The Sunday Haul

Most of the time it is either the cover, or the title or the blurb on the back or the author’s name that compel book lovers to buy a particular book. Of course, notwithstanding these the price also plays a role in the decision to buy or not. This last factor is not so important when buying books at Abids which is one major reason why I prefer picking up books here.

For sometime now since at least a couple of months or so I’ve been spotting a book that I have been hesitating to buy. I had never heard of Helen Garner or about ‘Monkey Grip’ the title of the book that she had written. The fact that it was a Penguin title or the fact that it was made into a movie did not influence me to buy Helen Garner’s ‘Monkey Grip’ until last Sunday when it surfaced again in a heap of books I was delving into. It was the price that decided it for me. Ten rupees.

I do not seem to get enough of writers’ autobiographies and memoirs though I have several of them including Somerset Maugham’s ‘Summing Up,’ Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’, Agatha Christie’s ‘Autobiography,’ Haruki Murakami’s ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,’ Tobias Wolf’s ‘This Boy’s Life’ and several other writers. On Sunday at Chikkadpally I found ‘Scenes from A Writer’s Life’ by Ruskin Bond that I had to bargain quite hard to get for Rs 75. I read only the preface of the book and learnt that it was a memoir of the first twenty one years of Ruskin Bond’s life. Someday I might write one myself. Inspired by Somerset Maugham’s ‘Summing Up’ I have already thought of the title of my memoir/autobiography –‘Giving Up.’