The Sunday Haul (on 24-12-2017)

Last Sunday I found a title by a writer with the sort of background not many writers care to have. To start with he was a professional burglar. Obviously he’s also a convict. Bob Dylan dedicated an album to him. He was also a mountaineer, playboy, traveller, filmmaker, and one of the founders of an underground welfare group known as ‘Diggers’ in San Fransico, and wrote an autobiography called ‘Ringolevio’ which was an international bestseller it appears. I remember seeing ‘Ringolevio’ somewhere but I haven’t noticed the author. So next time I come across ‘Ringolevio’ by Emmet Grogan I am going to grab it. ‘Final Score’ is Emmet Grogan’s first novel with the sort of cover that screams ‘Crime fiction’ and that’s something I cannot help buying. I bought it for just thirty rupees.

But ‘Final Score’ wasn’t the first book I found last Sunday at Abids. The first find was another book with a wonderful cover. I found a copy of ‘The Go-Between’ by L.P. Hartley in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees. I have come across the name ‘L.P.Hartley’ before but haven’t found any books by him so far either at Abids or at other places. There’s high praise for L.P. Hartley in the front pages of the book. L.P. Hartley had been fiction reviewer for the Spectator, the Saturday Review, the Observer and so on. He also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and also the Heinemann Foundation Prize of the Royal Society for Literature and a film version of one of his books ‘The Hireling’ also won the principal award at the Cannes in 1973. So all this means that I have found a book by a truly wonderfully talented writer. I got this book for just twenty rupees.
So, the final score at the end of the penultimate Sunday of the year is 186 books.

It is now official that the Hyderabad Book Fair is beginning from 18 to 28th January, 2018, the last three days coinciding with the Hyderabad Literary Festival that’s from Jan 26-28, 2018.

The Sunday Haul (on 17-12-2017)

Stephen King is one of those authors who write about how they came to write the book in the introduction and I love reading the tale behind the book. Last Sunday I came across a copy of ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Stephen King that had such an introduction. I realized I had not read ‘Salem’s Lot’ and picked it up for fifty rupees. Later sitting in the ‘Grand Hotel’ and sipping tea I read the introduction. Stephen King writes about how he got the idea for ‘Salem’s Lot’ from ‘Dracula’ and other vampire comics of that time.

The Sunday before last I had seen an English translation of an Assamese novel that I did not buy. One reason why I hesitated to buy it was that I did not know who the writer was though the book was a Sahitya Akademi publication. Last Sunday when I saw it again I looked it over carefully. ‘Longing for Sunshine’ by Syed Abdul Malik is the English translation of his novel in Assamese ‘Surya Mukheer Swapna.’ The translation was done by Pradip Acharya. Syed Abdul Malik is a famous Assamese author who won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1972.

The ‘World Telugu Conference’ was going on in Hyderabad and I had read in the papers about a Telugu book exhibition that was a part of the conference. Since the main venue, LB Stadium, was not far away from Abids I decided to pay a visit. I had studied Telugu in school and I can read and write in Telugu though not so well. It was one of my desires to read some classic Telugu titles and though I had this desire for long I had not mustered up the courage to buy Telugu books and read them. A few years back I had managed to lay my hands on ‘Chillara Devullu’ by Dasarathi Ranga Charyulu but I haven’t read it yet. At the book show in WTC I saw a copy of a book I had long wanted to read. The title of the book felt like it could be my own story. When I saw ‘Asamarthuni Jeevitha Yathra’ by Gopichand I bought it. For the past several years I have been making resolutions of reading either a Telugu or a Hindi book a year but haven’t been able to do it. I want to read at least one Telugu novel this year so I have already started reading ‘Asamarthuni Jeevitha Yathra.’ It is just 124 pages long and I hope to finish it before the end of the month.

The Sunday Haul (on 10-12-2017)

The year is drawing to a close and there are three more Sundays left. The haul of books that I’ve made this year from my visits to Abids, to second hand bookstores and also gifts from friends has added to a staggering hundred and seventy seven books. If I buy the books at my usual average of three books every Sunday then the total haul would cross 190 that is excluding the number of books that I buy at the Hyderabad Book Fair that is usually held in December. I heard that this year the Book Fair will not be held in December but is going to be held from the 18th of next January. In which case, my haul of books in 2017 is likely to be less than 200.

Last Sunday I was Abids as usual to look for books on the pavements. I ended up finding three books in all, two cookbooks and a crime fiction title. I’ve realized that British are terribly good at crime fiction after I’ve read Ted Lewis and Jake Arnott. There was another writer I cannot recollect now but I am always on the lookout for newer writers of crime fiction. I spotted a new book that seemed to stand out and I couldn’t resist picking it up to take a better look. It was ‘naked to the hangman’ by Andrew Taylor and once I read the blurb by The Sunday Times on the back cover saying it was ‘Crime at its best’ I decided to buy it.

Next I found ‘Secret Recipes from Indian Homes’ by Femina that looked like an ancient magazine. But it was published only in 1990 as it says on the cover- Vimla Patil presents The Best Recipes of 1990. I got it for thirty rupees. Later I bought another interesting cookbook. This was the ‘Chuk-Chuk Cookbook’ brought out by the SCRWO (South Central Railways Women’s Organisation). It appeared a quaint cookbook which was one reason I bought it.

The Sunday Haul (on 03-12-2017)

I don’t know what more I can write about the Sunday book market at Abids except that I never fail to be amazed at the surprises it throws up regularly. Once again last Sunday I hauled in another wonderful catch of some truly fantastic titles. I found three good titles I wouldn’t have found in any bookstore. One of the titles I have been desperately looking for is ‘The Survivor and Other Stories’ by Arun Joshi that I wanted to get my hands on ever since I read about it. Though I haven’t been able to find it so far I found a collection of stories that had a story from ‘The Survivor and Other Stories’

The first find of last Sunday was a hardcover copy of ‘Contemporary Indian Short Stories in English’ compiled by Shiv K. Kumar and published by Sahitya Akademi. I found it with a seller beside the café where I take a tea break. I have found many collections of Indian short stories in English but this seems to the best because it contains stories by a dazzling line up of some of the best writers in India. The following are the 24 stories in this collection;

Cold Wave by K.A. Abbas;
The Liar by Mulk Raj Anand;
The Betrayal by Sujatha Balasubramaniam;
The Eyes are Not Here by Ruskin Bond;
Versus the Godman by Upamanyu Chatterjee;
The Jahangir Syndrome by Keki Daruwalla;
Fish Mayonnaise by Kishori Charan Das;
The Submerged Valley by Manoj Das;
Heavy is Gold by Sunita Jain;
The Boy with the Flute by Arun Joshi;
To Nun with Love by Shiv K. Kumar;
Eyes by Jayanta Mahapatra’
A Pinch of Snuff by Manohar Malgaonkar;
Letters/4,5, and 6 by Anita Mehta;
Absolution by Dina Mehta;
The Womb by Chaman Nahal;
Green Sari by R.K. Narayan;
A Toast to Herself by Raji Narasimhan;
Afternoon of the House by Padma Pereira;
India-A Fable by Raja Rao;
Martand by Nayantara Sahgal;
If it were not for the Child by Ajoy Sen;
The Bottom Pincher by Khushwant Singh;
Not to be Loose Shunted by Ashok Srinivasan

There are some writers I haven’t heard about before until I found this wonderful collection. I haven’t heard of Ajoy Sen, Ashok Srinivasan, Padma Pereira, Raji Narasimhan, Anita Mehta, Sunita Jain, Sujatha Balasubramaniam so far but now I am glad I know who these writers are. This books seems to be from a college library because there was the stamp of Cauvery D.Ed College, Bangalore on one of the pages. I think this book is worth more than the hundred rupees I paid for it.

The second I spotted ‘The House at Adampur’ by Anand Lall I picked it up. It had the sort of irresistible cover that reminded me of the books brought out by Indian publishers in the sixties and seventies. I have not heard of the title or Arthur Lall, the writer. Inside I read that the book was first published by Alfred Knopf in 1956 but what I had in my hand was an Indian edition published by Pearl Publications, another new name for me. On the back I read that Anand Lall is better known by his westernized name Arthur Lall who was Amabassador and Permanent Representative of India to the UN back then. Anand Lall has also published another novel- Seasons of Jupiter. All this is fascinating information. I got it for just thirty rupees with the same seller who doesn’t have any idea about the value of the books he sells and sells them at a uniform price. The most interesting thing about the copy I found was that it belonged to a High Court Judge.

Then I found another book featuring two of my favourite writers. I found ‘V.S.Naipaul-An Introduction to His Work’ by Paul Theroux. Heinemann is the publisher and it was published first by Andre Deutsch in 1972. I thought maybe this book is some sort of a precursor to the book on Naipaul that Theroux wrote later. I got this book from a seller who doesn’t like to bargain much so I had to pay a hundred rupees for this.

The Sunday Haul (on 26-11-2017)

It was a meagre haul that I had last Sunday at Abids. I found just two books, one of them a magazine. I am not in my normal moods in November somehow. Nothing seems to go right and vague memories of something that happened in this month in the past weigh me down. I try to get over the feeling but don’t usually succeed so I try to battle the lows by reading. I set out last Sunday hoping I would find something to cheer me up but I ended up with nothing much worth writing here.

Kerala happens to be one of the few states I haven’t visited so far. I had thought of visiting with family sometime next year so I am stocking up on information about places I can visit in Kerala and things that I can do. Sometime back I had found a book … and a couple of weeks ago at Landmark I saw a separate booklet called ‘The Best of Kerala’ that came free with the October-November issue of Conde Nast Traveller that I did not buy. Later I regretted not buying it and thought of picking it up sometime soon. However on Sunday I saw the same at Abids, a stand alone supplement that I got for just twenty rupees. After going through it I might make further plans for the Kerala trip.

Later at Chikkadpally I picked up a copy of ‘Regional Indian Food’ by Kishore Reddy. The book cover was bright and colourful and inside were photographs of some of the dishes along with their recipes. The recipes were for the usual Indian dishes and nothing special but I bought it because it was attractive and stood out. It was also quite cheap at fifty rupees. That was the haul on Sunday that left me vague feeling of disappointment. This vague feeling lasted almost all week and was responsible for my trip to the MR Books store at Begumpet yesterday.

I had come to the Deccan Pen Store at Greenland to buy a refill for the Sheaffer ball point pen I got as a gift recently. Unfortunately they did not have the refill and passing by the MR Book Store I stopped to take a look. A quick glance revealed the shelf had a copy of ‘The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights’ by Jaysinh Birjepatil I had got as a gift from Jai. I saw a copy of ‘Hollywood Animal’ by Joe Eszterhas that I was tempted to buy but didn’t. Then I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘Stet’ by Diana Athill that was almost brand new and far better than the two copies I have. I did not hesitate long before picking it up for hundred rupees. Strangely, I felt calm after I had bought my third copy of this title.