The Sunday Haul

It is only natural that after more than two decades browsing for second hand books one acquires or develops an instinct for the good book. Seldom has it happened in my experience that I had picked up a relatively unknown (to me) title on a hunch and found it to be a good pick. Recently, Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Leopard’ was one such find but the one I remember quite well was picking up ‘The Saddest Pleasure’ and later finding that it was a bestseller. I felt my instincts were on spot when I read in TGS about this same book. On Sunday my eyes fell on the title ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ and I picked it up. I felt it was a different book, one that could turn out to be a good read. Of course, the blurbs at the back had a lot of praise but I’ve learnt not to trust it too much. Anyway, I picked it up for fifty rupees and later when I read the online reviews I found that my hunch had been right. It was indeed a very good book so I felt justified in breaking my resolve not to buy any books.

However, there was another book I bought, one that I couldn’t resist buying. Only the week before I had given one of the copies I had of Elmore Leonard’s ‘Freaky Deaky’ to a friend so when I found the same title again at Abids I couldn’t help buying it. But this was a different edition, of Arbor House- William Morrow with Elmore Leonard’s photograph by Anne Liebovitz on the back cover. It was for sale for only thirty rupees so the temptation was doubled. Anyway, there was a book I did not buy though I should have. I saw a hardcover copy of Tishani Doshi’s ‘The Pleasure Seekers’ which I had to leave behind. The guy asked two hundred and odd rupees for it so I felt it would be better to buy a new copy sometime in the future and moved on.

The only thing that got my attention in this month’s The Literary Review was the front page article by Parvathi Nayar about books by doctors. I’m currently reading Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ which was mentioned in the article. I learnt that his first book was ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ that I want to read someday. Another article was Vikram Kapur’s column where he bemoaned how some writers don’t write because there’s no place to publish. His idea that well known magazines like Outlook, India Today should publish short stories seemed good but impracticable when it is clear that these magazines have more ads than articles.

The Literary Review also had a detailed piece on Rupa’s new venture ‘Aleph’ with David Davidar at the helm. Though I had a vague idea of some of the publishing houses in India and could recognise some names like David Davidar, Ravi Singh etc I never really paid much attention to the names in publishing world. But ever since I started writing my first novel I began keeping track of who works where. In TOI the other day I got a complete low down on the latest happenings in the publishing world in India.