One often picks up a good book from the cover. The few times I picked up books whose covers seemed to exert some kind of a pull, they turned out to be quite good books. I picked up such a book last week. Sometime last year I had noticed a book at Abids that no one seemed to be interested in buying. I saw it on the rack with the book seller for almost two months waiting for someone to pick it up. Finally I gave in and purchased the book myself. It was Robert McCrum’s ‘My Year Off’. I had no idea who Robert McCrum was until I read on the back cover flap that he was the literary editor of “Observer’, and author of nearly half a dozen books. It was a paperback copy and I got it for less than fifty rupees. ‘My Year Off’ is an account of McCrum’s recovery from a stroke that left him half paralysed and out of a job.
A few weeks after I bought the book, I read it. McCrum describes his stroke, the devastation it caused in his life (he had been married only two months before the stroke) and how he recovered from it. It is a very honest and searing account of a person’s suffering from a condition that even doctors are unaware of its exact causes. I found the book very engrossing and remember reading it non-stop. Later I read somewhere that McCrum had brought out a book on PG Wodehouse. This Saturday I came across ‘My Year Off’ book again at a second hand bookstore in Secunderabad. But it was a hardcover First Edition I found and bought it for only fifty bucks. So, that was the first of the week’s haul.
Yesterday I happened to wander into another bookstore near my office.
Since I hadn’t been to Abids on Sunday I felt restless and hence the decision to go to the second hand bookstore. I came across Haruki Murakami’s ‘Hardboiled Wonderland End of the World.’ I had read his ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ and was blown away by his style. Since it was a store, the guys charge more than they do on the pavements on Sundays. It was a book I did not want to miss so I reluctantly paid the money and walked out, happy though lighter in the wallet by a hundred rupees.
A few weeks after I bought the book, I read it. McCrum describes his stroke, the devastation it caused in his life (he had been married only two months before the stroke) and how he recovered from it. It is a very honest and searing account of a person’s suffering from a condition that even doctors are unaware of its exact causes. I found the book very engrossing and remember reading it non-stop. Later I read somewhere that McCrum had brought out a book on PG Wodehouse. This Saturday I came across ‘My Year Off’ book again at a second hand bookstore in Secunderabad. But it was a hardcover First Edition I found and bought it for only fifty bucks. So, that was the first of the week’s haul.
Yesterday I happened to wander into another bookstore near my office.
Since I hadn’t been to Abids on Sunday I felt restless and hence the decision to go to the second hand bookstore. I came across Haruki Murakami’s ‘Hardboiled Wonderland End of the World.’ I had read his ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ and was blown away by his style. Since it was a store, the guys charge more than they do on the pavements on Sundays. It was a book I did not want to miss so I reluctantly paid the money and walked out, happy though lighter in the wallet by a hundred rupees.
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