FOUR MORE BOOKS THIS SUNDAY AT ABIDS

If the previous Sunday (14th) was Ramzan then it was the final day of the ten day long Dussehra festival this Sunday (21st). Compared to last Sunday there were more second hand book sellers and I found four good books in my two hour hunt. The first book I found was an incredible coincidence.

'DANUBE' BY CLAUDIO MAGRIS

Two weeks ago I had found the Mont Blanc catalog- Feelings 100 Years of Mont Blanc- in which I read about an Italian author, Claudio Magris who wrote a small article in it on cafes in Trieste. There was a picture of him seated in a café scribbling in his notebook. Today when I started my rounds from the booksellers near Grammar School I found a book by an author whose name looked familiar. It was the last book in a pile that was waist-high. The guy took it out and the book was ‘Danube’ by Claudio Magris! The book was described as ‘ A Journey through the Landscape, History and Culture of Central Europe’ and was translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh. I like to travel and this book was a travelogue. I paid the fifty rupees the guy asked and the book was mine, all four hundred pages of it.

Eudora Welty's 'The Optimist's Daughter'

The second book I found was Eudora Welty’s ‘The Optimist’s Daughter’ which I got from a heap of books selling for twenty rupees in the Bommana Lane. I picked up the book because it said on the back that Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel. I also have Eudora Welty’s ‘One Writer’s Beginnings’. Last year I had found three copies of this book and I gave away two copies to friends.

Riding the Iron Rooster

The third book I found was yet another copy of ‘Riding the Iron Rooster’ by Paul Theroux. I had found three copies of this book in Abids earlier but I had paid more than the ten rupees I got today’s copy for. It was incredible finding such a good book for only ten rupees. At the same time it also makes me sad that books are becoming too cheap. I picked up this copy to send it to a friend in Kolkata.

Classic Westerns by Peter Haining

The fourth and the last book I found this Sunday was a collection of Westerns called ‘Classic Westerns’ which has twelve stories set in the Wild West. The first story in the book is a story by one of my favorite authors- Elmore Leonard’. The story is ‘Three Ten to Yuma’. The other stories are:

'Hopalong Cassidy' by Clarence E Mulford
'The Cisco Kid' by O Henry
'Stagecoach' by Ernest Haycox
'Destry Rides Again' by Max Brand
'Western Union' by Zane Grey
'The Virginian' by Owen Wister
'Shane' by Jack Shaefer
'Hondo' by Louis L Amour
'A Man Called Horse' by Dorothy M. Johnson
'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry

The book has an introduction by Peter Haining and I got it for only twenty rupees. Needless to say I read ‘Three Ten to Yuma’ first thing after I got back home.