An Online Haul

More than a year ago when it was not possible to go out on Sundays to Abids or to second hand bookstores I lucky enough to be added to WA groups of second hand booksellers. Whenever I saw any title that looked good I put in my claim and most of the time I got them. Some I couldn’t because others claimed them before I could. Last week there was a sale by a seller who always puts up good titles and I claimed three titles before anyone could and got them. These are the three titles I was lucky to get.

I remember having bought a copy of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by TE Lawrence sometime back. I don’t know where it is. This title came up for claim and since no one seemed interested in it I put in my claim and wasn’t very surprised to see that I had got it. It is a thick book running into almost 685 pages.

I have been frustrated for long for not being able to find even a single title by Bohumil Hrabal ever since I heard the name. I was on the lookout for Bohumil Hrabal titles at Abids, I searched in all the second hand bookstores in Hyderabad but I was not successful. But the moment I saw ‘The Death of Mr Baltisberger’ by Bohumil Hrabal up for claim I waited breathlessly until the hour when the books were open for claims. I claimed this title first as soon as the sale was open for claim and waited nervously until it was time for the seller to put out the list of who got which titles. I felt a thrill when I saw on the list that the book was mine.

There are fourteen stories in this book, translated from Czech by Michael Henry Heim, and the Introduction by Daniel S. Miritz is translated by Kaca Polackova.

I had found a copy of ‘The Condemned Playground’ by Cyril Connolly many years ago but haven’t yet got around to reading it for some reason. I was keeping this wonderful title to read when I had a lot of time on my hands so it remained unread. Also the cover was a little dirty but it did not matter to me. But when I saw another copy up for claiming I put in my claim and was relieved to find that I had got it. The copy I got turned out to be a nice copy with a clean cover and the book looked almost new.

The Weekend Haul (on 11-09-2021)

Last weekend was pretty long with three holidays. Friday was a holiday because of Ganesh festival, second Saturday which is a holiday for us and of course, Sunday. Friday passed somehow but I felt restless on Saturday and so decided to check out Unique bookstore in Khairatabad. I always find something interesting in Unique on every visit and my visit there on Saturday was no different because I found two nice titles.

Since finding the first copy of ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King sometime in 2004 or so I have managed to find and also buy more than a dozen copies of this wonderful book. Even after giving away many copies of this book I have at least four copies of ‘On Writing’ gracing my shelves. I can never resist buying this book and so when on Saturday I found a beautiful, hardcover copy of ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King that appeared to be almost brand new I snatched it.

Of late I seemed to be finding books about India, and travel in India by foreigners and Indians. Only recently I had found a lovely copy of “If it is Monday it must be Madurai’ by Srinath Perur and before that I had found a copy of ‘Mofussil Junction’ by Ian Jack. On Saturday the second book I bought was a copy of the August-September 1997 issue of ‘London Magazine; India 1997 with Affection’ that looked interesting. It had a mix of articles, poems, photographs, art, book reviews mostly by Indians but the topic or theme was India because 1997 was the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence. I was glad I found it though I would have been gladder if I had also bought other titles I had seen but couldn’t buy. But I plan to visit the store soon and pick up the other books I saw especially the copy of the collection of essays by Amitav Ghosh.

 Of course, the next day being Sunday I went to Abids too. However though I saw a couple of books that appeared very interesting I did not feel like buying them. I saw a nice copy of ‘Italian Neighbours’ by Tim Parks that I had earlier missed buying but gave it a miss this time too. I may have to wait until the Sunday after next Sunday to buy it because the next Sunday it is Ganesh immersion and there will be a lot of traffic restrictions. Also, the cops won’t allow the sellers to set up shop on the pavements.

The Sunday Haul (on 05-09-2021)

It had been raining almost all day since the past ten days over here and Sunday morning was no different except that it was all cloudy as if it would rain any moment. However it did not rain when I set out for Abids. The previous Sunday while picking up some books at Chikkadpally I had seen two other titles I couldn’t take. So before going to Abids I thought I would see if they were still there with the seller and take them if they were available. To my luck I saw them and took these two titles for just a hundred rupees for both.

The first title was a copy of ‘A View of My Own’ by Elizabeth Hardwick. A collection of essays in literature and society as it says on the cover, there are essays on a few writers known and little known, like Christiana Stead, Mary McCarthy, and the lives of some poets, writers. I hope to dip into it now and then over a long period.

The second title was a hardcover copy of ‘Light Blue, Dark Blue: An Anthology of Oxford & Cambridge Writing’ Edited by John Fuller, Julian Mitchell & William Donaldson, Robin McLaren. This book features writings of people who have been at these two universities in the sixties, and some of the writers I could recognise were Dom Moraes with three articles, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and many that I do not know. Another Asian sounding name was that of Waris Habibullah, who , I read at the back of the book,  was born in Lucknow, lived in Bombay,  and had also written three stories.

Occasionally I read books in the languages I know. I have read a couple of books in Hindi and a few in Telugu but that was a while ago. Last Sunday I saw a beautiful and almost new hardcover copy of ‘Krishnaveni’ by Ranganayakamma that I picked right away. In the Foreword the author writes about why she got this latest edition published. Ranganayakamma wrote ‘Krishnaveni’ in 1959 when she was nineteen years old and it was first published as a serial in a weekly magazine in the years 1960-61. But after more than eight editions there were no reprints and the book had become difficult to find.  There were several errors in the book that she wanted to change and she tried to obtain all the editions to know more about where she had made corrections and in which edition. Hence this latest edition published in 2010 has a lot of footnotes about the errors and the corrections in scenes. Now this only made me want to look for older editions of this title. I hope I will be able to find at least one edition before I begin reading this popular book.

The Sunday Haul (on 29-08-2021)

The other Sunday I had had a major haul of a few lovely titles by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett among others, and three Sundays later I made another lovely haul last Sunday. However, not all of them were at Abids but most of them were at Chikkadpally.

I am a big fan of William Trevor and will not miss buying any of his titles that I happen to come across anywhere. I have multiple copies of a few of his titles though I do not always remember which. So when I spotted a copy of ‘The Love Department’ by William Trevor I thought I did not have it and felt pretty excited that I had found another William Trevor title. But when I got back home later in the afternoon I checked all the William Trevor titles on my bookshelf and saw that I already have a copy of ‘The Love Department’ but I was not disappointed.

Occasionally a bunch of old editions of some wonderful titles turn up with one of the sellers at Chikkadpally. The sight of such piles gets me all excited. I eagerly sorted through one such pile I noticed with a seller and picked up half a dozen titles that I kept aside for a closer look. Two of them were titles that I had been waiting to read after reading ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark. The two titles were old editions of ‘Memento Mori’ and ‘The Comforters’ by Muriel Spark. I felt lucky to have found not one but two Muriel Spark titles at one place.

Another title I had kept aside was a beautiful copy of ‘The Heart of the Matter’ by Graham Greene, one of my favorite writers. I already have a couple of copies of this title but not with this cover. I was quite thrilled to find this copy.

The fourth title was one I picked up based on the blurb. It was a copy of ‘Mon’ by Natsume Soseki. I haven’t heard of this writer and since I have very few titles by Japanese writers I decided to buy it. I got all these four books for just a hundred and sixty rupees.

At another seller a little away I spotted a copy of ‘Why I am Not a Hindu’ by Kancha Ilaiah, a Dalit intellectual and a critic of Hinduism who lives and teaches in OU in Hyderabad, .