In the excitement of posting about my recent finds of Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ and ‘At Home With Books’ at Begumpet’s Frankfurt Bookstore and at the Best Books sale at YMCA I had completely forgotten two more books that I had found at the same time. On the day that I had picked up Didion’s book at Frankfurt Begumpet I had bought two other books that I found.
The first find was my second copy of Stieg Larrson’s ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ which was in a far better condition than the one that I had found at Abids a couple of months ago. The earlier copy was an Maclehose edition and after I bought it I had thought it did not have all the pages in the end. But when I took out the one I found (Black Lizard edition) I realized I was mistaken. My earlier copy too had all the pages right up to the end of the story. It too had an excerpt of Larrson’s second book ‘The Girl Who Played With Fire’ and since the excerpt ends abruptly I took it to be the ending of the original book. But it is quite a lengthy book running to 644 pages and might take me at least a fortnight if not a month to finish it. Judging by the reviews of the book I should have read these two books long back. But then as the saying goes ‘better late than never’ I plan to begin TGWTDT sometime in the first week of February. Of course, I expect to find ‘The Girl Who Played With Fire’ very soon.
The other find at Frankfurt was Zadie Smith’s ‘The Autograph Man’ that I got for the same price that I got Stieg Larrson’s book- hundred rupees. Zadie Smith’s books, especially ‘White Teeth’ were something I was looking forward quite eagerly to read if only I could find second hand copies. ‘The Autograph Man’ is her second book I guess which came after ‘White Teeth’ which is what I want to read first before I read ‘The Autograph Man.’ Of course I am also eager to read her book of essays titled ‘Changing My Mind’ that I read about somewhere recently. I don’t remember where I read it. These two finds were ones I made on a day other than a Sunday.
On Sunday the haul at Abids consisted of two finds and not one of them a book but interesting nonetheless. The first find was the June 2007 issue of ‘Literary Review’ that I got for only ten rupees. I picked it up because it was the first time I was finding the magazine at Abids and though it was quite dated there was a review of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s ‘Travels with Herodotus’ in it that I wanted to read. Plus there was a review of Haruki Murakami’s ‘After Dark’ that I also wanted to read. It was a good find since there was a lot in it about books, reviews, new books and new authors I haven’t even heard before.
The other find on Sunday at Abids was a 2010 Mont Blanc catalogue, beautiful in black with stunning pictures of the beautiful pens. There were pictures of a new series made with ‘Meissen Porcelain’ that I haven’t seen anywhere before. Mont Blanc is talking about their pens as something that you pass on to your children, as a sort of legacy. The ads for Patek Philippe watches too have a similar theme (You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.) Anyway, there were two other models, the Meisterstück Solitaire Silver Barley and Meisterstück Solitaire Geometric Dimension, both so breathtakingly beautiful I wondered why I was not born rich.
Incidentally, the other day I started with Uma for the Mont Blanc store in the Inorbit mall at far away Madhapur, to get the hole in the star on the cap of my Meisterstück fixed. It turned out that they do not do any servicing at that outlet being a franchisee and the person asked me to go to the MB outlets in either Taj Deccan or the Grand Kakatiya. We also dropped in at the ‘editions’ store next door and gawked at the pens displayed. The counter person told us that they stock pens of brand one normally cannot find anywhere. I was quite excited to see copies of ‘Pen World’ magazine of December 2010 for sale at four hundred rupees each. Then there was a hefty book on pens that was for Rs 3500. We did not buy anything but walked out to go to Taj Deccan. Unfortunately for us, being the Republic Day, the Mont Blanc outlet at Taj Deccan was closed. I wonder what if one of the guests at Taj Deccan developed a sudden desire to buy a Mont Blanc pen that very day where would he go?
No comments:
Post a Comment