The Sunday Haul (on 21-05-2023)

 It was pretty hot last Sunday at Abids where I went to browse among the second hand books laid out on the pavement. It was hot enough to need a cap and a bottle of water that I took along. Very often I get asked about some good books for children by their parents after they get to know that I like to read a lot. I always mention a few titles that I myself have read but I wish I knew about other new and better Indian titles as well. Till last Sunday I did not know there actually was a book about good children’s books in India. I spotted a copy of  ‘101 Children’s Books We Love’ ed Anita Roy & Samina Mishra the first thing after I had parked my two wheeler. I got it for fifty rupees.  

I was a biology student ending up as a post graduate in Agriculture so crops, plants, animals and trees are something I know a bit of but trees were something of a mystery, I can tell a few trees right away but I don’t know many things about them just as I don’t know much about just about everything in my life. Anyway, when I saw a nice copy of ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ by Colin Tudge I wanted to buy it and so bought it for a hundred rupees. 

 

I always pick up good travel titles whenever I see them. I found a nice copy of ‘Himalaya’ by Michael Palin at a seller who throws all his titles, good and worthless one together in a heap that he sells for a fixed price. I found this title in a heap selling for fifty rupees and picked it up. This is my first Michael Palin title and am eager to read it as soon as possible. 

The Sunday Haul (14-05-2023)

 After having returned from Bengaluru with a big haul of fifteen wonderful titles I was not in the mood to buy any more books at Abids on Sunday though I went there more out of habit than with the intention of buying books. However, I find it very hard not to buy good titles when I find them. So when I saw the copy of ‘The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets’ edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra that I had seen earlier in the month I picked it up. The twelve modern Indian poets featured in this anthology are: Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Keki N. Daruwala, Dom Moraes, Dilip Chitre, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawala, Agha Shahid Ali, Vikram Seth, and Manohar Shetty. 

 

There aren’t many exciting moments in a bibliphile’s life than when coming across a nice sounding title by an author you’ve never heard of. So when I saw a copy of 'The Making of a Philosopher’ by Colin McGinn I instantly picked it up after reading the blurbs on the cover and also knowing instinctively knowing that it would be a good read. Good read it has turned out to be since I began reading the same evening I bought it at Abids for a hundred rupees. 

The Haul at Bengaluru on 7th & 8th May 2023

 

Sometime in March this year when my brother-in-law told me that his daughter was getting married in May and that the reception was in Bengaluru I got pretty excited. Bengaluru was where I was dying to go again after having been there in February 2020 just before the lockdown. I was counting the days when I would be catching the train to Bengaluru. Last Saturday we set out for Bengaluru and the first thing I did after breakfast was to set out with my son for Church Street. 

 

On the first day’s visit I decided to look in the three stores that Blossom had on Church Street. A friend in Bengaluru who I called told me about the third store that had been recently opened it seems. I had only a few hours to spend looking for books so I made the most of the time I had and managed to pick up eight titles. 

 

Half of the eight titles were travel titles and the first one was ‘The Arabs’ by Peter Mansfield that was about the Arabs and strangely enough I have another book with the same title by David Lamb. 

 

The second travel title was a nice copy ‘The Big Red Train Ride’ by Eric Newby that seemed to be about taking the train in Russia. I was glad I found this title.

 

The third travel title as a beautiful copy of ‘Best of Lonely Planet Travel Writing’ with some really wonderful travel essays by an assortment of well known travel writers.

My friend who lives in Bengaluru had told me that he had seen many Dervla Murphy titles in Blossom so it was the travel writing section that I checked out first because I was desperate to find ‘Full Tilt’ by Dervla Murphy. Instead I found ‘Wheels within Wheels’ by Dervla Murphy that I added to the. Haul. 

 

I picked up the copy ‘God’s Snake’ by Irina Spanidou, a writer I never heard after reading the blurb by Doris Lessing on the cover. I hope it is as good as Doril Lessing says it is. 

 

It is always a surprise to find a title by an author, an Indian at that, one had never heard. So when I saw a copy of ‘Seven Steps in the Sky’ by Kundanika Kapadia I was pleasantly shocked to find that it had won the Sahitya Akademi prize! in 1985. The original is in Gujarati and translated into English by Kunjbala and William Anthony.  I loved the cover and look forward to read it soon. 

 

A long time back I had read a review of ‘The Permanence of Grief’ by Nisha da Cunha and the reviewere had written that it makes for depressed reading which made me not to read the book though I hadn’t yet bought it or come across it anywhere. But the copy of ‘Old Cypress’ by Nisha da Cunha that I saw in Blossom didn’t look like it would make me sad so I bought it. 

 

Finally, I found the copy of ‘RSS- The Long and The Short of it’ by Devanuru Mahadeva that I had wanted to read to know what it was all about. It is a short book of just ninety pages translated into English from Kannada. 

 

We returned home with this haul and with a plan to come the next day for landing more titles. 

 

The next day, 8^th May, we were back on Church Street around ten in the morning. I decided to drop in at the other stores and so began with a visit to ‘Bookhive.’ The collection wasn’t much but just before leaving in a corner stacked behing other titles I found a copy of ‘The Blue Hammer’ by Ross MacDonald that I got for eighty rupees. 

 

Next it was turn of ‘Book Home’ in the same place where ‘Bookworm’ used to be if I am not wrong. Anyway I had a pleasant shock when I found the title I was looking for. I found a nice copy of ‘Full Tilt’ by Dervla Murphy in Book Home and what made it pleasanter was that I got it for just a hundred and ten rupees. 

 

Next I visited ‘Book Worm’ and also ‘Blossom’ and picked up five titles in these two stores but I cannot now remember which title I picked up in which store! 

 

I found a nice copy of a title by an author whose book I picked up recently. It was a copy of 

‘A Secret Country’ by John Pilger that was about Australia. Surprisingly the next book I came across was also about Australia- ‘The Ribbon and the Ragged Square- An Australian Journey’ by Linda Christmas

 

The other finds were a nice copy of ‘The Waiting Land’ by Dervla Murphy, ‘A Traveller’s Life’ by Eric Newby, and an interesting title Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ by Bruno Schulz about whom I had read somewhere very recently. 

 

We returned to Hyderabad with a bag full of wonderful titles that also filled my heart with a strange joy at having landed some really terrific books. 

The Sunday Haul (on 30-04-2023)

The only title that I found at Abids last Sunday was a copy of ‘Stallion of the Sun and Other Stories’ by U.R. Ananthamurthy whose beautiful yellow cover I spotted from far away. It was a Penguin title that I immediately bought for seventy rupees. I was filled with a quiet joy when I bought realizing that I had in my hands something not easily found.

 

The seven stories in ‘Stallion of the Sun’ were edited and translated from Kannada by Narayan Hegde who also wrote the introduction to the book. The seven stories in it are: Ghatashraddha, Clip Joint, Mount, The Sky and the Cat, Stallion of the Sun, Akkayya, and Jaratkaru. The Sky and the Cat is a wonderful story that I already read in ‘Modern Indian Short Stories’ edited by Stephen Alter and Wimal Dissanayake.