The Sunday Haul

Three Good Books

One of the earliest poets and the one who impressed me the most was the poet Sylvia Plath. I don’t remember any of her poems since I read them long, long back and also haven’t read any recently. But she is such a good poet that I would read anything she wrote. So when I came upon ‘The Bell Jar’, the only novel she wrote, I did not hesitate to buy it. I had read about it somewhere but wasn’t exactly looking for it but when I found it at Abids I was happy. It was a brand new copy and I got it for only twenty rupees. I plan to read it sometime soon.

The other book I picked up at Abids was one I had seen the previous Sunday but did not buy. It was AK Ramanujan’s ‘A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India’ which is a delightful collection of folk tales. AK Ramanujan is another writer I had read long time back. A bonus of buying the book is the number of stories in it.

The final book was, again, a memoir by a famous writer. It was Pete Hamill’s ‘The Drinking Life’ that I got for only twenty rupees. It is about the Hamill’s drinking habit and his attempts to get rid of it. Curiously enough, I haven’t read a single book by Pete Hamill. I guess I will begin to look for his books if ‘The Drinking Life’ is any good, which it should be, going by the title!