The Sunday Haul

Since the past couple of weeks I was lucky enough to find some really good poetry at Abids. First it was ‘Penguin Modern Poets’ (Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) that I found a couple of weeks back at Abids. Next find was ‘Collected Poems’ by Robert Frost that I found again at Abids only last Sunday. This Sunday I had another lucky hit at Abids. I found ‘The Country Without a Post Office’ by Agha Shahid Ali. I was a bit shocked at finding a book by Agha Shahid Ali, a name that stayed in my mind ever since I first read his poem sometime in the late eighties. I think it was in The Illustrated Weekly of India that I read his poem but I do not remember the title of the poem now. Whatever, I am feeling elated that I found this slim collection brought about by Penguin, another favorite publisher of mine.

Before I found ‘The Country Without a Post Office’ I spotted ‘A Heart So White’ by Javier Marias at one of the sellers in Chikkadpally. I haven’t read any book by Marias though I vaguely remember reading the name somewhere recently. One of the reasons I picked up this book was that the publisher was ‘The Harvill Press’ and another reason was the cover. It lookd like it would be a good read thought it was quite lengthy at 278 pages. But it did not come cheap, I had to pay eighty rupees for this super serious book.

The last find of Sunday was ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ by Audrey Nifenegger that I have read about a lot almost everywhere. Somehow I have managed not to get too interested in this book so far assuming it wouldn’t be not to my taste but when I found a good copy of this book at Abids selling cheap. I hope it is something I can enjoy reading.