Friday, March 15, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 10-03-2024)

 The previous Sunday in fact I had not picked up a title that I already have two copies of but later after I got home I realized that I should have bought it if only to give it to someone. It was a copy of ‘The Art of Dramatic Writing’ by Lajos Egri which is one of the best books on writing that I’ve read, and I am not saying it lightly because I have read nearly two hundred books on writing. Last Sunday I was relieved to find the copy and picked it up and the seller told me to give him whatever I thought the book was worth. So I gave him a hundred rupees.

The next find was also a title that I have numerous copies of and which I like to give to people who tell me they love books. It was a copy of ‘84 Charing Cross Road’ by Helene Hanff with an entirely different cover from the ones I have. I got this lovely book for eighty rupees only.

 


Ayn Rand is one writer I struggled to read. Somehow I couldn’t finish any of her books that I read. But this title by Ayn Rand that I found last Sunday at Abids I intend to read. It was a nice copy of ‘The Art of Nonfiction’ by Ayn Rand that I spotted with a seller. He also told me to pay him whatever I thought fit so I paid him hundred rupees for it.

 


This title too I had spotted last Sunday but this was at Chikkadpally, and since I had bought five books already I told the seller to keep it aside for me. It was a copy of ‘Jurgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere’ by Robert C. Holub that I got for hundred rupees. I had read about Habermas only recently and finding this title was a pleasant coincidence.

 


A little more than two years ago I found a copy of ‘The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East’ by Robert Fisk that I realized was a wonderful book by a great journalist. However, I haven’t yet read since I kept it aside to read along with a few other books on the Middle East. Last Sunday at a seller in Chikkadpally just before I picked up the Habermas book I spotted another Robert Fisk title. It was a nice copy of ‘The Age of the Warrior- Selected Writings’ by Robert Fisk that I immediately grabbed. 

Friday, March 08, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 03-03-2024)

 Missing three Sundays of browsing at the second hand book market of Abids made me so desperate to be back in Hyderabad that I couldn’t wait for it to be Sunday since the day I returned from Ooty last Tuesday. After four agonizing days it was finally Sunday and I rushed off after breakfast. Returning from a much cooler Ooty I felt it was uncomfortably hot on Sunday morning at Abids. However, it did not really bother me because I was fixed on the titles displayed on the pavements.


 

The first title that caught my eye was a hardcover copy of ‘A Saga of South Kamrup’ by Indira Goswami that had a tattered and torn cover that did not prevent me from buying it. It was a novel and I was glad I found this title by an acclaimed writer. A long time back I had found a collection of short stories by Indira Goswami that, I regret to say, I haven’t yet found the time to read.


In a heap of books selling for only fifty rupees I spotted a new title by an author I haven’t read about before and who I read on the back cover was an acclaimed South African writer with many other artistic talents. It was a copy of ‘The Textures of Silence’ by Gordon Vorster that I picked up. 


Next find was a title I read about in a book my son picked up a couple of weeks ago when he came along with me to Abids. I read about ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ by Daniel Gilbert in ‘Tools of Titans’ by Tim Ferris, and luckily I recollected having read about it when I actually spotted it at Abids last Sunday. 

 

When I found a copy of ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk at Abids a couple of months ago I felt ecstatic about finding a title everyone seemed to praise to the skies. Incidentally it was a Fitzcarraldo edition that I found. However, last Sunday at Chikkadpally where I stopped to take a look at the books with a seller, I spotted another copy of ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk with a different cover and published by Riverhead Books. Though I already had this title I picked up this copy too. 

 


The last find was with the same seller. I managed to spot this title at the last minute just when I decided to leave. It was a copy of ‘Up & Down & Around; A Publisher Recollects the Time of His Life’ by Cass Canfield. I had never heard of the name Cass Canfield, and since my interest extend to reading memoirs of editors and publishers too I felt it would be an interesting read so I picked it up. 



Friday, March 01, 2024

The Ooty Haul

The past two weeks I was at Ooty on work and therefore could not go to Abids. I missed Abids very badly and it was pure agony for the two Sundays I was at Ooty. This is my eleventh and last visit to Ooty about which I will write in another post. Since I would be at Ooty for two long weeks I took along three books to read one of which was ‘The Snow Leopard’ by Peter Matthiessen that I am reading for the fourth or fifth time since I last bought it almost two decades ago. 

 


Though I had three books to read I was longing for something else to read and it so happened that I came across a Tweet about ‘The Cooking of Books’ by Ramachandra Guha that I had earlier planned to buy sometime in the future. Somehow I felt a desperate need to read it and I was disappointed not to find it at the Higgin Bothams store in Ooty, and they told me that it would take a week for them to get it if I want it. Not wanting to wait so long I placed an order for it on Amazon and five days later I got it. However I did not read it right away since I planned to read it on the twenty hour long train journey from Coimbatore to Hyderabad.

 

As planned I finished reading it by the time the train reached Hyderabad. I got to know more about Rukun Advani than Ramachandra Guha after I read it. I will read it once again after sometime and want to do a slow read. 

Friday, February 09, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 04-02-2024)

 

It’s just beginning to get a bit warm during the day in Hyderabad which means summer is just around the corner. It wasn’t hot enough to need a cap but next Sunday I might need it when I am at Abids. Last Sunday though it was sunny it wasn’t hot and I got around and found these four books. 



Of late I am tilting towards non-fiction titles especially journalistic accounts of places where there is conflict like the Middle East. One such title I came across at Abids last Sunday was one that I picked up immediately. It was a nice copy of ‘My House in Damascus; An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution’ by Diana Darke.

 

I am travelling by later this month and thought I’d read some crime fiction during the long journey. I was unable to decide which title to take out of the many I had on my shelf and so when I spotted a copy of ‘The Quiller Memorandum’ by Adam Hall that was also made into a movie as mentioned on the cover I decided it would be this book I would take with me to read. I got this title for just twenty rupees. 

 

The other Sunday I had found a wonderful title at Abids- ‘A Writer at War’ by Vassily Grosman that was about the fighting in Russia in the Second World War that I am yet to read. Last Sunday at Abids I found another title set in Russia- ‘Ten Days that Shook the World’ by John Reed that was about the Russian Revolution that I found at Chikkadpally. 

 


At Chikkadpally again with the same seller I found a copy of ‘Secrets’ by Nuruddin Farah about whom I had read about somewhere recently. It was a Penguin title so I picked it up without much hesitation. This was also the first title by a Somalian writer that I found. 

Friday, February 02, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 28-01-2024)

 After getting the news that the Hyderabad National Book Fair will be from February 9-19, 2024 I thought I would not buy books at Abids and instead pick up books at the Book fair that is just ten days away. However once I reached Abids last Sunday I couldn’t help picking up four titles, all good ones. 


The first title I picked up was an old copy of ‘Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People’ by Fritjof Capra that I got for a hundred rupees. I don’t know if and when I will read it but I felt I had to buy it. I am going to Ooty again on a two-week trip and thinking of taking this book along to read. 



Another find was a hardcover copy of ‘An Unfinished Journey’ by Shiva Naipaul, a collection of six essays. Inside I saw the stamp of ‘Institute of Defence Management- MESS Library’ and wondered who decided to discard it. One of the six essays in it titled ‘My Brother and I’ is about his famous brother V.S. Naipaul. He writes of the absence of his brother in his life, and also about his own development as a writer.  I remember buying a copy of his novel 'Fireflies' long back but I do not remember if I had read it!


 

A year ago perhaps I had found a wonderful copy of ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis that I had read about in several places. I thought I was lucky to find it, and had also read it and found it to be a wonderful book. Last Sunday I came across another copy of the same title but with a different cover that at first I did not want to pick up since I already had a copy. But I couldn’t leave it behind and so picked it up.

 


When I want to know more about something current or something I am intrigued by I always try to learn the basic facts from sources that put it across in a simple way. Ever since the flare up of the conflict in Palestine I wanted to know the background facts. I found a copy of  ‘The Arab-Israeli Issue’ by Paul Harper, a hardcover title not more than eighty pages in which I learnt about how it all began. It was a discarded copy from the Seattle Public Library that I got for fifty rupees. 

Friday, January 26, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 21-01-2024)

 It wasn’t a normal Sunday as I sort of reversed my usual Sunday routine. Instead of going to Abids in the morning I went instead in the afternoon as I had to go somewhere in the morning. Going to Abids in the mornings felt a bit odd but apart from the time everything else was the same. Of course, the afternoon crowd is a bit different from the morning crowd at Abids which in my opinion, is made of the serious book types like yours truly. It is so because all week along we are impatient to come to Abids and grab as many good titles as one can find well before anyone else grabs them. 


Anyway, coming in the afternoon in no way changed my luck at finding good titles because I spotted a nice copy of ‘A Writer at War- with the Red Army 1941-45’ by Vasily Grossman. I Though I haven’t read much about Vasily Grossman the name stuck in mind and when I spotted this title I picked it up. I got it for a hundred and fifty rupees.  



 

Though I am not riding a two-wheeler after my accident in October which would have made it easier for me to stop at Chikkadpally after visiting Abids first, I am getting down at the Chikkadpally bus stop to check the titles that the three sellers there display on the pavement. At one of the sellers I spotted a copy of ‘Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain’ by Maryanne Wolf that I thought would be interesting to read. I got it for a hundred rupees. 

Friday, January 19, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 14-01-2023)

 

It was festival time last week due to Sankranti, and due to which we (in the government) had a three-day holiday spell that included Sunday last. So it was in a rather relaxed mood that I went to Abids to dig out good titles from the pavements. 


The first title I found was a new looking copy of ‘Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations’ by Ronen Bergman that was thicker than a brick. I only know that Israel has a policy of assassinating people who it considers as its enemies and the assassinations after the Munich Olympics were on my mind when I picked it up to know more about how it happens. I got this title for two hundred rupees though I could have bargained for a lesser figure but it being the festival I did not bargain and paid the money and took the book. 


Sometime last year I had managed to successfully claim a copy of ‘The Blue Nile’ by Alan Moorehead in a sale on WA by a second-hand bookseller. I bought it because I had a copy of ‘The White Nile’ and so I wanted to read ‘The Blue Nile’ also along with it. However, I couldn’t read them both and in the meanwhile I came across another copy of ‘The Blue Nile’ by Alan Moorehead at Abids. This was a different edition as it was illustrated as well as bigger in size than the copy that I had. It looked quite attractive though there was a tear in the front cover at the bottom. I got it for a hundred and fifty rupees. 

Friday, January 12, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 07 January, 2024)

  

On most Sundays I get lucky finding good titles in the Sunday book market at Abids. But on some Sundays I get very lucky and finding some wonderful titles there. Last Sunday was one such day when I found a wonderful title though it was at Chikkadpally and not at Abids. 


 

I spotted a copy of ‘Only Man is Vile’ by William McGowan and picked it up to take a closer look. It looked almost new and was a hardcover copy and I had a feeling that I had come across the title somewhere earlier. I couldn’t recollect where I had read about it and so decided to buy it and got it for two hundred rupees. It is about the situation in Sri Lanka written by a journalist.



 

I left Abids soon after finding this title and got into a bus upto Koti and from there I got into another bus and got down at Chikkadpally after some hesitation since I wanted to go home and have lunch as I was feeling quite hungry. However, I decided to check out the two booksellers and got lucky since I spotted a brand-new looking copy of ‘The Border Trilogy’ by Cormac McCarthy. A couple of weeks ago I had found a copy of ‘Suttree’ with the same seller and coincidentally it was at the same place that I found ‘The Border Trilogy’ that I got for just a hundred and fifty rupees. 


 

Hyderabad Book Fair dates

At last someone tweeted the dates of the Hyderabad National Book Fair. It is from 9-19 February, 2024. I am not very glad because I would be travelling from 12th Feb and would be able to go to the Book Fair for only two days!  

Friday, January 05, 2024

The Sunday Haul (on 31-12-2023)

 In a coincidence last Sunday happened to be the last day of 2023 and also the last Sunday of the year. Somehow this year I haven’t kept count of the number of books I’ve bought at Abids as well as online but the figure could be somewhere around 200 which is quite high. As I set out for Abids last Sunday I wondered how many titles I would find that I really want to buy. I ended up buying three good titles.


The first find was ‘The Road to San Giovanni’ by Italo Calvino that I remember having bought earlier. But since the copy I saw last Sunday appeared to be reasonably good I bought it. It has five autobiographical essays that I am raring to read as soon as I finish the books I am reading currently.

The next find was a book I felt everyone in the country should read. It was a copy of ‘What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures’ that has twenty four essays in English and a few in Hindi by various JNU faculty about nationalism and other issues.

It was the last find that got me pretty excited after I picked it up and read the blurbs on the cover. When I first spotted the book the title intrigued me and I had that feeling that it could be a good book. I told myself even before I actually picked it up that I should buy it. However I did not pick it up right away but came back and read the blurbs. On the cover the blurb by Frances Wilson of Sunday Times said ‘You have in your hands a masterpiece’



It was a copy of ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance’ by Edmund de Waal that had me quite excited as I flipped through the pages and read the blurbs on the back cover. Apart from praise by others it was the praise by Diana Athill - ‘A complex and beautiful book’ that convinced me that my hunch that it was a good book was correct.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

The Sunday Haul (on 24-12-2023)

 


 

A bit late writing about last Sunday’s haul because I wanted to post it on the last day of the year 2023. I love humor and when I found a beautiful collection of humor writing I did not think twice before buying it. I saw a copy of ‘Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker’ edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder with a seller outside the GPO at Abids and bought it for just a hundred and fifty rupees only. It has more than a hundred and fifty pieces by writers like Woody Allen, James Thurber, E.B. White, Garrison Keillor, Steve Martin, Peter De Vries, and there’s even one by Susan Sontag!

 

I have copies of ‘The Blue Nile’ and ‘The White Nile’ both written by Alan Moorehead but I am yet to find the time to read them. When I saw a copy of ‘No Room in the Ark’ by Alan Moorehead, a slim volume I was curious to know what it was. I got it for only thirty rupees.