Susan Visvanathan
Susan Visvanathan
501 FACTS FACTORY: AMAZING BUILDINGS OF THE WORLD by Sreelata Menon Hachette India, Gurugram, 2019, 170 pp., 299
November 2019, volume 43, No 11

Sreelata Menon has engaged in a labour of love. The task she took on was huge, and yet, while discussing 501 architectural facts about buildings all over the world, she has succeeded in being lucid and interesting. Young people who have a skill for memory tests or general knowledge facts will find this a very interesting collection. The chapters are titled very clearly into Castles, Churches, Clock Towers, Forts, Homes, Libraries, Lighthouses, Mausoleums and Tombs and concludes with the sections on Temples, Towers and Unusual Buildings. There are 21 chapters and include Mausoleums and Tombs, Mosques, Museums, Nature Inspired Buildings, Opera Houses, Theatres and Concert Halls, Palaces, Residences of Heads of State, Skyscrapers, and Synagogues.

What is provided for ever curious teens, and literate preteens, with computer facilitation, is a map of the world, where time is presented not linearly, or chronologically, but in terms of dates, figures, descriptions of places as mnemonics, and some typically found, or commonplace, photographs of the place defined. It takes about 8 to 10 hours to read the book, though it is of only 170 pages. The line drawing facing the first chapter is peculiarly beautiful. Publishers have always depended on some image, it could be paragraph breakers which are aesthetically pretty, when they feel the book might not otherwise attract attention. Here, the one drawing to catch your attention is an image like a heart beat’s rhythm on a cardiograph, but is actually a row of continuous buildings.

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