The Sunday Haul

One magazine that I look forward to find at Abids and one that I cannot resist buying is the Conde Nast Traveller. Once again, after a long gap, last Sunday I found the latest i.e., August 2010 issue of Conde Nast Traveller at Abids. I got it for twenty five rupees only and it also happened to be only haul of Sunday. I wasn’t very disappointed that I did not find any other book because the magazine was enough to get me through the week.

There are a couple of places I’d like to visit before I become too old to travel. One of them is Tuscany. The issue of Conde Nast that I found at Abids has a lengthy article on good hotels in Tuscany. There was another interesting article on Masai Marai in Kenya with some stunning photographs. Of course, India was featured and guess what was the article about? Monkeys in Delhi! Apart from very well written pieces on exotic places the magazine also carries small box items about books in a regular feature called ‘Shelf Improvement. One of the books mentioned in this issue’s ‘Shelf Improvement’ was Anjali Joseph’s ‘Saraswati Park’ of which I had read somewhere very recently. The book got a good review and if I come across it anywhere I am definitely going to buy it even if it costs me a bomb.

Landmark and also Crossword stores are advertising sale of books on discount. Last week I happened to go to the Landmark store at Punjagutta. There were hundreds of books on sale at various discounts. Most title of the recent crop of Indian writers were selling at huge discounts and some titles were for sale at fifty bucks only. I did not have the time to go through all the heaps of books kept on tables all over the store. Landmark was overcrowded with people picking up everything on sale. I felt glad seeing the crowd that never seems it worth to visit Abids. Anyway, I had thought only the books were on discount so it came as a pleasant surprise that almost everything in the store was included in the sale. I had picked up a rather nice looking handmade notebook with a strip of gold on the hard cardboard cover. I got it for less than hundred bucks and now I regret not having bought a couple more of them. Next week I hope to drop in at the sale at Crossword and see what they’ve got.