The Sunday Haul

Yesterday while reading about Robert Byron’s ‘Road to Oxiana’ in Aparna Karthikeyan’s delightful column in the Metro Plus supplement of ‘The Hindu’ my desire to find this book grew stronger than ever. I also had the realization that there were quite a few books that I am desperate to find and which I hope to find either in the second hand bookstores of Hyderabad or at Abids. Some of the titles in my ‘Dying to Find’ list include:- ‘All About H.Hatterr’ by GV Desani, ‘Get Carter’ by Ted Lewis, ‘Fresh Air Fiend’ and ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ by Paul Theroux, ‘The Blind Rider’ by Juan Goytisolo, ‘The Pulphead’ by John Jeremiah Sullivan and several other books too numerous to list here.

If I am patient I know I will find these books one of these days just as I found Wilfred Thesiger and Freya Stark’s books in second hand bookstores and in the Abids book bazaar. Last Sunday there weren’t many books that I saw that were worth picking up. But I ended up buying an original edition of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ that I had been planning to read. This did not come cheap and cost me a hundred rupees. I also saw a badly damaged copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘The Fight Club’ that did not appear worth buying so I let it be. A few minutes later Uma picked Palahniuk’s ‘Diary’ which was a brand new hardcover copy that he got for just thirty rupees.

The other book that I picked up at Abids on Sunday was Reader’s Digest ‘5oth Anniversary Treasury’, a hardbound copy that I got for only fifty rupees. It runs into several hundred pages and among others has Helen Hanff’s ’84, Charing Cross Road’ and articles by AJ Cronin and Michener, apart from several other stories, articles, jokes. I picked it up feeling it would be a nice read during rainy afternoons.