The Sunday Haul (on 9-10-2016)

Due to a technical problem I couldn't post on Friday. Better late than never, hence posting today.
Sometimes I fail to understand why I choose to ignore obviously bestselling titles of which I see several copies at Abids, and instead pick up obscure titles by little known authors. Though these random finds mostly turn out to be quite good titles I have missed out picking up some really good titles due to this eccentricity of mine. I do not pick up such well known and obviously good reads unless I read their reviews or read those titles being praised by someone whose tastes I respect. Last Sunday I found one such title I had seen quite often but failed to buy until I read about it recently.

A long time ago, more than a decade maybe, on a hunch I picked up ‘A Divided Life’ by Bryan Forbes. Until that day I had no idea who Bryan Forbes was. I finished reading that wonderful autobiography a second time last week. In it, Forbes, who is a British film director, novelist mentions that he directed directed the movie based on ‘King Rat. I realized that I must have come across several copies of James Clavell’s ‘King Rat’ many times at Abids but hadn’t thought of buying it.

Last Sunday I saw a good copy of ‘King Rat’ by James Clavell that I got for a hundred rupees. If I had waited for another week or so I could have found a nice copy of this same title in one of those heaps of books that sell for twenty rupees. But last Sunday due to the Dasara festival there weren’t many sellers and not one of them had all their books on sale and were content to display only a few books. There wasn’t much to choose and pick.

In the introduction to ‘King Rat’ John Simpson wrote that James Clavell himself, who by then had begun to write screenplays in Hollywood, wrote the script for ‘King Rat’ the movie. There’s no mention of who directed the movie which is a bit puzzling. Anyway, I am glad I found a nice copy of ‘King Rat’ and also plan to be on the lookout for other titles by Clavell such as ‘Shogun’ and ‘Taipan.’