The Book Fair Haul

The Haul at the Book Fair

There’s one book I never fail to pick up whenever I spot it. There are multiple copies of this book with me and some of them I have given away to friends. It is a book that sort of helped me begin writing my book about which I had been thinking for quite sometime. The book is ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. All the copies of this book I had picked up till the other day were paperbacks but at the 23rd Book Fair last Saturday I found a hardcover copy at a second hand book stall. I was quite thrilled to find it and I got the almost new copy for only a hundred rupees. In fact all the three books I bought at the Book Fair, all of them second hand, I got for hundred rupees.

The other book I found was one I had missed buying a long time back at the second hand bookstore in Lakdi-ka-pul. I had seen it once and had thought no one would pick it up and did not bother to buy it myself. When I went there again a month later the book was gone. It was Bennett Cerf’s ‘At Random’, his reminiscences of the publishing world, of famous writers like Truman Capote, Moss Hart, Ayn Rand, William Styron and others. It is a first edition and I am thrilled to have found it at last. While flipping through the books I noticed Cerf had mentioned a writer and his book that I have- Moss Hart’s ‘Act One’ that I found at Abids sometime last year.

The first book I had found at the Book Fair was one by one of my favorite writers- Elmore Leonard. I spotted his ‘The Hot Kid’, a book that I had not read or known about because it was published in 2005. This book too was a hard cover edition and was almost brand new. I was pleased to find one of Elmore Leonard’s latest books and am now eager to begin reading it. I have almost all of his books except a few that I hope to find sooner or later.

The surprising coincidence about the above three books is that they were all first editions and that makes them special. I don’t usually collect first editions but when I find them I do pick them up. I had been only once to the Book Fair this year and I might go once again before it is over. The reason why I am not going again is that I’d be tempted to pick up more books than I can afford or store.