THE SUNDAY HAUL

The Four Book Haul
Bargaining was one thing that was proving something very difficult for me to master. I thought I’d never be able to get the hang of it despite my many feeble attempts. I always ended up paying more than necessary. But at Abids I seemed to be succeeding now and then, managing to get some books at the price I wanted. I always leave feeling I could have got a better price. Last week, however, I managed to get two books at what I think was a great bargain. I picked up two books from a seller who usually doesn’t budge from his price and reluctantly lowers the price by just ten or twenty rupees. On Sunday I got two good books at half the price.

One gets something nearing a cardiac arrest on finding two good books at the same moment. Something of that almost happened to me when I saw not one but three of Syd Field’s books apart from Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ at Abids. After checking out the books I realized some aspiring screenwriter had lost interest and sold away the books. But I had another theory in mind. No one who buys writing books sells them away all at once. I wondered if someone had stolen them and disposed them. Whatever, since I did not have Syd Field’s ‘The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver’ I decided to buy it as well as another book I thought of giving to a friend. It was David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ that I had earlier read and also gave as a gift to one of my brothers on his birthday.

The seller wouldn’t budge from his price of 350 rupees for these two books. I told him that I’d buy the books if he gave the two books I wanted for that price. He took a while to think and just when I thought he would put back the books on the shelf, he agreed. I was astonished and it was then I realized I may not have packed that much money. But luckily I had and so picked up both Syd Field’s ‘The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver’ and David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ for 350 rupees

These weren’t the only books I found on Sunday at Abids. There was a book on writing that I am now unable to find mentioned anywhere on the internet. The book is Stanley Wood’s ‘How to Write’ that I got for only thirty rupees. It was a hardcover book and had someone’s name inscribed in black ink along with the year- 1951.

But the first book I had picked up on Sunday was one I had seen earlier. It was Lorenzo Carcaterra’s ‘Sleepers’ that is a hard hitting memoir. I did not pick up the book the first time I saw it two Sundays ago. When I saw it on Sunday I picked it up especially after I noticed that it had been made into a movie. It seems something worth reading and so I bought it paying thirty rupees for it. In all I picked up four books on Sunday including one that I have to give away.

Hyderabad Book Fair
On the subject of books there’s happy news for those who love books. I read in the papes that the 26th edition of the Hyderabad Book Fair is beginning from December 1 to December 11 at the Nizam College grounds. It is an event that I look forward to with more trepidation than eagerness because there would be so many books to buy during that ten day period that there’s the danger of losing one’s mind and buying whatever book one happens to like. Luckily, being in the Government has helped me in limiting my purchases because we don’t get paid like the Ambanis. Last year I bought just a couple of books at the Book Fair and this year I don’t know what I will find. But there’s one book I am looking for now especially after I read about it yesterday.

Another Book to Find
In Wednesday’s (17-11-11) The Metro Plus supplement in The Hindu I came across a well written travel piece by Aparna Karthikeyan about a ballooning trip. In the same page she also wrote a wonderful review (in the column The Armchair Traveller) of an equally wonderful book called ‘Cloud Road- A Journey through the Inca Heartland’ by John Harrison. Surprisingly, I have not heard of this book before but however I am on the look out for it and hope to find it soon because there are a lot of travel books I have to read. In 2012 I plan to read all the travel books that I have collected so far.