FRIDAY DOUBLE POST: POST 2/2: The Sunday Haul

Last Sunday was another Sunday that added more books to my growing and untidy collection of books. I managed to find three books at Abids. The first title I found was James M Cain’s ‘The Root of His Evil’ that I got for thirty rupees. James M Cain is the author of the classic ‘The Post Always Rings Twice’. I had found a battered copy of this book sometime a year before at Abids. After I read this book I felt like looking out for more books by Cain and so when I found ‘The Root of His Evil’ I picked it up.

Minutes later I saw Graham Greene’s ‘The Heart of the Matter’ that I had been looking for since a long time. I see many copies of ‘The Human Factor’ and ‘Brighton Rock’ but till date I had not been able to get a decent copy of ‘The Heart of the Matter.’ The copy I saw at Abids on Sunday was in good condition and so I bought it for forty rupees.
On the way back home, at one of the sellers at Chikkadpalli I saw Haruki Murakami’s ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ that I don’t think I have in my collection of Murakami titles. I got it for only seventy rupees which is quite a bargain considering how pricey the new copies are. This was the luckiest and the best find of Sunday. With these three titles the number of books I bought so far in this year (2014) is 17. Unless I watch out and cut down on the number of books I routinely pick up every Sunday at Abids and also at second hand book stores I might end up with another ton of books by the end of the year.

I conveniently forget it when I am out hunting for books in second hand bookstores. On Tuesday on my way home I dropped in at the MR Bookstore in Begumpet. There I found Robert B Parker’s ‘Thin Air’ which I do not have and also another book by Lisa St Aubin de teran called ‘Keepers of the House.’ Sometime last year I had bought ‘The Slow Train to Milan’ by Lisa St Aubin de teran but haven’t read it. ‘Keepers of the House’ is her first book and hence I picked it up. I got both the books for fifty rupees each which would have been enough to make me happy but I wasn’t. The reason was that I had seen Qurruatulain Hyder’s ‘Fireflies in the Mist’ but did not buy it because the price was too steep. After going home I regretted buying ‘Keepers of the House’ and ‘Thin Air’ instead of ‘Fireflies in the Mist’ which made me feel bad. This feeling lasted only one day since I went there on Thursday and bought ‘Fireflies in the Mist’ as a gift for myself since it happened to be my birthday.