The Sunday Haul (on 1-1-2017)

It is quite difficult for me to put into words why I feel like buying books all the time. Not more than a week has passed since the eleven day Hyderabad Book Fair ended just a day after Christmas and where I had bought thirteen books in the four or five visits I made to it. By the time I was done I had bought a total of 157 books in all during the year.

Last Sunday, incidentally, the first day of the New Year I was at Abids as usual. In the year gone by I had picked up more than a hundred and thirty or so books at Abids on Sundays. After buying thirteen books at the Book Fair only a week earlier I thought it wouldn't be a bright idea to take home more books. So last Sunday I started for Abids with the intention of returning home empty handed. However, once at Abids, the sight of all those books tempts me a lot and I ended up buying five books.

The first book I saw had the picture of George Clooney on the cover. It was a title that seemed to have been made into a movie. The copy of 'The American' by Martin Booth that I found was in a good condition and came for fifty rupees. With the same seller I found another interesting title- The Ayurvedic Cookbook- that I bought. It was a hardcover title but I got it for just fifty rupees.

After the usual chai and half hour of talk with friends in the Irani hotel at Abids I set out again. Sometime during the eleven day book fair I had overheard a young woman asking a bookseller if he had any books about Indian birds. She was disappointed when the seller said no. I felt sorry for her since she seemed very keen. Many years ago I had seen a copy of Salim Ali's books on the birds of India. But it had been in a very bad condition with a torn cover and missing pages and I did not buy it. Last Sunday I came across a hardcover copy of 'Pictorial Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent.' It had plenty of illustrations and pictures of several birds inside. Except for a bit of the cover missing the book was in a good condition and cost me only a hundred and fifty rupees.

In a heap of books selling for thirty rupees only I found a book with an interesting cover that suggested it would be an old and interesting title. It was 'My Life and Adventures' by Frank Harris. I usually buy memoirs and autobiographies by any literary personality so when I read inside that Frank Harris had been an editor of 'Saturday Review' I bought it.

A little further down the road I saw another old book with the author's photograph on the cover that had something all over it that made me pick it up for a closer look.The name of the author- Julian Symons also rung a bell somewhere inside my head and made me buy it. Inside I saw that Julian Symons had written on Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie and also had articles on a literary magazine and others that I bought it without a second thought. I had a pleasant surprise when the seller asked for just thirty rupees for this hardcover gem.
After finding the above five books that were weighing me down I thought I wouldn't come across any more good title worth buying when I saw another title which was a memoir. I found 'The Spiral Staircase' by Karen Armstrong that I got for fifty rupees only. So I began the new year with a haul of five books and it looks like I am going to end this year too with another haul of nearly two hundred books.