The Sunday Haul (on 24-07-18)

I came across many crime writers (like Jake Arnott, Ross Thomas, Peter Blauner ) at Abids by pure accident. I liken such finds to finding a gem in the dust. Last Sunday I found one such gem at Abids but I did not know it then that it was a gem. When I saw ‘No Beast So Fierce’ by Edward Bunker I had a hunch that it could be a good book and even the blurb on the cover about it being made into a film starring Dustin Hoffman confirmed my hunch. So I picked it up for a mere thirty rupees. Later when I Googled the title I was intrigued by Edward Bunker’s background. Edward Bunker took to crime at a very young age, went to jail, wrote a book, became famous and wrote scripts, acted and produced movies. This I plan to read right after finishing Ross Thomas’ ‘Out on the Rim’ that I am engrossed in at the moment.

I found yet another book on writing-‘The Modes of Modern Writing’ by David Lodge. It is an academic tome that discusses things I’ve never heard before like ‘metonymy’ and has sentences like this-‘the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination’- that left me reeling. Nevertheless I bought it- for a hundred rupees. It looks impressive to have titles like this in one’s bookshelf.

There’s this pile of Rs 30 books that the Best Books people have in the lane beside Dayal’s that is beginning to throw up many good titles. The previous Sunday I had picked up ‘Mirror Maker’ by Primo Levi and ‘Mildred Pierce’ by James M. Cain from this same pile. Last Sunday I found another wonderful title in that pile. As soon as I spotted the copy of ‘The Emigrants’ by W.G. Sebald I jumped on it. Anything I write about this book would seem insignificant so I will just mention that it seems to be fictional accounts of four people-Dr. Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth, Max Ferber.

This was one Sunday when all my Abids friends- Uma, Daniel and Jai seemed to come together. Though Jai did not spend much time with us, we three talked for a long time about our usual topics over chai. It just seemed like one of those old days of the past when all was well with the world.

The Sunday Haul (on 15-7-2018)

Though the weather forecast said it would rain heavily on Sunday it didn’t! But the sky was overcast and looked like it would rain any moment but mercifully while we were out at Abids not a drop fell from the sky. It wasn’t rain that I was worried if the copy of ‘A Whole Life’ by Robert Seethaller that I had seen the previous Sunday and not bought was there or not. But before I could reach that seller I spotted another interesting title with another seller right in the lane where I park my two-wheeler. It was a copy of ‘Out on the Rim’ by Ross Thomas that I saw in a pile of ‘Rs 20 only’ books. I would have picked up anything by Ross Thomas and this copy had a blurb by Elmore Leonard on the back cover saying: ‘ A stunning array of characters working a plot that twists and slithers, never stops.’ I read the first chapter later after I got home and now I am trying to make time to read this book as soon as I can.

'Out on the Rim' was the first title I picked up at Abids last Sunday before finding ‘A Whole Life’ by Robert Seethaller that I managed to buy at the price I wanted to pay- hundred rupees. I felt glad that no one had picked it up in the meanwhile and I got to bought it. As it says on the cover it had been long listed for the Man Booker and surprisingly it was less than a hundred and fifty pages long.

The next find was ‘Mildred Pierce’ by James M. Cain. I already have a copy of this title that I had bought a couple of years ago. But this was a very good copy almost new and coming cheap at thirty rupees only. In fact this was one of the three books I picked up from a heap selling for thirty rupees only.

The second book was ‘The Mirror Maker’ by Primo Levi. It is a collection of Stories and Essays translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. The stories in it are: The Interview; They Were Made to Be Together; The Great Mutation; The Two Flags; Five Intimate Interviews; The Mirror Maker; Through the Walls; The Ant’s Wedding; Force Majeure; A Mystery in the Lager; Time Checkmated; The Tommy-gun Under the Bed
The Essays in it are: A Valley; The Commander of Auschwitz; The Moon and Man; Sic!; Our Dreams; The Struggle for Life; Spears Become Shields; Translating Kafka; Rhyming on the Counterattack; Dear Horace; Bacteria Roulette; Among the Peaks of Manhattan; The Wine of the Borgias; Reproducing Miracles; The Man Who Flies; About Gossip; Jack London’s Buck; Adam’s Clay; The Spider’s Secret; The Dispute among German Historians; Defiance in the Ghetto; Hatching the Cobra.

The Sunday Haul (on 8-7-2018)

Everything was normal at Abids last Sunday. The previous Sunday there were no books on the pavements because the overzealous traffic cops had not allowed the sellers to set shop because some hotshot VIP was passing through. The weather was fine and I had a friend along to browse with. I picked up two books and missed buying a title that I later felt I should have bought. I had seen a good copy of ‘A Whole Life’ by Robert Seethaler but the seller quoted a high price for it which deterred me from buying it. I hope no one’s bought it because next Sunday I am going for it.

One of the books I picked up last Sunday was ‘Word Watching’ by Julian Burnside that I got for eighty rupees. It is an interesting book with thirty nine essays about, what else, words. Another book I bought just for the cover. It was ‘The Best of Indian Cooking’ published by Bay Books that I got for only thirty rupees.

These were the only finds at Abids last Sunday. Even as I write this post sitting in front of the television watching the news the forecast for tomorrow (Sunday) is for heavy rain in Telangana. Outside it has already started raining and it looks like it is going to be a wet weekend ruining my weekly visit to Abids.

The Sunday Haul (on 1-7-2018)

The trip to Nainital kept me away from Abids for two consecutive Sundays so I was more than eager to return to my familiar Sunday morning haunts. But I found my enthusiasm doused by the over action of the traffic policemen who did not allow anything to be set up on the pavements. As a result there weren’t many books on the pavements at Abids last Sunday. It was only in the few lanes and nooks that the book sellers could safely spread their wares on the pavements. It was at one such seller in a lane that I came across a brand new book that was small in size as well as compact. It was a copy of ‘College’ by Saikat Majumdar that I got for just thirty rupees.

Then in another pile of books selling for twenty rupees I found two crime fiction titles. I had been seeing books by Alan Williams since a long time and though the covers looked like there could be a good novel inside somehow I did not buy them. But last Sunday when I saw ‘The Purity Leagues’ by Alan Williams I picked it up along with ‘False Flags’ by Noel Hynd.

The best of the Sunday haul was at Chikkadpally on the way home from Abids. With each title by an Indian writer that I read my interest in Indian literature especially Indian English literature grows. I have a few titles about Indian literature but nothing that gives me a full picture. I wasn’t really looking for something that would give a full picture of Indian Literature in English since I wasn’t aware there was anything like that. So when I saw ‘An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English’ edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra with a seller at Chikkadpally I was dumbstruck. This title I found quite by chance is a real treasure though I had to shell out two hundred rupees for it. There is so much interesting in this book, about a page on Arun Joshi, that ‘All About Mr Hatterr preceded All About H.Hatterr’ and plenty of illustrations and photographs. It is filled with so much about Indian English writers that it needs a separate post. Along with this title I found the classic ‘Notes of a Native Son’ by James Baldwin that the seller threw in for free with ‘An Ilustrated History…’ !