The Sunday Haul

Though the saying ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ doesn’t apply when it comes to books, I always regret not buying books that I come across at Abids on Sundays. The feeling of regret lasts a week until I pick it up the next Sunday and if I don’t find it then the feeling lasts forever. This Sunday at Abids however, I picked up a nice movie magazine that I had not earlier come across but it isn’t doing anything to stem the feeling of remorse of not having bought the book I had seen. The book I missed picking up was Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Lectures on Literature.’ I did not buy the book because it was in too bad a condition with water stains on all pages and a bent shape. I did not feel it was worth it but now I wish I had because it was really a treasure. The only thing I can do is hope it will be still on the pavements until next Sunday. But I will be away at work on Sunday so I have to make some arrangements for someone to buy it on my behalf that is if they can manage to find it.

Even as I was planning to watch Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Inglourious Basterds’ some day soon I stumbled across a film magazine that had a lot of stuff on the movie. ‘Empire’ magazine was yet another new find for me at Abids. It was the August 2009 issue, a fairly recent one that I got for only twenty bucks. The issue is some kind of a special issue listing out 1001 Greatest Movie Moments. It would take me decades to go through all those moments because I am not such a big movie fan. One can imagine how keen a movie buff I am if I let it be known that I watched ‘Pulp Fiction’ just a few months ago. Not that I don’t like movies but I find the whole process of getting to the movie theatre, standing in line for the tickets and watching the movie, a boring thing. Hence, it is only once or twice a year that I go to the movies. Anyway, now that I have a list of the good movies I might watch more of them in the future.

It seems there’s actually a movie titled ‘The Inglorious Bastards’ made in 1978 and is the inspiration for Tarantino. He even had the director of the original Italian movie, Enzo Castellari, in a cameo in the movie. This and a million other bits about other movies made and in the making fill Empire magazine. I might never find another issue again at Abids. This was a ‘one in a billion’ find! But there’s enough in it about TIB to make me go and watch it right away and again and again.