The Sunday Haul- Four Spensers & Odyssey’s Latest Branch

The Haul

Normally I go alone to look for books at Abids and return with a couple of good titles if I am lucky. Since about a year Uma has been accompanying me and together we manage to spot some really good books. Now, Srikanth is also coming along with us and the three of us are more or less cleaning up Abids of all good titles. Last Sunday it was a record haul in a way. Usually, only one Spenser title turns up in the haul now and then. But last Sunday we found not one or two but we ended up hauling up four Spenser titles in a span of about fifteen minutes. We found three in a single heap and one with a different seller. Of these, Uma spotted two and I found two. Three of these were almost new, hardcover copies that we got for only thirty rupees each. It was a real treasure finding the Spenser titles.

The first find was Robert B. Parker’s ‘Widow’s Walk’ followed by ‘Bad Business’ both which Uma found in a disorderly heap within minutes. My turn came next when in the same heap I picked up ‘Chance’ that I already have. But the copy I have is a paperback si picked it up. We felt that it was a super Sunday when I spotted another Spenser title- ‘God Save the Child’ on the pavement with another seller. It was a Penguin paperback and seemed to be a very early edition for it looked quite old. It might be one reason the seller asked for only ten rupees for the book. With a haul of four Robert B Parker’s Spenser titles in a day it really looked like a Spenser Sunday.

But that wasn’t all. I picked up a copy of Harper Lee’s ‘to Kill a Mocking Bird’ for a friend’s daughter. I added some more fuel to my scriptwriting dream by picking up another book- The Screenwriter Within- for a hundred rupees. It might help me get the script I am working on out of the cold storage. Another find was Somerset Maugham’s ‘Mrs Craddock’ which was actually the first find of Sunday. I bought the copy for forty rupees just before I met Uma and Srikanth. There was a nice copy of ‘Catch 22’ but I let it be.


Odyssey Opens Another Branch

This wasn’t the only haul last week. A day before, on Saturday I had dropped in at an Odyssey store along with Daniel. Sometime in the previous week I had noticed that the Bata store opposite Baseera in Secunderabad was gone and in its place was an Odyssey store. I did not drop in at that time but last Saturday I got the chance to check it out. There were heaps of books on tables for sale at Rs 100 each. There were quite a number of titles but I found only one book worth picking up. It was Martin Amis’ ‘Visiting Mrs Nabokov’ which is a collection of his non-fiction. One doesn’t find books by Martin Amis that regularly so finding ‘Visiting Mrs Nabokove’ was really lucky.