The Sunday Haul

The smart thing to do when one spots a good book or magazine at Abids is to pick it up the moment one sees it. But that wasn’t what I did last Sunday when I saw a few copies of ‘New Yorker’ magazine one of which had a lengthy article on Jack Kerouac’s ‘The Road.’ When I turned up at Abids this Sunday I found them gone filling me with a twinge of regret. I commit this mistake often, not bothering to pick up such books, but when I spotted two issues (Feb and March 2009) issues of Condé Nast Traveler magazine I did not hesitate. I picked them up for fifty bucks for the two issues. It had been quite a long time since I had found this magazine so I was happy.

Back at home, after lunch I was leafing through one of the issues when I chanced upon an article by Nicholas Shakespeare on the Polynesian Islands. It was then that I decided on the spot that this would be the place I would go on a vacation with my family soon after I got the million dollar advance for my book. Ha ha. If the pictures of the place were so beautiful I wondered how the place would look when one actually went there. There was also an article on an equally picturesque destination- Madagascar. Both these articles reminded me of my time in the Andamans. It was exactly three years ago I was there. I still cannot forget those beaches and the lonely times I spent in them. Maybe I'll go to Andamans first after I get the advance.

I had also seen another book titled ‘In Babylon’ by Marcel Moring. It seemed a good book from the looks of it and was published by Morrow? It was quite bulky and I hesitated to buy it. One reason was that the guy did not bargain much and I was not ready to pay anything more than fifty bucks. So I did not take it. But when I Googled the book I found that it is quite a good so if I find it next Sunday I might pick it up.