Friday, January 08, 2016

The Sunday Haul (on 03-01-2016)


A week after the Hyderabad Book Fair ended and twenty four books later I thought of stopping going to Abids for a couple of weeks. But some habits are difficult to avoid even temporarily. So I made that familiar trip to Abids that I make every Sunday but with a resolve not to buy anything until I had read at least half a dozen of the two dozen books that I had picked up at the Book Fair.

However strong the resolve not to buy any more books might be it easily dissolves when I come across books by authors like Ross Macdonald. Ever since I came to learn about Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer series of novels and also read a few titles like ‘The Instant Enemy,’ ‘The Ivory Grin,’ and ‘The Wycherly Woman’ I was hooked to his writing style. The previous Sunday I had seen four Ross Macdonald titles- The Galton Case, The Chill, The Moving Target, and The Underground Man. I had the first three titles with me except ‘The Underground Man’ that I wasn’t exactly looking for.

Sometime back I had purchased second hand copies of eight Ross Macdonald titles online. This lot of eight titles included three titles I saw at Abids. My desire to buy all the four titles was dampened by the seller who quoted an abnormally high price after he saw the gleam in my eye when I spotted the books. Fresh after shelling out nearly three thousand books for the two dozen titles that I had bought at the Book Fair only the week before I was not in a mood to spend on more books. So I had walked away reluctantly after an unsuccessful bout of bargaining with the seller who was in no mood to budge from the price he had quoted.
But last Sunday I decided it wasn’t such a high price after all and ended up buying all the four Ross Macdonald titles- The Galton Case, The Chill, The Moving Target, and The Underground Man that I kept and gave the rest of the first three titles to one of my younger brothers. I bought the four titles for forty rupees each which was considerably less than the seventy five rupees I spent on each of the titles I had bought online from Afzal of Matunga.
Another book that I found at Abids last Sunday was ‘Arab Gold’ by MT Vasudevan Nair and NP Mohamed. This is the second or third MT Vasudevan Nair title that I had found and I was glad to pick it up. It did not take me very long to decide to buy this book that had a picture of two golden coconut trees on the cover which was totally black.

So I began 2016 with another medium sized haul of five titles. I was glad that I found another Ross Macdonald title to add to my collection that it growing gradually. I don’t know how many books I will end up buying during the year but I not want to break the last year’s record of nearly 230 books bought.

4 comments:

Jayasrinivasa Rao said...

arre...The Chill aur The Moving Target mein le leta na ... bolna tha na bhai ... chalo, koi baat nahin ... yeh bhi seh lenge ...

Vinod Ekbote said...

Arre bhai, you should have told me before. Anyway I came to know that Best Books is having a sale from 18th Jan.




Thejus said...

Hi Vinod, have been searching high and low for MT Vasudevan Nair's "Arab Gold" but to no avail. I am very sorry to trouble you with this request but I am hoping you will agree to help... Can you tell me VERY BRIEFLY what the book is about -- I am curious to know whether MT talks of the influence of gold brought from Gulf countries to Kerala...
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
-tjs

Vinod Ekbote said...

Thejus, I haven't yet read 'Arab Gold' and can't tell you what the story is. However, this is what it says on the blurb:
"The Arabs came in their dhows laden with date to Calicut, the Port of Truth, and through the dates smuggled in gold. The Port of Truth became the Port of Treachery. Koya, the herro saw hands smeared with the stink of Arab gold, opium, smuggled liquor and women. He saw them, lived with them. He loaded opium on a Chinese vessel anchored off Beypore. But he emerged as a new man from the world of treachery and robbery, deceit and betrayal."

I hope you find the above useful.