How do you manage to read good books without a good library system in India?

the most common thing i do is i read a lot of ebooks and that u can find all over the intenet i have read a lot of salman rushdies on the internet for that matter when i get all bored with serious stuff i even read romantic books

Have you tried bookstores like "Bookworm / Brigade road" and "Blossoms / Church street".. I know, the books are quite expensive and the lack of a good library system is quite vexing.

The problem for me is knowing which books to read.. going to blossoms is on4e thing .. but knowing what you should read is another :)

Well.. what kind of books are you looking for?

I generally prefer non-fiction stuff and the range is pretty wide open. All the way from Feng-Shui to Project Management. Fiction obviously popular ones.

I think e-books are the best option. Kindle, Sony e readers are way too expensive as of now.

hey vijay a hav any idea hw much will the chinese ebook reader will cost?

I used to buy books but of late I am not getting any time to sit down on a couch and read a book. So I graduated to Audiobooks. I have a gold membership at Audible.com that allows me one book per month. Since I have a three hour commute everyday, these audiobooks are acting like life-savers. It does put you back by around 700 rupees per month but well worth it. 

Just a thought. 

If you indeed wish to have this expensive hobby of buying and reading books, fictional or non-fictional, e-books are a solution to your problem if you do not have issues with the morality issue related to it(read copyright morality). Also, you can get such places in  every city where they will sell second hand books at throwaway prices. i buy from stores as well as footpath, and i do not find much diffeerence between the quality of knowledge I gain, besides some pagges quite de-coloured or coloured for that reason. So , I would suggest you  to have a short trip of your vicinity and enquire local people about such second hand book sellers.