The Sunday Haul

Once again it was a cloudy morning last Sunday and there was even a light shower making me wonder if it would rain later in the day. Luckily, the rain stopped before I set off for Abids to look for books. I seem to be on an extended stretch of luck because within moments of parking my bike I found a good title that I already have several copies of. I found yet another copy of ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King that I cannot resist buying for some reason. So far I have found more than a dozen copies of this book and after giving out several copies to people who asked me for it, there are still about half a dozen copies of ‘On Writing’ on my shelves. Coincidentally, this is the fourth copy that I have found at the same seller where I had found my first copy of ‘On Writing’ which, incidentally, did not have a cover. The title was written with a sketch pen on a plain white cover and I was lucky to have spotted it. Anyway, like most of the copies that I had found so far I got this copy too quite cheap. I paid only fifty rupees for this copy which was in decent condition.

My next stroke of luck came minutes later. I have been looking for Romesh Gunesekera’s ‘Reef’ ever since I found his ‘The Match’ a couple of months back. At last I was able to spot it at Abids with a seller who had displayed it rather prominently but had no idea how valuable it was. I was able to bargain for it and ended up buying ‘Reef’ for only fifty rupees. The Granta Books edition that I found was in beautiful condition and I was glad to have found ‘Reef’ at last.

The third book in Sunday’s haul was John O’ Hara’s ‘Appointment in Samarra’ about which I had read somewhere very recently. In fact, it was in ‘Writing a Novel’ by John Braine in which the opening scene was taken as an example of a good beginning. After I read the opening I wanted to read the entire book and luckily, a few days later I found it at Abids last Sunday. Anyway, I got this book pretty cheap. It was the cheapest book in Sunday’s haul, at just twenty rupees.

With these three books the total haul this year has reached stratospheric heights. It is likely to go up further since there is the Hyderabad Book Fair coming up sometime in the next month. I am eagerly waiting to read the announcement about the dates and the venue of the next Hyderabad Book Fair.