The Sunday Haul of Books at Abids

This Sunday too I struck gold on the pavements of Abids. I picked up four books and three of these seemed to have a common thread running through them. It was an odd coincidence finding these books.

IAN FLEMING'S NON-FICTION BOOK

The first book I found was Ian Fleming’s ‘Thrilling Cities’ which I got for twenty rupees only. It was a surprising find since I was of the impression that Ian Fleming wrote nothing but the James Bond books. It always gives me a thrill to discover that a favorite author has written a few interesting non-fiction books as well. Coming back to ‘Thrilling Cities’, the book is a collection of essays that Ian Fleming wrote about fourteen cities that he traveled to. These essays were published in 1959-60 in a Sunday newspaper. The cities he visited include Hong Kong, Macau and Los Angeles.

ANOTHER TRAVEL BOOK

The second book I found was also a sort of travel book- ‘Into the Badlands, Travels through Urban America’ by John Williams. It is about the writer’s visits to several cities that figure in the thrillers of famous writers like Tony Hillerman, James Ellroy, Sara Paretsky and Elmore Leonard. I got the book for just ten rupees.

ELMORE LEONARD'S BANDITS

The next find in a heap of books being sold for twenty bucks near Dayal’s was Elmore Leonard’s ‘Bandits’. I had just then picked up John William’s book and finding ‘Bandits’ written by Elmore Leonard, one of the writers he spoke to, was a nice coincidence. The copy of ‘Bandits’ I found was a hardcover edition and was in good condition. I already have a copy but I picked up this copy as well; maybe I will gift it to someone who is an Elmore Leonard fan like me.

The last find of the day was the Spitting Image edition of R L Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’ published by faber and faber. It was of a big size, like a magazine and had superb color illustrations on high quality glossy paper and the exciting thing about this find was that I got this 160 page book for only twenty rupees.

It was another good Sunday at Abids for me.