The Sunday Haul (on 22-01-2023)

It takes much to stop me from visiting the secondhand book market that comes up every Sunday at Abids. It has become a deep-rooted habit that’s just not possible for me to give up. So last Sunday too I was at Abids as usual right after breakfast. 

 

I like to travel and though I haven’t travelled much in my own country I wish to travel somewhere abroad. I hadn’t any opportunity to go to another country and I don’t think the opportunity will come unless I create it. A couple of years later I will be retiring so I am thinking of travelling to a country like Vietnam and also Cambodia, if possible. I want to see Vietnam because I have read about how the United States waged a war against this tiny nation and lost. Cambodia simply because I want to see the temples at Angkor Wat and also go around the country where millions lost their lives during the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I don’t know if I can make the trip but I dream of it though I have no idea about either country. Luckily last Sunday at Abids the first book I saw was an old copy of a Lonely Planet book- South-East Asia on a Shoestring that I eagerly picked up though it was a twenty-year old edition.

Though I am not computer savvy I know enough about how computers changed the lives of people who made them. When I saw a copy of ‘Accidental Empires’ by Robert X. Cringely I read on the cover that it was about the Silicon Valley and how they made their fortunes. It sounded interesting and so I picked it up though I have no idea when I will find the time to read this book that runs into exactly three hundred and fifty pages. It is dated of course but I want to read it. I got this book for hundred rupees. 

The next find was a book I already own. I have all the three titles in Chinua Achebe’s trilogy beginning with ‘Things Fall Apart.’ But when I saw a nice copy ‘A Man of the People’ by Chinua Achebe with a cover different from the one on the copy I own I couldn’t resist buying it. I bought it for eighty rupees only. 

 

What kind of crazy bibliophile I am you will wonder when you find out that I have six copies of ‘All About H. Hatterr’ by G.V. Desani on my bookshelf. Anyone with a normal brain will not buy another copy even though it is given free to him but since I love this classic like anything I bought my seventh copy when I saw it at a seller near the GPO at Abids. 

In a couple of weeks from now I will be turning sixty, something that I am yet to believe. A lot of physical changes may have taken in my body mentally I haven’t aged much. ‘The Challenge of Aging’ John A.B. McLeish suggests ‘Ulyssean Paths to Creative Living’ that I want to learn about. I hope it is as good as the blurbs say it is. I got it for hundred rupees at a seller in Chikkadpally on the way home from Abids. 

The Sunday Haul (on 15-01-2023)

Due to the Sankranti festival and the ensuing holidays there seemed to be fewer people at Abids last Sunday. I saw one seller packing up his books early into the afternoon and told me there was no business as there were no customers so that is why he was leaving early. It was too late for me to buy a couple of books with him because he was almost ready to leave with all his books packed into the sacks.

 

In a heap of books that has yielded several books during the past few Sundays I saw yet another wonderful title. I found a copy of ‘During the Journey and Other Stories’ by Sethu. After I flipped through the cover and a few pages I found that it was a collection of fifteen short stories in Malayalam translated into English by Aboobacker Kappad. It has a foreword by the renowned Malayalam writer K. Satchidanandan who praised the author Sethu for the stories. 

 

With another seller where I had picked up the Raymond Carver title and also the one by James Cameron I noticed another title that I seemed to have missed seeing the previous Sunday. It was a copy of ‘Dead Letter’ by Jonathan Valin and appeared to be a crime thriller title, one of a series of Harry Stoner. I love to read well written thrillers like these. The blurbs on the book looked good enough to make me buy it. It was for twenty rupees only. 

The Sunday Haul (on 08-01-2023)

 Only the week before I had picked up twenty five books during my five visits to the 35^th Hyderabad National Book Fair and it was already Sunday again making me wonder if I should be buying more books at Abids. Since I really cannot stop myself from going to Abids on Sundays I decided on the way that I would buy only one book and that too if it was something really good. However, I ended up buying three titles including one that I already have on last Sunday’s visit to Abids. 

The first title I found was a nice copy of ‘Around India in 80 Trains’ by Monisha Rajesh. I had seen this title earlier some time back but hadn’t bought it because the seller was asking a too high price. Last Sunday however I saw it at a different seller’s and he gave it to me for eighty rupees only. 

Sometime back I had found a copy of ‘Indian Summer’ by James Cameron and had found it to be very absorbing as it was mostly about his life in India, being married to an Indian, and about the political developments around that time. Last Sunday in a heap of books selling for fifty rupees each I saw a book with a cover torn here and there. After I picked it up I saw that it was a copy of ‘What a Way to Run the Tribe’ by James Cameron, a collection of his journalistic pieces about the places he had been and the people he had met which was just the sort of thing I love to read. 

In the same pile I saw a copy of ‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler that had a half-torn back cover and for a moment I almost put it back in the pile but I didn’t. I bought this copy though I have two copies of the same title on my bookshelf. 

The Sunday Haul (on 01-01-2023)

It was the first day of the New Year, first Sunday, and also the last day of the 35^th Hyderabad National Book Fair where there were more than three hundred stalls packed with books. But I wanted to go to Abids and I went only to buy just one book, a title that I never miss buying though I have bought multiple copies so far.

‘On Writing’ by Stephen King is a title I first found a long time back, more than two decades ago. Since then I must have bought more than twenty copies of this book and given them away to people who told me they wanted to write. Last Sunday I came across another copy that I bought right away for a hundred rupees. It was a beautiful copy in very good condition that I was lucky to find.