The Midweek Haul- 'The Groaning Shelf'

This is the sixth daily post of this special week. The next one will appear tomorrow.

There are few things I go to great lengths to obtain. I am capable of anything (short of theft and murder) when it comes to books. There’s no saying how far my love for books will take me. Though I have been meaning to buy Pradeep Sebastian’s ‘The Groaning Shelf’ ever since I’ve read about it, I’ve not been able to buy it till yesterday. Something more pressing (a new mobile phone) made sure I was left with little money to buy a new book. Add to it the delay in getting the pay because of my transfer, my desperation to buy TGS reached a new peak. When I read the review of the book in the latest ‘Literary Review’ in The Hindu I couldn’t hold myself back. So on Thursday I set off to the bookstores to look for and buy ‘The Groaning Shelf.’ It turned out to be quite a long hunt.

Though it was quite late in the evening on Thursday I decided to check out ‘Crossword’ at the City Centre Mall in Banjara Hills first. I was disappointed to be told that the book was out of stock. Undeterred, I next went to the Landmark store in Banjara Hills. I entered the store hoping I’d find the book. But alas, Landmark too had run out of stocks of TGS. I wondered if the other booklovers in Hyderabad had got to the stocks much before me. The thought that they might be reading the book much before me made me determined to check every bookstore in Hyderabad till I found it.

The next stop was the small Oxford Book Store in Banjara Hills again. The sales person asked me to spell out ‘Pradeep’ and also ‘Groaning’ which made me wonder about the caliber of the salesmen in bookstores. The ones at Landmark and Crossword too had asked me to repeat the title like they had never heard the word ‘Groaning’ before. But it was at my fourth and final stop at the Walden Bookstore that I got lucky. The young attendant gave me the happy news that they had TGS in stock. But he was unable to find a copy. I was surprised I too couldn’t spot the book, the keen eyed guy that I thought I was having spotted Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Corrections’ last Sunday at Abids. Anyway, I watched in despair, as the attendant looked all over the store. Finally after checking some invoices in a side room he rushed out and went straight to a rack and took out the book. I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t the one who spotted the book.

TGS is a compact sized hardcover book with a little under three hundred pages filled with some inviting essays on books. If the simple cover was arresting in its own way then the pages themselves held another surprise. The outer edges of the pages were notched which gave the book an interesting appearance. Also, the book was light which belied the weight of the words on its pages. Somehow I get the feeling that the author must have chosen the size and had the last word on the overall appearance of the book. But whatever, TGS is a book everyone who claims to love books must have on their bookshelves.

Only after I reached home after my three-hour, four-bookstore book hunt did I feel happy holding TGS in my hand and leafing through it. The brand new book with the pure white on the cover appeared striking beside the sad looking pile of second hand books taking up half of the dining table at home. For what I paid for TGS (Rs 395) I could have easily bought not less than a dozen secondhand books at Abids. But books on books by bibliophiles are not written so often and also hard to find so I really do not mind the big hole in my wallet.

Sometime in the coming weeks I will attempt a review though the thought makes me nervous. Tomorrow, in the next post, I will write about another interesting discovery I made at Walden.