition of the same book. The author of the new edition is following me for more than 6 months. Hope will complete and release soon as a low price print book.

Movies

Watched “A Minecraft Movie” with kids. They enjoyed a lot. It is a good watchable one. The 3D is not effective. I still remember how the 3D illusions were coming near to our nose, on the movies like “My dear kuttisathan”

Good bad ugly. The worst movie of Ajith kumar, as per my view. It is only for the fanboys, to enjoy some 3 hours joyful concert of Ajith in theatre.

Theatres should plan to show good music shows, concerts, sports matches, to give more vibe moments for the audience.

Amaran and Officer on Duty are good movies to watch on TV.

Nithya watched a Korean movie, “Forgotten” with her friends, on a movie night. Seems, It is a sad movie, but the discussions she had after the movie are good.

Meetings

Attended Python for Tolkappiyam meeting and KanchiLUG meet.
Asked for a talk on how to contribute for various Free/Open Source Software.
KanchiLUG team should bring more contributors to FOSS.

Did some video shoots of nithya, in nearby places of our building, as we see the good warm weather outside. She is working on a text and video series on GenAI in Tamil. Read the text content at https://kaniyam.com/tag/genai/

I started to write a tutorial on Python in Tamil, in a funny way.
Read it here – https://kaniyam.com/category/let-us-learn-learn-python/

Thanks Swaroop, for releasing your wonderful book “A Byte of Python” https://python.swaroopch.com/ in Creative Commons License.

Social Reading

I have to agree that I waste many hours on mindless scrolling on social media. Have to regain my hours from the phone and social media.

I go to social media, to read content and to know what others are doing.
In the search of little good content, we spent more time. The signal-to-noise ratio is too high nowadays.

I started to focus more on newsletters and RSS feeds, where there is no advertisement. We can get displayed only what the writers are sharing.

I am hosting a tech blogs aggregator here – https://blogs.kaniyam.cloudns.nz at my selfhosted homelab.

I am collecting the websites, blogs in the topics of Literature, books, tech, photography in Tamil. Thinking to host one more public website to deliver all the contents from these sites in a single place, so that readers can enjoy reading them without any distraction.

Emacs

Discussed with a tamil author, on the problems of text editors with huge tamil content. Wondered to know many text editors are showing wrong word count for the tamil text. Explored VSCode, it is good, but bulk.

Working with KanchiLUG friend Thanga Ayanar, to bend Emacs as a very simple text editor.

Read the explorations here – https://forums.tamillinuxcommunity.org/t/need-help-to-make-emacs-as-fullcsreen-edtior-like-writeroom/

What are you doing? Share the things you do as weekly notes like this, in your blog.

Vanakkam Makkalayae!

In today’s digital age, traditional book learning might seem old-fashioned. With the rise of audiobooks, podcasts, and AI-powered tools like NotebookLM by Google, there are numerous ways to gain knowledge. But the big question remains: which one is best? Let’s dive into the discussion!

My Perspective on Books vs. Audiobooks

Nanba, as I mentioned earlier, we are living in a modern era, right? Reading physical books might seem outdated, but to be honest, it is a solid learning method that I personally prefer.

Why Do I Prefer Books?

I’ve listened to over 20+ audiobooks on finance, and I gained valuable insights on money management — how to spend, save, and invest wisely. However, whenever I try to explain these concepts to others, I sometimes struggle to recall the specific terminology. This is one drawback of audiobooks: they help in understanding ideas, but the retention of precise terms can be weaker in our minds.

On the other hand, I still remember the books which I read like Gandhiji’s Sathiya Sothanai, Nelson Mandela’s biography, and various poetry collections, my memory of them is significantly stronger compared to audiobooks. The depth of knowledge retained from reading a physical book feels more structured and lasting.

I have listened to audiobooks multiple times, often uploaded by different channels. Sometimes, they appear in the form of book summaries lasting 10 to 20 minutes. While these formats are useful. But, they don’t always provide the same deep connection and retention as reading a physical book.

The Power of Books

One book that completely transformed my perspective on finance is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” I first listened to the audiobook twice, and it truly reshaped my understanding of money, especially the idea that “the rich don’t work for money, money works for the rich.” That concept stayed with me.

Because of the impact, I decided to buy the physical copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Due to time constraints, I couldn’t complete the entire book, but the first three chapters stayed deeply embedded in my mind. This is the strength of books: they leave a lasting imprint that enhances understanding and retention.

Audiobooks vs. Books: A Balanced View

I’m not saying audiobooks are bad. They are great tools for learning, and they played a major role in shaping my financial knowledge. Podcasts, too, helped expand my perspective on startups and entrepreneurship. However, when compared to books, audiobooks have a slight disadvantage when it comes to deep retention and understanding.

Final Thoughts

This is purely my personal opinion on the debate between books and audiobooks. Both have their advantages, and choosing the best one depends on your learning style. Even I preferred audiobooks mostly due to time constraints. But literally, the book is best as always to learn deeply.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your perspective — drop your thoughts in the comments!

When you feel this content is valuable, follow me for more upcoming Blogs.

Connect with Me:

• LinkedIn: Anand Sundaramoorthy
• Instagram: @anandsundaramoorthysa
• Email: sanand03072005@gmail.com

At FreeTamilEbooks.com we have published 850 ebooks. All in sharable creative commons license. There are many people asking for the text only content of all these books many times. As it is a big task, took long time for it. Thanks to Lenin, Anwar of Kaniyam Foundation, all the contributors, all the writers and readers for making this project alive and a great success.

We are publishing the books as epub format, along with PDF format. Epub is just a zip file of HTML files. So, we can copy all the content from it as unicode text. Pandoc is a wonderful open source software, which can convert an epub to plaintext file.

There are the list of actions we have to do.

1. Get URLs of all the 850+ epub files
2. Download them all.
3. using pandoc, convert to text file.

So far, we dont have a metadata file for all the books published. Getting the links of all epub files need some programming. As Python is a swiss knife to automate anything, started to explore the wordpress REST api with python to get all the books pages content.

https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/get_Data.py

Wrote the code here to get all the books info.

This gave a JSON file with book name, author, genre, epub, mobi, a4 pdf,6 inch pdf links.

Converted this to a CSV file with the below code. https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/parse.py

I had to fix few things manually on the CSV file.

This is the final CSV file. https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/fte_metadata.csv

The below code is to download all the epub files from their links in the fte_metadata.csv file. Used pandoc to convert to text.

https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/get_fte_books.py

Got 845 txt files. Total size is 374 MB

Compressed with 7z to get 47MB compressed file.

Published the data here. https://kaniyam.cloudns.nz/tamil_datasets/

Download, share the text data for free. Dont sell them as most of the books are released as CC-BY-NC ( No Commercial ) license.

Use these data to build awesome open source applications and researches like Spellchekers, grammar checkers, LLm, RAG, what not?

Data is always the oil. Let us grow the open data oil.

Please share all your text, audio, video content in sharable license like creative commons. They will use to build a better future.

• For the past few months, I was preparing for an English Exam called CELPIP. It is an exam to check the Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. Though we know English, preparing for an exam is an exhausting one. We took online training from “Galaxy Training Academy“. https://galaxytraining.in The coach “Jay Kumar” gave nice intro about exam pattern. He gave many mock tests and gave good feedback on how to improve, on each test. Last month, Nithya and I cleared the exam. It is a good feel to released from exam fear. Postponed many activities because of the exam preparation. Will roll out them all soon. If you are preparing for any English Exam, I suggest taking training and mock tests with “Galaxy Training Academy”.
  
  ——
  
  
• In Canada, Daylight saving ended yesterday. This happens every year in fall season and referred as “Fallback”. The clocks are moved one hour back. This is to adjust the dark winter season. It seems like all in a sudden, we got one hour extra to sleep in morning.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Oct 31, we had Deepavali, Halloween and our Marriage day. Deepavali day went with great remembering our childhood memories. The evening was filled with fun, as we went to neighbourhood houses, with friends and kids, to play “Trick or Treat”. Saw many weird, spooky decorated houses and people. Kids collected a bag full of chocolates. Last year, it was too cold. This year, the same day had a nice weather, to roam around in the evening.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 1, we celebrated Deepavali with firing crackers. Bought a few crackers, which emit light. Here, we don’t get loud-full crackers like atom bombs, 1000 piece fireworks shots etc. With limited available crackers, kids enjoyed firing them, with all their friends together.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 8, we are planning for a mega Deepavali event with around 250 people here. I am contributing on the planning/photography. Nithya and kids are practicing dance with their friends. Hope it will be a fun-filled evening.
  
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 2, gave a talk on tolkappiyam Canada monthly meeting, about our efforts on writing python code for tamil grammar rules in Tolkappiyam book. It was a good meeting. Few of the participants accepted to collaborate. You can read our progress here – https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/ProjectIdeas/issues/214
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Few weeks ago, gave a talk on open-tamil python library, at Kanchi Linux Users Group ( KanchiLUG) meet. Video is here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtIrbvw2V-w
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Kids started going to tamil school on every Saturday morning. This week, they received books. Viyan is good at Tamil and English. Iyal started to read Tamil and English. Paari is trying to learn writing.
  
  ——
  
  
• We conduct daily meetings in a text based chat system called IRC (Internet Relay Chat). daily, 7-8 pm IST. Good to see many people are joining and discussing many things about open source software and mentoring to contribute to open source software. More details here – https://goinggnu.wordpress.com/2024/10/21/open-source-projects-mentoring-via-irc/
  
  ——
  
  
• Practicing Manual mode in photography for few weeks. Feeling like learning linux and Emacs. It gives the most flexible options and results are stunning. It is better to learn it in early days, so that we can do more magics with lighting.
  
  
  ——
  
  
  The one thing I follow in photography is – shoot a lot, share a little. I keep and share only 10%. All others are deleted. Though it is hard to select the best photos, sharing only 10% is easy for viewers and brings a Wow from them.
  
  
  ——
  
• Completed reading books in last week.
  • வாலிப வார்த்தைகள்: vaaliba vaarthaigal – book about poet Vaali – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08F3KGF1B
  • எழுதுதல் பற்றிய குறிப்புகள்: (Art of Writing) – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B09XHZYGZD kombu muLaithavan:
  • கொம்பு முளைத்தவன் – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B07YJ4PJQK
    
    ——
    
    
    
• currently reading these books.
  • Crash Course Drupal 10 Site Building – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B0CKQ8MK8H
  • Archives, Ethics and the Law in India – https://ethics-law.archives.ncbs.res.in/
  • Understanding Large Language Models – https://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Large-Language-Models-Technologies/dp/B0CJ2C8TXQ

• For the past few months, I was preparing for an English Exam called CELPIP. It is an exam to check the Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. Though we know English, preparing for an exam is an exhausting one. We took online training from “Galaxy Training Academy“. https://galaxytraining.in The coach “Jay Kumar” gave nice intro about exam pattern. He gave many mock tests and gave good feedback on how to improve, on each test. Last month, Nithya and I cleared the exam. It is a good feel to released from exam fear. Postponed many activities because of the exam preparation. Will roll out them all soon. If you are preparing for any English Exam, I suggest taking training and mock tests with “Galaxy Training Academy”.
  
  ——
  
  
• In Canada, Daylight saving ended yesterday. This happens every year in fall season and referred as “Fallback”. The clocks are moved one hour back. This is to adjust the dark winter season. It seems like all in a sudden, we got one hour extra to sleep in morning.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Oct 31, we had Deepavali, Halloween and our Marriage day. Deepavali day went with great remembering our childhood memories. The evening was filled with fun, as we went to neighbourhood houses, with friends and kids, to play “Trick or Treat”. Saw many weird, spooky decorated houses and people. Kids collected a bag full of chocolates. Last year, it was too cold. This year, the same day had a nice weather, to roam around in the evening.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 1, we celebrated Deepavali with firing crackers. Bought a few crackers, which emit light. Here, we don’t get loud-full crackers like atom bombs, 1000 piece fireworks shots etc. With limited available crackers, kids enjoyed firing them, with all their friends together.
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 8, we are planning for a mega Deepavali event with around 250 people here. I am contributing on the planning/photography. Nithya and kids are practicing dance with their friends. Hope it will be a fun-filled evening.
  
  
  ——
  
  
• On Nov 2, gave a talk on tolkappiyam Canada monthly meeting, about our efforts on writing python code for tamil grammar rules in Tolkappiyam book. It was a good meeting. Few of the participants accepted to collaborate. You can read our progress here – https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/ProjectIdeas/issues/214
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Few weeks ago, gave a talk on open-tamil python library, at Kanchi Linux Users Group ( KanchiLUG) meet. Video is here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtIrbvw2V-w
  
  
  ——
  
  
• Kids started going to tamil school on every Saturday morning. This week, they received books. Viyan is good at Tamil and English. Iyal started to read Tamil and English. Paari is trying to learn writing.
  
  ——
  
  
• We conduct daily meetings in a text based chat system called IRC (Internet Relay Chat). daily, 7-8 pm IST. Good to see many people are joining and discussing many things about open source software and mentoring to contribute to open source software. More details here – https://goinggnu.wordpress.com/2024/10/21/open-source-projects-mentoring-via-irc/
  
  ——
  
  
• Practicing Manual mode in photography for few weeks. Feeling like learning linux and Emacs. It gives the most flexible options and results are stunning. It is better to learn it in early days, so that we can do more magics with lighting.
  
  
  ——
  
  
  The one thing I follow in photography is – shoot a lot, share a little. I keep and share only 10%. All others are deleted. Though it is hard to select the best photos, sharing only 10% is easy for viewers and brings a Wow from them.
  
  
  ——
  
• Completed reading books in last week.
  • வாலிப வார்த்தைகள்: vaaliba vaarthaigal – book about poet Vaali – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08F3KGF1B
  • எழுதுதல் பற்றிய குறிப்புகள்: (Art of Writing) – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B09XHZYGZD kombu muLaithavan:
  • கொம்பு முளைத்தவன் – https://www.amazon.in/-/ta/dp/B07YJ4PJQK
    
    ——
    
    
    
• currently reading these books.
  • Crash Course Drupal 10 Site Building – https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B0CKQ8MK8H
  • Archives, Ethics and the Law in India – https://ethics-law.archives.ncbs.res.in/
  • Understanding Large Language Models – https://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Large-Language-Models-Technologies/dp/B0CJ2C8TXQ

At FreeTamilEbooks.com we have published 850 ebooks. All in sharable creative commons license. There are many people asking for the text only content of all these books many times. As it is a big task, took long time for it. Thanks to Lenin, Anwar of Kaniyam Foundation, all the contributors, all the writers and readers for making this project alive and a great success.

We are publishing the books as epub format, along with PDF format. Epub is just a zip file of HTML files. So, we can copy all the content from it as unicode text. Pandoc is a wonderful open source software, which can convert an epub to plaintext file.

There are the list of actions we have to do.

1. Get URLs of all the 850+ epub files
2. Download them all.
3. using pandoc, convert to text file.

So far, we dont have a metadata file for all the books published. Getting the links of all epub files need some programming. As Python is a swiss knife to automate anything, started to explore the wordpress REST api with python to get all the books pages content.

https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/get_Data.py

Wrote the code here to get all the books info.

This gave a JSON file with book name, author, genre, epub, mobi, a4 pdf,6 inch pdf links.

Converted this to a CSV file with the below code. https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/parse.py

I had to fix few things manually on the CSV file.

This is the final CSV file. https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/fte_metadata.csv

The below code is to download all the epub files from their links in the fte_metadata.csv file. Used pandoc to convert to text.

https://github.com/KaniyamFoundation/create_ebooks/blob/master/get_metadata/get_fte_books.py

Got 845 txt files. Total size is 374 MB

Compressed with 7z to get 47MB compressed file.

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ரசவாதி

இப்பெயரின் அர்த்தம் அறிந்திடாமல் தான் நான் இப்புத்தகத்தை வாசிக்க துடங்கினேன்.புதையல் சார்ந்த புத்தகம் என கேள்விபட்டுள்ளேன்.அப்படி தான் என் கை விரல் அதன் பக்கங்களில் பதிந்தது.

கதையின் நாயகனாக சான்டியாகோ வருகிறான்.இடையன் தொழிலை ஆர்வமுடன் பார்க்கும் மனிதன்.தனது ஆடுகளின் மேல் மிகுந்த அன்பு கொண்டவன்.உலகை சுற்ற வேண்டும் என தன் பெற்றோரிடம் தெரிவிக்க,அவர்களும் சம்மதிக்க இவன் இடையனாகிறான்.

அவன் ஓர் கனவு காண்கிறான்.அதில் புதையல் தனக்கு கிடைக்க போவதாக வந்தது.அதனை மீண்டும் காணவே,கனவை விவரிக்க கூடிய பழங்குடி பெண் ஒருவளை காண செல்கிறான்.அவளிடம் கனவை விவரிக்கிறான்.நேரம் அதிகமாக அவனிடமும் போதிய பணம் கைவசம் இல்லாததால்,விடை பெற்றுக்கொள்ள எத்தனித்தவுடன் அவள் எனக்கு பணம் வேண்டாம்…,மாற்றாக உன் புதையலின் பத்தில் ஒரு பங்கினை எனக்கு தர வேண்டும் என்கிறாள்.அவனோ கனவு நிஜத்தில் நடந்திட போவதில்லை என்றும் நமக்கு பணம் மிச்சம் என யோசித்து அங்கிருந்து செல்கிறான்.

ஒருமுறை ஓர் ஊரில் பெண் ஒருவளை கண்டு காதல் கொள்கிறான்.வருடம் கடந்தது.இம்முறை மீண்டும் அந்த ஊருக்கு செல்ல நினைத்து தனது ஆடுகளுடன் செல்கிறான்.

அங்கே ஓர் முதிவரை சந்திக்கிறான்.அவர் தன்னை அரசர் என அறிமுகம் செய்துகொள்கிறார்.அவரும் இவன் தன் கனவை பின் தொடரவேண்டும் என கூறுகிறார்.அப்பழங்குடி பெண் தான் இவரிடம் என் கனவை பற்றி கூறியிருக்க வேண்டும் என யோசித்தான்.பிறகு கனவை பின் தொடற விருப்பம் கொள்கிறான்.இவர் சில ஆலோசனை வழங்க,அதற்கு சில ஆடுகளை பெற்றுக்கொண்டார்.இவன் கையில் இரண்டு கற்களை தந்து “துவும்” இதன் பெயர் என்றார்.இதனை குழப்பம் வரும் சூழலில் பயன் படுத்த கேட்டுக்கொண்டார்.

தனது ஆடுகளை விற்றுவிட்டு பயணத்திற்கு புறப்பட்டான்.அக்கறையில் இருந்து,இக்கறை வந்தான்.மொழி தெரியவில்லை.இருந்தும் சமாளித்தான்.

திருடன் என தெரியாமல் அவனிடம் தனது பணத்தை பறிகொடுக்க,பின் விற்பனையில் மந்தமான ஒரு படிகக் கடையில் வேளை செய்யும் சூழல் வருகிறது.வருடம் ஓட…,பணம் சேர்த்துவிட்டான்அக்கடையையும் பிரபலமாக்கினான்…அவரிடமும் உங்கள் கனவை தொடருங்கள் என கூறி விடைபெற்றான் அவ்விடம் விட்டு.

என்ன இன்னும் ரசவாதி வரவில்லையே….நானும் காத்திருக்கிறேன்…

காத்திருப்போம்……..,

ரசவாதி

இப்பெயரின் அர்த்தம் அறிந்திடாமல் தான் நான் இப்புத்தகத்தை வாசிக்க துடங்கினேன்.புதையல் சார்ந்த புத்தகம் என கேள்விபட்டுள்ளேன்.அப்படி தான் என் கை விரல் அதன் பக்கங்களில் பதிந்தது.

கதையின் நாயகனாக சான்டியாகோ வருகிறான்.இடையன் தொழிலை ஆர்வமுடன் பார்க்கும் மனிதன்.தனது ஆடுகளின் மேல் மிகுந்த அன்பு கொண்டவன்.உலகை சுற்ற வேண்டும் என தன் பெற்றோரிடம் தெரிவிக்க,அவர்களும் சம்மதிக்க இவன் இடையனாகிறான்.

அவன் ஓர் கனவு காண்கிறான்.அதில் புதையல் தனக்கு கிடைக்க போவதாக வந்தது.அதனை மீண்டும் காணவே,கனவை விவரிக்க கூடிய பழங்குடி பெண் ஒருவளை காண செல்கிறான்.அவளிடம் கனவை விவரிக்கிறான்.நேரம் அதிகமாக அவனிடமும் போதிய பணம் கைவசம் இல்லாததால்,விடை பெற்றுக்கொள்ள எத்தனித்தவுடன் அவள் எனக்கு பணம் வேண்டாம்…,மாற்றாக உன் புதையலின் பத்தில் ஒரு பங்கினை எனக்கு தர வேண்டும் என்கிறாள்.அவனோ கனவு நிஜத்தில் நடந்திட போவதில்லை என்றும் நமக்கு பணம் மிச்சம் என யோசித்து அங்கிருந்து செல்கிறான்.

ஒருமுறை ஓர் ஊரில் பெண் ஒருவளை கண்டு காதல் கொள்கிறான்.வருடம் கடந்தது.இம்முறை மீண்டும் அந்த ஊருக்கு செல்ல நினைத்து தனது ஆடுகளுடன் செல்கிறான்.

அங்கே ஓர் முதிவரை சந்திக்கிறான்.அவர் தன்னை அரசர் என அறிமுகம் செய்துகொள்கிறார்.அவரும் இவன் தன் கனவை பின் தொடரவேண்டும் என கூறுகிறார்.அப்பழங்குடி பெண் தான் இவரிடம் என் கனவை பற்றி கூறியிருக்க வேண்டும் என யோசித்தான்.பிறகு கனவை பின் தொடற விருப்பம் கொள்கிறான்.இவர் சில ஆலோசனை வழங்க,அதற்கு சில ஆடுகளை பெற்றுக்கொண்டார்.இவன் கையில் இரண்டு கற்களை தந்து “துவும்” இதன் பெயர் என்றார்.இதனை குழப்பம் வரும் சூழலில் பயன் படுத்த கேட்டுக்கொண்டார்.

தனது ஆடுகளை விற்றுவிட்டு பயணத்திற்கு புறப்பட்டான்.அக்கறையில் இருந்து,இக்கறை வந்தான்.மொழி தெரியவில்லை.இருந்தும் சமாளித்தான்.

திருடன் என தெரியாமல் அவனிடம் தனது பணத்தை பறிகொடுக்க,பின் விற்பனையில் மந்தமான ஒரு படிகக் கடையில் வேளை செய்யும் சூழல் வருகிறது.வருடம் ஓட…,பணம் சேர்த்துவிட்டான்அக்கடையையும் பிரபலமாக்கினான்…அவரிடமும் உங்கள் கனவை தொடருங்கள் என கூறி விடைபெற்றான் அவ்விடம் விட்டு.

என்ன இன்னும் ரசவாதி வரவில்லையே….நானும் காத்திருக்கிறேன்…

காத்திருப்போம்……..,