Friday Double Post- The Sunday Haul (1st Post)

There are days when I don’t find a single book worth buying at the Abids second hand book bazaar on Sundays and then there are days when I find more books than I can afford to buy. Last Sunday turned out to be one such day when I couldn’t decide which titles to pick up after I came across nearly half a dozen good ones. Despite much restraint I managed to pick up three good titles for under hundred rupees.

The first of the find was a book I had missed buying the previous Sunday. The first thing I did after parking my bike at Abids was head towards the seller where I had seen two good books last week. Luckily, Mohammed Hanif’s ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes.’ was still available with him and I bought it for fifty rupees which was quite a bargain for a book in good condition. However I was disappointed to see that Umberto Eco’s ‘Focault’s Pendulum’ and ‘Atonement’ by Ian McEwan were gone.

The second find of the day was Alice Sebold’s ‘The Almost Moon’ with a distinct and eye-catching cover in violet. Though I had not read her first book ‘The Lovely Bones’ I had read ‘Lucky’ sometime last year and was quite enamored of her style of writing. I picked up ‘The Almost Moon’ for twenty rupees but do not plan to read it right away. I will find her first book, read it and then start ‘The Almost Moon’ soon after. I come across quite a few copies of ‘The Lovely Bones’ at second hand bookstores and also at Abids though I did not pick it up. Now I am determined to buy the book the moment I spot it anywhere.

Then, the final find of the day was again a book I had seen earlier but had not bought. I like to read memoirs by famous people about some experience (usually terrible) that they have gone through. One such book was Robert McCrum’s ‘My Year Off’ that was about the time the author who is a famous editor, had a brain stroke. The book I bought last week was a similar book- the actor Michael J Fox’s ‘Lucky Man’- an account of his Parkinson’s. I had first seen this hardcover copy at a secondhand book store but did not buy it since it was priced quite high. The other Sunday however, it was on sale on the pavement for only thirty rupees which was another reason I bought it.