The Haul at the 37th Hyderabad National Book Fair

 The 2024 Book Fair Haul-1

 

There’s one event I wait for with a lot of excitement and anticipation, and that is the Hyderabad Book Fair that usually is held in December. This year it was from 19-29, December. But this year before stepping into the HBF on the first day of HBF i.e., Dec 19^th, I decided to take it easy and buy not more than six books because only a couple of days earlier I had returned from Bengaluru with a dozen books I had picked up in the bookstores on Church Street. 

 

But I ended up buying a total of twenty books during my six visits to the book fair. I couldn’t resist buying them because each and every of them was a book I wanted to read. There were many titles I did not buy because I feared I would end up with too many unread books. 

As usual I reached there on the first day but couldn’t enter as the CM was inside for the inauguration. But after sometime I noticed people entering from a side entrance and I too went in. I decided to check out only a few stalls on the first day and buy whatever I find good enough. 

These are the titles I found on the first day. 

 

I really did not know Nicholas Basbanes had written this book. I have his classic, ‘A Gentle Madness’ that I bought online last year. I found a beautiful copy of ‘Every Book Its Reader’by Nicholas Basbanes and made it the first book I bought at the HBF. 

 

A journalist friend had told me about Philip Gourevitch’s book about the killings in Rwanda and since then I had been looking for it, and that was about a decade ago. At the Hyderabad Book Fair this year I found ‘We Wish to Inform that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families’ by Philip Gourevitch. I was very glad to have found it. 

 

I had read about Suresh Menon’s book recently and had also looked for it at Bookworm in Bengaluru but they did not have it, and later I almost ordered it online. Somehow I did not order it and was pleasantly surprise to find it within the hour for Rs.250 only! I was pretty amazed when I showed the picture of the cover to the salesman in one of the stalls and he simply walked over to a shelf and pulled it out. I did not expect to find it at the HBF but I am lucky I found ‘Why don’t You Write Something that I Might Read?’ by Suresh Menon.

 

Then there was this slim book that I almost did not buy and in fact had kept it back on the shelf after the seller quoted an outrageous price for it. He later reduced it and I picked it up the copy of  

‘Deccan: Ilustrated Hyderabad’ by Mehdi Saajid and Sibghat Khan

 

 

Not really content with what I found on the first day of HBF I went again on the second day and picked up another half a dozen titles.

 

I had read about tThe Art of the Personal Essay’ by Philip Lopate a long, long time back and had hoped to find it sometime soon. But a decade passed before I came across it at a stall. I did not expect it to be such a big tome and the price was also high. But I think it is worth it since it has more than seventy-five essays by some wonderful writers like William Hazlitt, Annie Dillard etc 

 

Once again another book I wanted to read as soon as I heard about it. I had seen a nice copy of ‘Caste Matters’ by Suranj Yengde at the Best Book Store in Abids but the price sticker on it said ‘Rs.500’ and so I did not buy it. At the HBF I got it pretty cheap. 

 

This was one title I had already read but my copy was destroyed by termites a couple of years ago and I had to burn it. I was pretty pleased to see another copy of ‘Why I am Not a Civil Servant’ by Ajay Singh Yadav’ and I bought it because it is a candid account of the IAS by another IAS who left the service, disillusioned. 

 

Ever since the latest conflict/war in Palestine the book most mentioned on Twitter was the 

‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine’ by Rashid Khalidi, and every time I read about it my desire to read it grew like anything. I got a shock when I saw it in one of the stalls that I had already been to on the first day, and wondered how I had missed it. But I thanked my stars that I found it. 

 

I can never read enough books about Africa, by Africans, on Africa so when I saw this book with a dazzling cover I grabbed it. ‘African Rhapsody’ edited by Nadezhda Obradovic is a collection of short stories by African writers, and at last I found a story in it by Ken Saro Wiwa.

 

Earlier in the week I had picked up four wonderful titles by Jan Morris and though there were several other titles I did not buy them because the price was too high. But at HBF I saw two titles I had seen at Blossoms in Bengaluru but did not buy, and was thrilled to get them at half the price. 

The first title was ‘Spain’ by Jan Morris and the other was ‘Heaven’s Command’ by James Morris (Jan Morris’ name before the sex-change surgery). Someday I hope to find the third title in the Empire trilogy. 

 

I skipped a day or two of the HBF and on the next day I found a wonderful title on Africa. I picked up the beautiful copy of ‘The Search for Africa’ by Basil Davidson.

 

The next find was a beautiful copy of ‘Self-Help’ by Lorrie Moore that I already had but this copy that I saw at HBF had a really wonderful cover so I picked it up and got it pretty cheap. 

 

I have bought several books about India as seen by foreigners earlier and had found their views about India pretty interesting without all the sentimental stuff Indian writers write. Another of such books was a copy of ‘Through the Indian Looking Glass’ by David Selbourne that I bought. 

 

I must have bought at least a dozen copies of ‘The Snow Leopard’ by Peter Matthiessen over a period of thirty years and whenever I see a copy I buy it. I spotted another copy with a completely different cover that I immediately wanted to buy, and bought it.

 

 

Even at the HBF in the second-hand book stalls there were lots of books being sold for fifty and also hundred rupees. In one of the fifty rupee lots I saw a copy of ‘Friends & Lovers’ by Oscar Pinkus and bought it based on the blurb on the front cover. 

My next visit to the HBF was on 28^th December, a Sunday. I thought I’d just look around and try not to buy more books but I ended up buying three titles. 

 

I found a beautiful copy of ‘bad land: an american romance’ by Jonathan Raban that had a startlingly attractive cover. I have many titles by Jonathan Raban but this title was not in my collection. 

 

Then I saw another title on Africa, and bought it. It was an almost new copy of ‘The State of Africa’ by Martin Meredith.

 

I had found and read ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household and found it a gripping read. In one of the stalls I saw a copy of ‘A Time to Kill’ by Geoffrey Household and picked it up hoping it would be as good as ‘Rogue Male’. 

On the last day of the HBF I picked up two more titles. Somehow I saw a couple of titles of Ved Mehta, and I picked up one of them which was 'John is Easy to Please' that I got for a hundred rupees. 

The last book I bought at HBF on its last day was a beautiful copy of 'A History of the Middle East' by Peter Mansfield that I had seen on the first day but couldn't locate it again even after a detailed search. Luckily, I spotted it in the same stall but on a different shelf. I already have another title by Peter Mansfield- The Arabs. 

The Sunday Haul (on 22-12-2024)

 Even after buying more than half a dozen titles on my two visits to the 37^th Hyderabad National Book Fair that began on the 19^th of December I couldn’t resist going to Abids on Sunday. Most of the sellers had set up stalls at the Book Fair and were missing at Abids. But that wasn’t the reason why I found only one book last Sunday at Abids. 

 

I found a copy of ‘The Barbarous Coast’ by Ross MacDonald that I got for fifty rupees. Ross MacDonald is one of my favourite writers and so I bought the book thinking I did not have this title in my collection of MacDonald’s titles. But when I later checked in my bookshelves I saw the copy of ‘The Barbarous Coast’ that I had bought long back. I wasn’t disappointed since the copies had different covers. 

The Bengaluru Haul (13 & 16/12/2024)

 Last week I was in Bengaluru to attend the BangaloreLiterature Festival, and had a day free before the Lit Fest, and also a day free after the Lit Fest that I used to check out the bookstores on Church Street. I picked up more than a dozen books at Blossoms, Bookworm and also at Book Hive that I went to on the two days I was free. 

 

On Friday afternoon I first went to Blossoms, the old one first, where I found a hardcover copy of ‘Memoir’ by John McGahern. Inside the pages were some paper cuttings about John McGahern and his books that the previous owner seemed to have made out of the TLS and other periodicals including one in German in a German periodical. There were two pages of a review by Mary Kenny of ‘Memoir’ by McGahern, and also another cutting of a review of the same title by Gerals Mangan.  Whoever it was who was the previous owner he or she must have been a real fan of John McGahern. 

 

The second book I found at the Blossoms was a copy of ‘Views from Abroad: The Spectator Book of Travel Writing’ with a foreword by Colin Thubron. It has about a hundred travel essays in sections divided into Travel and Travellers, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, The Middle East, The Far East and Australia, North America, and finally Central and South America. There are essays on some big names in travel writing like Patrick Leigh Fermor, Eric Newby, Shiva Naipaul, as well as essays by Freya Stark, James Morris (now Jan Morris), V.S. Naipaul, Evelyn Waugh, Rose Macaulay and several other writers. 

 

I went to the Blossoms store where I picked up four Jan Morris titles. The first was a beautiful copy of ‘Pleasures of a Tangled Life.’ I was thrilled to read that it is the second volume of her autobiography, the first being ‘Conundrum’ that I have. It has about thirty-six chapters or essays I should say about various topics. 

 

The second Jan Morris title was a nice copy of ‘Destinations’ that is a collection of some of the essays she wrote for ‘Rollng Stones’ magazine. It has ten essays about the various places she had travelled to including one on New Delhi that I have already read somewhere. 

 

The third was a copy of ‘Europe, An Intimate Journey’ that was about, what else, Europe and its history and countries in Europe. After reading the blurbs at the back of the back and in the inside pages I just want to begin reading it right away but I will keep it for later, or maybe make it the first title I want to read in 2025 which is just days away. 

 

The fourth was a ‘A Writer’s World: Travels 1950-2000’ that was about her travels across the world described in eighty-seven essays. This book too I am tempted to read right away but I will read it later sometime in March 2025 which is when I will be really free as I will be retiring from my job. 

 

Now I realize I did a foolish thing by not picking up the other two titles of the Pax Britannica trilogy, the first and the third title called “Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress’ and ‘Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial retreat’ respectively since I already had the second title called ‘Pax Britannica’ in the trilogy. I am wondering how to rectify this lapse. There were also Dervla Murphy titles, one was ‘South from the Limpopo’ and the other about travels in Madagascar (‘Muddling Through in Madagascar’) that I should have also bought. 

 

Since I had already bought half a dozen titles by then I did not feel like buying more titles since there was Bookworm, Book Hive left to check out. After a sandwich and cup of coffee in the India Coffee House I went straight to the newly opened Antiquarian Bookworm store that I had read about on social media, and that I was eager to check out for books on books. It was a wonderful store inside a store, with wooden shelves with glass fronts, and nice lighting. It felt like being inside a quaint antiquarian bookstore.

 

I had the surprise of my life when I saw the author of one of my favorite books- The Groaning Shelf, as well as ‘The Book Beautiful’ and ‘An Inky Parade: Tales for Bibliophiles’ that I bought and had it signed by him. I am a fan of Pradeep Sebastian since the days his column on books called ‘Endpaper’ were published in The Hindu. It was a dream coming true meeting the columnist and writer after nearly thirty years. They did not have a copy of ‘The Groaning Shelf’ or I would have bought it and got it signed by Pradeep Sebastian.

 

As recommended by Pradeep Sebastian I bought these three titles. 

‘The Pope’s Bookbinder’ by David Mason

‘Fishers of Books’ by Barton Currie

‘The Book about Books: The Anatomy of Bibliomania’ by Holbrook Jackson

 

After the BLF, on Monday I went again to Bookworm and found a copy of ‘The World of Robert Fisk’ that was the first of a two-volume series that came with The Independent newspaper. I was disappointed that I couldn’t find the second title. It is a slim title that has columns by one of the boldest journalists who had covered several wars. I feel lucky to have found his other titles a while back.

 

Another wonderful title I found there was a copy of ‘I Served the King of England’ by Bohumil Hrabal that I was excited to spot. I have a copy of ‘The Death of Mr. Baltisberger’ and also ‘The Little Town Where Time Stood Still’ that I have read and ever since I wanted to read more of his books.

 

Later I went to Book Hive and was elated to find another wonderful book that I had been looking for since a long time. I spotted an almost new copy of ‘African Silences’ by Peter Matthiessen with a stunning blue cover that I grabbed the instant I saw it. It is a Harvill edition and I was thrilled to have found it. I think it is one of the best finds of the year. 

 

That makes it twelve books I bought in Bengaluru. The 37^th Hyderabad Book Fair is beginning from today ( 19^th December, 2024) and is held until 29^th December. I have to see how many books I will find in these ten days of the book fair. Afterwards I have to count how many books I had bought during this year. I think it will easily cross 250!

The Sunday Haul (on 08-12-2024)

It was another cloudy Sunday in Hyderabad the sort of weather that makes one feel gloomy. It was how I felt when I left for Abids from home after breakfast praying I would not be tempted to find more than two titles. Surprisingly, I found only two titles that I brought home.

 The first title was a copy of a book I already have but don’t know where it is lying at home. So when I saw a good copy of ‘Ten Novels and their Authors’ by Somerset Maugham I picked it up. It is a great book in which Maugham writes extensively and deeply about classic novels like ‘Tom Jones’ by Henry Fielding, ‘Pride Prejudice’ by Jane Austen, and other titles as well as about their authors. Reading it was a lesson in writing. I got this book for just fifty rupees.

 

The second title I found at one of the sellers in Chikkadpally on the way home. I saw a nice copy of ‘South African Dispatches’ by Donald Woods, a Penguin title that had a foreword by Alan Paton author of ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ a classic. ‘South African Dispatches’ is a collection of columns by Donald Woods published in Daily Dispatch of which he was the editor. This book too I got for fifty rupees. 

 

At the same seller I saw a copy of ‘The Closing of the American Mind’ by Allan Bloom that I had read about on X just days ago. However, I did not buy it and now I am regretting not buying it. I will be in Bengaluru next Sunday and I hope it would still be available by the time I return and go to Chikkadpally the following Sunday. 

The Sunday Haul (on 01-12-2024)

 Unlike the past few Sundays when it was bright and sunny, last Sunday the sky was overcast making it a gloomy day. But fortunately it did not rain until late in the evening so I was able to visit Abids to look at the books spread on the pavement. I managed to find just one title after looking around for a couple of hours. 

 I saw a small and slim copy of ‘A Line in Water’ by Amrita Pritam with a seller. Sometime back I had found copies of her other titles like ‘The Skeleton’, and also ‘Two Faces of Eve’ that I am yet to find the time to read. I hesitated before buying another Amrita Pritam title but since it seemed to have around 140 pages I bought it hoping I could read it in one day whenever I could find a day free to read. 

 

I have not read about ‘A Line in Water’ anywhere so I do not know how good it is. 

The Sunday Haul (on 24-11-2024)

  Last Sunday it was the kind of lovely weather that makes Hyderabad what it is, sunny and bright all through the day. Once again I picked up four books at Abids, two of them huge tomes running into hundreds of pages.

 The first title I found was at Chikkadpally on the way to Abids. I had seen the copy of ‘Journey to Ixtlan’ by Carlos Castaneda the other Sunday but somehow missed buying it. So when I saw it again last Sunday I picked it up and got it for just fifty rupees. 

 

Afterwards I caught a bus to Koti and from there I caught another bus to Abids and reached there half past noon. At a seller I saw two books. The first was a nice copy of a title I had heard about but hadn’t found it until then. It was a copy of ‘Manufacturing Consent’ by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky that I want to read as soon as I can.

 

The other title I found at the same seller was a beautiful and almost new copy of ‘All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945’ by Max Hastings. This book ran into almost seven hundred and fifty pages about World War II, and seemed to be a sort of complete history of the war. I do not know when I will find the time to read it. 

 

The last title was a large hardcover copy of ‘The Book Wars: What it Takes to be Educated in America by James Atlas, and it was the title that grabbed my attention. This too I got for a hundred rupees and this I want to read right away because it looks interesting as the book is about what books school kids should or should not read. 

The Sunday Haul (on 17-11-2024)

 Last Sunday I felt winter has made its appearance in Hyderabad. The sunlight in the morning felt mellow and provided a mild warmth. It felt good to be at Abids looking for titles to pick up. 

 I had read two novels by Malayatoor Ramakrishan earlier and though I found them to be average I couldn’t help picking up another title of his just for the cover. I found a copy of ‘Five Cents of Land’ by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan at one of the sellers near GPO from where I began. 

 

Of late I’ve begun to be taking an abnormal interest in history, especially history of the country and have picked up several titles about what had happened in the past. The time before Indian got independence and its aftermath are traumatic and when I found a hardcover copy of ‘Mountbatten and the Partition of India’ by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre I couldn’t resist buying it after I noticed that the previous owner had pasted newscuttings about Mahatma Gandhi, Edwina Mountbatten from English and Urdu newspapers dating back to the 1980s. He had also underlined some passages, wrote in the margins, and in one of the front pages had written ‘banned in Pakistan’. I wonder who it was as there was no name and only a signature dated 14^th July 1982 at New Delhi. I would have loved to know him.  

 

Just before leaving I walked across the road near the GPO where an old seller had a few books, a place where I earlier had found some good titles. Last Sunday I found two good titles, the first of which was a nice copy of ‘Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine’ by Tom Wolfe.

 

The second title was even more interesting. It was a copy of ‘Confessions of a Story-teller’ by Paul Gallico, and the subtitle says ‘unlocks the secrets of a writer’s mind. It is a book about the story behind the twenty stories in the book, and how he got the ideas for the stories, and also what compelled him to write them down.  

The Sunday Haul (on 10-11-2024)

No matter that I’ve been going to Abids almost every Sunday to look for books at the Sunday book market for around thirty years I feel the same excitement every Sunday before I setting out to go there. It is something I cannot express properly, the feeling of anticipation about what you might find in the thousands of books arranged on the pavements of Abids. The weekly visit to Abids is the only bright spot in my otherwise boring life. 

 

Last Sunday too I set out with the same feeling of anticipation I feel every Sunday. At Chikkadpally, my first stop before Abids, I saw a nice copy of Roget’s Thesaurus with a black cover unlike the red one I usually see, but somehow skipped buying it after the seller asked for two hundred and fifty rupees. My next stop was at Abids. 

 

The first title I picked up was a copy of ‘Voices from the Grassroots’ by Dr.R. Balasubramaniam that seemed very interesting as it said on the blurb at the back that it is about the stories of struggle, hope etc from the lives of common people. I got it for fifty rupees only. 

 

Sometime back I had found a book/magazine called ‘Madras Mag’ that contained essays by people living in Chennai (earlier called as Madras) about the various aspects of the city. Last Sunday I found a similar book but this was about Bengaluru (then known as Bangalore) titled ‘Multiple City: Writings on Bangalore’ edited by Aditi De. It was a Penguin title that was enough reason to buy it but since I also love Bengaluru (and plan to visit next month to attend the Bengaluru Lit Fest) I picked it up, and this book too I got for fifty rupees only. 

 

I saw an original copy of ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’ by Matt Haig in a heap of Rs.100 books with a seller. I bought it since I’ve not come across an original copy though I see plenty of pirated copies here at Abids. 

 

The surprise of last Sunday was finding a good copy of ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’ that I picked up from another heap of Rs.50 books. 

The Sunday Haul ( 03-11-2024)

 

Winter doesn’t seem to have set in Hyderabad though it is now officially the winter season. It was bright and sunny on Sunday as I stepped out of home for the hunt for good titles in the second-hand books market at Abids, and also at Chikkadpally. 

 

As usual I started off by visiting the three booksellers at Chikkadpally. I had seen a title on Buddhism by Gail Omvedt the Sunday before that seemed to have disappeared. I couldn’t find it last Sunday too but instead found an old copy of ‘Short Stories’ by Lev Tolstoy that I got for hundred rupees. There are six stories in it and these are: Two Hussars; Yardstick; A Happy Married Life; The Death of Ivan Ilyich; The Kreutzer Sonata; and After the Ball. 

 

I got into another bus to Koti from where I took another bus to GPO, Abids. With a seller near Hotel Grand I spotted a copy of ‘The Flamingo’s Smile’ by Stephen Jay Gould, a thick Penguin title. I had read about Gould but never read anything by him so I bought this book though I was a bit hesitant to buy the bulky volume of essays. At the same time I did not want to let go of it so I bought it for a hundred and fifty rupees. It has thirty essays on various subjects. 

 

I met my friend Daniel,  and we talked about books etc over a cup of chai in the Star of India café. Later while looking at books in a lane I found a copy of ‘The Getaway’ by Jim Thompson, a beautiful and almost brand new copy. Though I felt that I have a copy of the same title and have also read it I did not want to miss buying it for I was getting it for only fifty rupees. 

The Sunday Haul (on 27-10-2024)

Las week it was Diwali week as preparations for the major festival have begun. The ads in the newspapers and television are screaming discounts to lure buyers. The shoppers have already begun crowding the stores as I noticed at Chikkadpally on the way to Abids. A nice book I had seen the previous Sunday and thought of buying wasn’t there and I was disappointed for not buying it the moment I saw it. I then left for Abids. 

 

At Abids, all  the shops were open, and the first of the shoppers were arriving as I went around the streets. Some sellers had to shift from their original places but they were around somewhere. More or less all the sellers were present with their books laid out on the pavements. 

 

I began from the sellers in front of the GPO. The first title I found was a nice copy of 

‘Loving’ by Henry Green. Strangely enough, sometime back I had found a copy of ‘Loving, Living; Party Going’ by Henry Green that did not seem to hold my interest when I read a few pages of the first part. So I gave it away and later regretted parting with the book. I did not want to miss this copy of ‘Loving’ by Henry Green so I bought it and got it for a hundred rupees. 

 

With another seller right next I spotted a copy of ‘Testaments Betrayed’ by Milan Kundera, and it said ‘an essay in nine parts’ which made me buy it because I love reading essays though these do not appear to be the kind of essays I like. Anyway, this too I got for a hundred rupees which seems not much to pay for this kind of book. 

 

A long time back, maybe three decades or so I had read the name Eric Sevareid somewhere that I don’t remember now. But the name remained in my memory and so when I saw a copy of ‘Not so Wild a Dream’ by Eric Sevareid I picked it up to see what it was. I hesitated before buying it because it was too long, about 516 pages but then it was in a heap of books being sole for just fifty rupees. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I picked it up rather than regret later for not picking up though it appeared like no one would buy it. 

 

This is one book that I had been waiting to read since long but the copies I saw in bookstores were all hardcover ones so when I found this paperback copy of ‘Em and the Big HOOM’ by Jerry Pinto I picked it up. This I got for eighty rupees only.