The Sunday Haul

Last Sunday was actually a fun day because a couple of my friends, all of them serious readers, joined in the hunt on Sunday at Abids. Usually I go along with Umashankar and Srikanth to Abids looking for books. We begin from an Irani restaurant where we have chai, talk for a while about movies, books, politics and everything else under the sun before leaving for the actual hunt. We spend nearly an hour and half looking for good titles. Afterwards we go our own ways laden with books. This Sunday Hari came along with Raja, who has now hopped on to Indore. Only Jai was missing or else it would have been quite a picture. I wish he had come along. Among ourselves we picked up quite a few books, pointing out good books that we have read to the others in the hope of making them buy the titles. I ended up buying three titles.

Sometime back I had picked up a book at Abids solely on the basis of its intriguing title- The Fools in Town are On Our Side’’ by Ross Thomas. Later I discovered that Ross Thomas was an extremely good writer and was compared to another favourite writer of mine- Elmore Leonard. I felt lucky for having across that title and for having discovered another good writer. On Sunday in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees I came upon another Ross Thomas title- ‘Twilight at Mac’s Place' that I did not hesitate to buy right away. On the back it said again that Ross Thomas was on par with Elmore Leonard.

In the same heap I found two more books. One was a title I had missed buying a couple of months ago. I had been looking for ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ by Mordecai Richler ever since I missed buying it. This too was in a good condition and I picked it the moment I saw it. Moreover, it was a Penguin title and I do not like to pass over any title by Penguin.
The third title I found in the same heap was Carson McCullers’ ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ that I already have. I had found another copy but with a different cover only recently. But this copy was a different imprint, older than the ones I had at home. Either way it is a good book and there are a few people I know who might like reading it so I picked it up.



Find Hari's account of the visit here:
http://harimohanparuvu.blogspot.in/2014/05/day-out-at-abids-second-hand-book-stores.html