The Sunday Haul (on 22-05-2022)

It had rained a bit sometime during the week in Hyderabad and the mercury had come down making it cooler. I was at Abids last Sunday at my usual time and on my usual hunt for good titles of which there are too many. I ended up four good titles in my haul at Abids last Sunday.

The first title I bought at Abids was a book that I almost missed finding. It was half hidden under a stack of large sized books on top of a bookshelf, and I spotted when I went closer to look at the title on the spine. It was a slim, small volume and it was Graham Greene’s ‘A Sense of Reality’ with four stories ( Under the Garden, A Visit to Morin, Dream of a Strange Land, and A Discovery in the Woods).  I got it for hundred rupees.

The next find was a nice looking Penguin title- ‘The Summer House’ by Alice Thomas Ellis. I had not heard or read about the author before so I was undecided whether to pick it up or not. When I saw on the cover that it was not only a trilogy but was also made into a movie my decision was made. I got this title too for a hundred rupees.

I cannot resist any book with an attractive cover so when I saw a book with an eye-catching cover from afar I looked closer and saw that it was a copy of ‘Where Gods Dwell’ by Kusum Budhwar. It is a collection of folktales and legends from the Central Himalaya. It is such a beautiful looking book that I couldn’t resist buying it and the fact that it was a Penguin title made it doubly impossible not to buy it.

My curiosity about knowing about other parts and countries of the world is growing by the day. The happenings in Sri Lanka have made me claim a book on the island from a seller on WhatsApp that I am yet to get in the mail. I saw another title at Abids on Sunday ‘Sri Lanka- A Land in Search of Itself’ Mohan K. Tikku that was a National Book Trust title. I flipped through it and decided to buy it.