A Small Achievement

This blog is at No. 12 on the list of 'Top 15 Book Blogs in India' put out on Baggout.com, an online shopping portal.

Here's the link: blog.baggout.com/2015/02/26/top-15-book-blogs-india/

I think it is a fluke and not much to crow about. (I did crow about it on FB, though) However, I realize that it is almost eight years since I started this blog and now someone else other than my friends and family has at last noticed it. Feels good.

The Sunday Haul (21-02-2015)

I had a vague thought in mind to watch the movie when I found the book. I did not really expect to find the actual book but on Sunday it was quite a surprise to come across a nice copy of ‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed. I decided to forego the movie for the time being since I could know the story better by reading the book. Even if I decided to watch the movie ultimately I don’t know if it would be around by the time I finish reading the book which has more than 300 pages.

It was a hot Sunday morning and I was alone at Abids. It was actually a blessing in disguise since I could focus on each and every title on the pavements. However, despite the keen search I couldn’t find anything. There was a book of short stories by Amanda Cross that looked interesting but I gave it a miss. The name seems familiar but somehow I did not feel like picking it up which could be a dumb thing to do for all I know. But if I see it next Sunday then maybe I will pick it up.

Earlier on Friday I dropped in at the MR Bookstore beside the Punjagutta flyover in the evening. I wanted to check out if there were any interesting titles to pick up. When I saw ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ by Keigo Higashino I remembered what Jai told me recently. He had told me not to miss any title by Keigo Higashino. So naturally, I took his advice seriously and picked up ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ by Keigo Higashino. Though the price sticker mentioned 150 rupees I got it for a hundred. It wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t too high a price either. Crime fiction interests me greatly so I have already begun reading it and found it to be extremely engrossing.

The Sunday Haul

A few days back the Government announced that shops could be allowed to open on Sundays also. At that time I did not really pay much attention about it since it wouldn’t affect me because I am not such a big shopper. However I thought that it was a good idea since both shoppers as well as the shopkeepers would benefit from it. It wasn’t until I went to Abids last Sunday that I realized that the Government’s latest announcement would affect me directly. When I first noticed that a couple of shops were open I did not give it much thought but later I remembered the announcement. It might take a couple of months for the shopkeepers to get into the habit of keeping the shops open so until then I guess the Sunday book bazaar at Abids would remain. Afterwards, what? I do not want to think or imagine about it now.

On the way to Abids I had stopped at a pavement bookseller at Chikkadpally. The guy looks so forlorn and lost that sometimes I give him books that I no longer want to keep with me. This made him that he is indebted to me. So he refuses to take any money from me when I pick up a title I find in his collection. But I always pay him whatever ridiculously low price he sometimes quotes. So when I spotted ‘The World of Malgudi’ an omnibus book with four titles- Mr Sampat, The Financial Expert, The Painter of Signs, and A Tiger for Malgudi- I picked it up. It was in extremely good condition and I desperately wanted it. He let me have it for only hundred rupees.

The next find was at Abids. It was a title that I never cease to find everywhere in all bookstores, and also pavement sellers. I have seen so many copies of it at so many places over the years but did not buy it. Finally, last Sunday, I bought ‘Cold Mountian’ by Charles Frazier when I got it for a low price. It is a forbidding tome of about 450 pages which was one of the reasons why I had resisted buying it till now. Anyway, now that I have bought it I hope to find time to read it some day in the future.
A couple of years ago at a book sale in YMCA I had come across Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Everything is Illuminated’ that I did not buy for some stupid reason. I guess it was the price that put me off then. However, I did not come across the title again anywhere. At Abids I saw another Foer title- ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ that I hesitated for a long time to buy. This title too was another tome of nearly 350 pages of which about 25 pages are blank with some illustration filling a quarter of the page. Only when I read the book perhaps I will know what that illustration.

The Sunday Haul

Last Friday, it was my birthday which was one reason why there was no post on the blog. Another reason was that I did not have anything to write on the blog since the Sunday before I returned empty handed from Abids. Though I spent a couple of hours scouring the pavements I found nothing interesting enough to make me buy it.

However, last Sunday it was a different scene. The summer is upon Hyderabad if the warm mornings are any indication. At Abids I found two more books within the hour. The first find was in a heap of books selling for thirty rupees. The moment I spotted ‘The Spoon River Anthology’ by Edgar Lee Masters I knew it was something worth buying. I had read about it somewhere and that also pushed me to buy it. It has 214 poems and is considered as a title that brought fame to Edgar Lee Masters.

The second find was Shrilal Shukla’s ‘Opening Moves’ that I got for fifty rupees. Ever since I read ‘Raag Durbari’ I had been looking for more writing by Shrilal Shukla and so when I found ‘Opening Moves’ I felt thrilled. Since I had finished reading ‘Raag Durbari’ for the third time sometime last month I plan to start ‘Opening Moves’ very soon. With these two books the haul so far in 2015 has gone up to 17.