This Sunday's Haul of Books

After the long festival season, this Sunday all the book sellers were back at Abids. However, the lane housing the Hollywood shoe shop and Meena Bazar extension continue to be off limits for the booksellers. This was the nerve center of the book bazaar with the three biggest booksellers having their spots in the lane. Without any booksellers in this lane, the Abids book bazaar doesn’t appear the same. I hope the shopkeepers would see reason and allow the booksellers to set up shop in the lane.

This Sunday too I found a couple of good books. The first find of the day was a hardcover copy of Elmore Leonard’s ‘Maximum Bob’ which I picked up from a heap of books selling for only twenty rupees each. It was a good find because the book was a hardcover copy with the jacket intact and it was also in good condition. I remember seeing this copy earlier but it was highly priced, hundred fifty bucks or so, a few months back. Sooner or later many of the books the booksellers sell them off at ridiculously low rates. I have another copy with me that I had picked up for fifty bucks or so sometime back. I picked up this second copy to give away.

The second find of the day was Pete Dexter’s ‘God’s Pocket’ which I got for the shocking rate of only five rupees. It was really a shame that such good books have no takers. I had picked up his other book ‘Paris Trout’ and incidentally Elmore Leonard in an interview I read in the ‘Writer’s Handbook 2002’ mentions that he liked Pete Dexter’s writing. I haven’t yet started “Paris Trout’ but I hope to finish it this year.

Another book I found was Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Not After Midnight’. Again this was a hardcover copy and it was a discard from the British Library. It wasn’t in such a good condition but since a friend asked to look for it I picked it up for seventy rupees which I felt was too high a price.

This week I found a book on writing. I am sucker for books on writing and buy up any book on writing with the expectation that I would find something that would help me write well. The book I found this Sunday was a sort of writing textbook aimed at college students. The title was ‘Writing Voyage’ by Thomas E Tyner. It seemed good and I picked up after I leafed through the pages and found an essay on writing by Anne Tyler in it. I bought it for fifty rupees. It was in good condition and was in the size that textbooks come in.

The last find was another Conde Nast Traveler magazine. This was an issue of March 2005. It was in pretty good condition and I got it for twenty rupees only. This seemed another addition to the growing collection of Conde Nast Traveler magazines that I was picking up regularly at Abids.