DOUBLE POST FRIDAY / POST -2: A Super Midweek/Independence Day Haul

Last weekend was a pretty long one that lasted four days and ended with the Independence Day on the fifteenth of August. Though I had been to Abids on Sunday and picked up six good books I felt restless. On Monday I dropped in at the MR Books store opposite Lifestyle in Begumpet just to look at the books and pass the time. In no time I found a good book that I immediately wanted to buy. I found a copy of ‘Ah, Treachery’ by Ross Thomas. It was entirely by chance that I had stumbled across Ross Thomas. I had first come across a Ross Thomas title a couple of years back when I found ‘The Yellow Dog Contract’. After reading it I wanted to buy all the books Ross Thomas had written. Over the years I found ‘Twilight At Mac’s Place,’ ‘The Fools in Town Are On Our Side’ and ‘The Mordida Man’ only the previous Sunday. There are many other titles of his that I want to read especially ‘Briarpatch’ and ‘The Missionary Stew’ that are said to be very good. So when I found ‘Ah, Treachery’ I grabbed it right away.

Then on Tuesday I had been to the flag hoisting at my workplace in the morning. On the way back I decided to stop at MR Books once again since I had not checked the books on the landing of the stairs to the cellar and the books by kilo section in the cellar. I consider myself to be lucky in the matter of finding good titles since I manage to find some really good titles regularly. But on some days I get super lucky and Tuesday was one such super lucky day. Sometime last year or so I had started reading Business Line on Saturday that comes with a supplement called ‘Blink’ that carries some really good stuff. I think it was in some article about food that I read about James Salter and how good his writing was especially ‘Life is Meals’ and his memoirs ‘Burning the Days.’ Little did I know then that I would find his books soon. Sometime recently I found a copy of ‘A Sport and A Pastime’ at Abids and did not expect to find another James Salter title very soon.

I’ve learnt that it pays to look at each and every title in piles of books wherever they are. There’s a large, irregular pile of books in some kind of a shelf besides the steps in MR Books that lead down to the cellar. On my last visit I had seen a nice copy of ‘The Foreigner’ by Arun Joshi in the pile that was still there but at a different place. There were other titles that I had seen earlier but there seemed to be some new titles that I started checking carefully on the spines. Then I spotted the name James Salter but couldn’t read the title because light was reflecting off it. I pulled out the book and got a wonderful shock to find that it was ‘Burning the Days.’ I was ecstatic on finding it and wondered if it had been there in the same pile that I had checked out on my earlier visit. I wondered if I had failed to notice this wonderful title and thanked my stars that no one had bought it. I marvelled at my exceptional good luck finding this book that I got for just a hundred rupees.