THE HAUL

A combination of rain and the Ramzan shopping spree due to which the regular shops were open, resulted in a fruitless visit to Abids. It left a vague dissatisfaction in me returning empty handed from Abids last Sunday. But it gave me a reason to drop in at a bookstore and pick up at least one book. Luckily, on Tuesday afternoon, I was able to complete a personal project which I felt entitled me to buy myself a reward. And the only reward I could think of for myself was a book. So off I went and landed at the MR Bookstore beside the Punjagutta flyover on Wednesday evening. I found a book I had missed during a previous visit to the same store.

Sometime last month or so I had seen Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Butter Chicken in Ludhiana’ at the store but did not buy it. I had been looking for this book since a long time and when I found it I did not feel like buying it, strangely. A couple of weeks later when I dropped in at the store and looked for it I could not locate it anywhere. I had thought it was gone and regretted not buying it the moment I spotted it. But last Wednesday I was quite happy to come across the book on a different shelf. I bought it for Rs 110 which was quite reasonable for a new copy the original price of which was Rs 225. I plan to begin reading it one of these days.

There’s another crime writer appearing on my radar. It is funny how when the eye is searching for the hard to find title or the elusive writer it tends to ignore names that appear again and again everywhere. There are a few writers whose books I see everywhere, every week yet I have not felt the urge to check out their books. James Patterson is one such writer I haven’t paid much attention to all these days till the other week. Recently I read somewhere that James Patterson tops the Forbes list of writers raking in the most moolah, way above Danielle Steele, Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer. Even that bit of news did not make me check out his books. Either I am dumb or trying to be too choosy about my reading but I wish I had looked closely at his books earlier.

The other day I was reading an article by Donald Maas and came across James Patterson again. Maas wrote about Alex Cross, JP’s famous creation and how he built that character. There was the title of a bestseller ‘Along Came a Spider’ that I jotted down. I feel it is better to come across titles of books to be read in this manner than finding them out on lists on the internet. Then yesterday I read an interview of James Patterson in an old issue of ‘The Writer’s Handbok’ of 2002. Here again were a few books of his mentioned including ‘Along Came a Spider.’ It appears James Patterson has a thing for drawing upon nursery rhymes for the titles of his books.

Now I plan to look for books by James Patterson especially ‘Along Came a Spider’ and ‘Kiss the Girls.’ I will read only these two books first and if they are any good as they say I will try to read the rest of the 16 or 17 Alex Cross books. If I can find his first novel- The Thomas Berryman Number- then I hope to read it. Another reason I want to read his books is that he tells people not to read one of his titles ‘Season of the Machete’ which was one of his early works and one that he himself does not like. I definitely decided to read his books when I read that he writes in long hand and doesn’t use a computer. Another reason why I want to read his books is becaue I read that James Patterson was a copywriter who rose up the ladder and became head of JWT. Why is it that most writers I like to read happen to be copywriters?