An Online Haul

With the lockdown restrictions in place in Hyderabad I haven’t been able to visit Abids for almost a month now. I had this restless urge to buy books and so when there were a couple of sales of second hand books on WhatsApp groups I claimed six good titles. After a long time I felt pleased that I had bagged some really good books though it burned a bit of a hole in the pocket.

In February, 2019 while on a visit to Bengaluru along with my son, I found a copy of ‘Bang, Bang Birds’ by Adam Diment at the Blossoms store that I bought for just seventy rupees. Only weeks before I had read about Adam Diment, and I felt glad I had bought the book since I had read it after I got home and found Diment to be a terrific talent. I wished I had found more of his titles but I couldn’t until last week when I found not one but two Adam Diment titles up for sale on a WhatsApp group.

I was surprised that no one claimed ‘The Great Spy Race’ by Adam Diment and ‘The Dolly Dolly Spy’ by Adam Diment. I was quite thrilled to get these two titles.

Later in the same year Jokha Alharthi won the Man Booker Prize for her ‘Celestial Bodies’ that is still being talked about. I wanted to read it and luckily a copy was on sale on the WhatsApp group and I claimed it before anyone else could and got it. I do not know when I am going to read it but read it I will.

A long time ago I had found a copy of ‘Paraja’ by Gopinath Mohanty that I haven’t read so far because it is a large tome and I am hesitating to begin it. Sometime last year I also found another hardcover copy of another collection of stories by Gopinath Mohanty with the title ‘The Bed of Arrows’ that too I haven’t read so far.  On the WhatsApp sale I saw a copy of ‘Stories’ by Gopinath Mohanty that I claimed and also got. It is a small and slim book with just three stories- Ants; The Shelter; and The Bed of Arrows. 

For a long time I had been looking for a travelogue about the Carribean countries but couldn’t find any. When I saw ‘A Walk Around the West Indies’ by Hunter Davies on the sale I decided to claim it and to my surprise I got it because no one else had claimed it.

There’s no need to mention about Martin Amis’ writing because everyone knows how good he is. Only the other day I read an entire chapter on Martin Amis in Christopher Hitchen’s ‘Hitch-22’ where references to Martin Amis are aplenty. I have a few titles by Martin Amis including two copies of his most famous  title- ‘The War on Cliché’ the first copy of which  I found at Daryagunj in Delhi a couple of years ago. When I saw ‘The Moronic Inferno’ by Martin Amis on the sale I claimed right away and nervously prayed that no one would claim it before me because it was a non-fiction and a travelogue kind of work. To my relief I got it and a few days back when the books were delivered I saw that it has 27 essays on various places and people. This looked like a book I am going to enjoy immensely.