The Sunday Haul (on 10-09-2017)

The first find of the haul at Abids last Sunday happened just moments after parking my two-wheeler. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf that I got for just twenty rupees. Though I already have a couple of copies of this title I couldn’t resist buying this copy as well because it was almost brand new. Though my two regular friends did not turn up Jai had made his rare appearance and together we set off on the hunt after a cup of chai at our usual Irani café.

No soon had we stepped out of the café than I spotted a Keigo Higashino title that Jai urged me to buy. Sometime back he had presented me with a copy of ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ that I found to be fascinating. So when he told me to pick up ‘Malice’ I did as he told. I got the book quite cheap for fifty rupees or so. I’ve already forgotten what I paid for it.

My third find was a rare copy of ‘The Chess Players and Other Stories’ by Prem Chand that I saw in a heap of books that were being sold for ten rupees. This was an Orient Paperbacks copy published exactly fifty years ago, in 1967. These are the ten stories in this title: The Voice of God; The Village Well; The Daughter-in-Law; Two Sisters; Wheel of Fortune; Story of Two Bulls; Laila; The Shroud; The Chess-Players and Requiem. These stories were translated from Hindi to English by Gurdial Malik. The copy I found wasn’t in a good condition with the spine damaged but I bought it. A long time back I had read Prem Chand’s ‘Godaan’ when I was too young to understand what I was reading so I do not remember much of the book. I hope the stories in this title takes me back to ‘Godaan’ again after I finish reading the stories.

I really cannot recollect who it was who wanted a copy of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak but I had grabbed a copy I had spotted a long time back. I came across another copy last Sunday at Abids and I got it for the unbelievable price of ten rupees. It was among a large number of colouring books for children that I usually do not look at carefully but somehow I spotted it. This could have been my third copy had I not missed buying another good copy I had seen some time back at Abids.

I had picked up five more books after this, of which two were cookbooks that are not much to write about here. Another title was a Scholastic title on writing that I had a copy of already. One title was about growing roses and another was a Wolverine comic for my son. It turned out I had already bought a copy of the same title earlier. It was a large haul of nine books but only four of them were worth mentioning here so I have written only about those interesting titles.