The Weekend Haul

I hadn’t been to Abids the Sunday before due to things beyond my control. I was vaguely restless until it became too much to bear. I went to the Unique Books second-hand bookstore in Lakdikapul on Saturday. I am very much into crime fiction and so when I saw a copy of ‘Raffles’ E.W. Hornung I picked it up. Moreover it was a Penguin title, something I rarely let pass.

A long time back when I was a teenager I happened to watch ‘Apocalypse Now’ and later Oliver Stone’s ‘Platoon’ and gradually came to know the horror that was the Vietnam war. Then I read some books like ‘Despatches’ by Michael Herr, ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien, ‘In Pharaoh’s Army’ by Tobias Wolff most of which presented one side’s version of the war. Later I realized that there was nothing that revealed the story on the other side. In fact I was keen to find something that would show how the other side, the Vietnamese view so to say, felt about the senseless war that claimed thousands of lives on both sides. I was reconciled to the fact that I may not be able to get hold of such a thing if it existed. But at the Unique bookstore, wedged between two tomes was a narrow, slim volume that had nothing on the spine. I was curious and took the book out.

The book turned out to be ‘The Sorrow of War’ by Bao Ninh. There was a sepia photograph of a helmeted soldier’s and under the title at the top it said ‘The Award-winning Novel from North Vietnam. I opened it and inside I read that it was an English translation by Frank Palmos from the original Vietnamese by Vo Bang Thanh and Phan Thanh Hao with Katarina Pierce, and published by Secker & Warburg, London in 1993. On the back cover were details of Bao Ninh who was born in Hanoi in 1952 who was in the Vietnamese Army and one of the ten survivors out of a 500 strong brigade that was in the 1969 war. I also read that the novel was a huge bestseller in Vietnam.

The next day, a Sunday at Abids I found another crime title- ‘Death May Surprise Us’ by Ted Willis who is another writer new to me. It was a Pan title and appeared very interesting with a lot of praise in the blurbs from Evening Standard, Sunday Times, and Evening Standard. I took a risk and bought the title for thirty rupees only.

The other find at Abids was a copy of ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’ by RK Narayan that I had read ages ago. The reason I picked it up was the beautiful cover of the paper jacket. It was a 1971 reprint published by RK Narayan’s own publishing house- Indian Thought Publications, Mysore. It was in good condition except for the numbers scribbled on the cover of this book that was from the library of a Government Junior College in Hyderabad. I wonder how it got there on the pavements at Abids. I bought this for thirty rupees again.

A Weekend Haul

It was a long weekend break for us in the government last week due to the Bakrid Festival. On Saturdays I buy three business papers- Business Line, Mint, and also Business Standard for their weekend supplements that have some interesting features. I usually buy them from a newspaper vendor in Lakdikapul who keeps them aside for me. Last Saturday just before reaching the vendor, I stopped at a second hand bookseller with his books on the pavement opposite the BSNL office. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘In the Land of Oz’ by Howard Jacobson that I bought right away.

After that I collected the papers from the vendor. Since it was a holiday with nothing much to do I sat in an Irani café and flipped through ‘In the Land of Oz’ by Howard Jacobson and read a few pages. I found it to be very funny and felt glad that I had bought the book since Howard Jacobson’s observations of places and especially the people during his travels in Australia are exceedingly funny. Presently I am reading and enjoying the humor in it.

A couple of minutes’ drive from the Irani café where I sat was a second hand bookstore, the Best Book Centre, Lakdikapul branch. It was where I headed next just to take a look and ended up finding another wonderful book. I found a copy of ‘Over By the River and Other Stories’ by William Maxwell. I have four books by William Maxwell-Time Will Darken It, They Came Like Swallows, So Long See You Tomorrow. He is one of the best writers I have ever read and I cannot resist buying anything written by William Maxwell.

‘Over by the River and Other Stories’ has a dozen short stories. These are: Over by the River, The Trojan Women, The Pilgrimage, The Patterns of Love, What Every Boy Should Know, The French Scarecrow, Young Francis Whitehead, A Final Report, Haller’s Second Home, The Gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel, The Value of Money, and The Thistles in Sweden. I got it for only seventy rupees.

Less than twenty four hours after buying these two books I was again looking for more books. The next day was Sunday and I was at Abids scouring the pavements for interesting titles that could be in the piles of books the second hand book sellers had spread out. At one seller I found a copy of ‘The Way of the World’ by Nicolas Bouvier and I decided to buy it right away. The reason was that it was a travel book and on the cover it said there was an introduction to the book inside by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Then on the way back to my bike I spotted a cover on a book that seemed to stick out in the pile of books it was nestled in. I went closer and picked it up. I saw that it was a beautiful copy of ‘This Time Next Week’ by Leslie Thomas. It was a memoir of the author’s childhood. Leslie Thomas is the author of ‘The Virgin Soldiers’ that I had seen only recently, and also other books. I decided to buy it and since it was in a pile of books selling for twenty rupees only that was what I paid for it.
That was one terrific weekend haul with four wonderful titles.

A Weekend Haul (on 03-08-2019)

On the two days it rained, Friday and Saturday I took the Metro to go to the Institute where I worked. On Saturday evening I decided to check out a second hand book store in Madhapur I check out often. I took the Metro to Durgam Cheruvu station and just under the station was the bookstore. I did not have anything specific in mind but just wanted to see what was on the shelves. Apart from books there was a lot of dust, a thick layer of it in fact on the books. I picked up five books in all but ended up buying only two.

On a previous book I had seen a book that appeared interesting because it was by a journalist who wrote about his interests in music, books, and paintings etc. Somehow I did not buy it thinking it would be quite boring. On this visit I saw it again and went through it a bit more carefully. It was a hardcover copy of ‘Enthusiasms’ by Bernard Levin, a journalist and he wrote about his enthusiasms which were books, architecture, walking, art, and so on. I decided to buy it after reading a few paragraphs which seemed to be to my taste.

Sometime back in November last year I had picked up a copy of ‘The L Shaped Room’ by Lynne Reid Banks at Abids. I looked for the post about it and I am surprised I had not written about finding it and had also not posted a picture of the book’s cover. Anyway, I had read the book and found it to be a wonderful story. I did not know then that it was the first title in a trilogy. Last Sunday at Abids I found the third title in the trilogy- ‘Two is Lonely’ by Lynne Reid Banks. I am glad I found it but it also means that I cannot read it until I find the second title of the trilogy which is ‘The Backward Shadow.’ I have no idea when and where I will find it.
I got these two books for hundred rupees each.

The Sunday Haul (on 28-07-2019)

This blog now enters the 13th year.

Maybe I had forgotten to pray that it shouldn’t rain last Sunday so it rained. I too welcomed it since there had been no rain since a long time and I didn’t mind sitting at home. However, in the afternoon the skies cleared up and I decided to go to Abids and check out the books on the pavement. There wasn’t much crowd at Abids and there also seemed to be fewer sellers and the reason could be the rain and also a popular local festival that was being celebrated last Sunday. I could find only one title.

Sometime back I had found a nice copy of ‘A Cab at the Door/Midnight Oil’ by V.S. Pritchett at Abids. It is his two-volume autobiography that I often see mentioned here and there. Last Sunday I found a copy of ‘Mr. Beluncle’ by V.S. Pritchett that I got for forty rupees. It is a novel that I plan to read sometime later.