The Sunday Haul & Literary Review

All of last week I was up to my ears in books crawling through four bookstores looking at books, books and more books. Sunday morning too brought with it more of books. This Sunday was something I was eagerly waiting for. It is the first Sunday of the month and Literary Review comes with The Hindu on this day. I was surprised when I opened the paper. The LR has become colorful! However it wasn’t something to be happy about for the number of pages still remain only four. I wouldn’t have minded having two more pages even if they were in black and white. Actually I think these kinds of supplements of serious (?) stuff should be in black and white only.

Apart from the color pages there was nothing interesting in the LR. Expectedly, there was a full length feature on Kamla Das. All the papers are full of Kamla Das. I had expected to see reviews of some good books but I was disappointed. An article by Karthika Nair on reading poetry and its effects was one I liked very much. There was a review of Meghnad Desai's new fiction work by Ziya Us Salam who wrote it was a good book worth reading. But I had read a hilarious review of the same book by CP Surendran in the new magazine 'Open', who said something totally opposite. It was a funny review, one that I liked a lot.

At Abids too there was a lot of disappointment. I did not find anything worth picking up. I was not yet ready to pick up Marcel Moring’s ‘In Babylon’ that beckoned temptingly. I might pick it up later. I picked up only one book- ‘Selected Essays’ by D.H. Lawrence for forty rupees. It had more than thirty essays on a variety of topics ranging from books to Tuscany. There was one titled ‘Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine’ which was one reason why I bought the book.

Luckily for me it did not rain in the morning when I was at Abids but in the evening there were sharp showers. In the monsoons it will be difficult to go to Abids every Sunday. When it rains not many of the sellers turn up. I too don’t like to go when it rains. I cannot bear to watch the books get wet.