Haul on the Last Sunday of the Year

Unlike the end of the year posts on this blog where I listed all the books I hauled up during the year, this year, unfortunately I could not remember to do it. One reason could be that I was unable to put together the list of books because I’ve written down each week’s finds in several notebooks that I am now unable to locate. But next week I promise to have the list ready and posted here even if no one wants to know how many books I might have bought during the year. The list might have more than a hundred books. For now, the Sunday’s haul would be enough I expect.

2009 must be the year when I picked up more magazines than books on some Sundays. It is also the year when I got subtle hints from life about my writing, hints I’ve just now begun to understand, hints that I still have a lot to learn about writing. Last Sunday I stumbled upon one such hint in the form of the July-August 2009 issue of ‘creative screenwriting’ magazine. That was the second issue of the same magazine I picked up in as many weeks. It had an article by Supriya Kelkar on how she came to be writing for Vidhu Vinod Chopra. There were two articles on movies by Quentin Tarantino. One was about Tarantino describing how he wrote ‘Inglourious Basterds’ in own style which was quirky to say the least. The other article was about the scenes in ‘Reservoir Dogs’ that never made it to the screen.

Another hint I got, this time about my non-existent photographic skills, was when I found ‘Digital Camera World’ magazine of July 2007. The mag had a lot of stuff about basic photography skills, taking control of one’s SLR and more information than one can take on the variety of digital cameras in the market. It also came with a free CD of 11 Photoshop Lessons. If I had found this magazine a month ago I would have considered it fortuitous but finding it now appears ironic if you recollect that my loyal three-year old digital camera conked out. I hope by the time I’ve finished learning the things in the magazine I’ll save enough to buy a decent camera.

I also wish someone in, say, Sony, Nikon, Olympus reads this post and realize how badly I need a camera right now, and offer me a nice digital camera of the latest model on discount. They needn’t give it to me on 100% discount but 99% would be just enough.

Another magazine I bought was the September 2007 issue of ‘BestLife’ magazine that I sometimes find at Abids. I bought this old issue after I saw on the cover that inside the magazine were ‘265 Simple Shortcuts to Ultimate Happiness’ which was exactly what I needed next to a digital camera on 99% discount. However, after I paid for it, I discovered that there were no such shortcuts inside the magazine. It wasn’t a total disappointment though because the magazine had some rather interesting pictures of someone called Carla Gugino wearing the kind of dresses she must have bought on 100% discount.

However, the find of the week was a book I was unaware of though I was very aware of the author. I have with me Anthony Bourdain’s ‘A Cook’s Tour’ (which I’ve read) and also ‘Kitchen Confidential’ which I haven’t yet read. I liked ‘A Cook’s Tour,’ so finding his ‘The Nasty Bits’ this Sunday was a pleasant surprise since I’ve come to like his style of writing. TNB is a mix of ‘Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones.’If not his dishes, at least I am enjoying Bourdain’s writing.

‘The Nasty Bits’ was the last book I bought in 2009. Of course, as planned I had also been to the 24th Annual Book Fair one last time and picked up Jay McInerney’s ‘Bright Lights, Bright City.’

A Happy New Year to all of you who’ve bothered to read this far. You’d be interested to know that this is the 200th post under the ‘BookJunkie’ label.