The Sunday Haul (13.08.2023)

 It was a bountiful haul last Sunday at Abids with four good titles finding home on my bookshelf. The first find was a copy of ‘Dispossession; The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination’ by Edward Said with a seller near the GPO at Abids. It was in good condition and I felt glad I had found a good title. 

 Along with this title I also found a copy of ‘Alone Across the Atlantic’ by Francis Chichester with the same seller who gave me both these titles for just hundred and fifty rupees. I have another title by Francis Chichester that I found a long time ago at Abids but haven’t got around to reading it as it is quite a tome running into several hundred pages. 

A little further away with another seller I found a nice copy of ‘Heaven on Wheels’ by Firdaus Kanga, a title that I had been looking for sometime now. I had read about it and was interested in finding it as it was said to be a travel title. I got it for just seventy rupees. 

But the best haul of the day was not at Abids but at Chikkadpally where I stopped before going home. I almost did not stop since I had already found three good titles and did not want to buy any more books. I am glad I stopped because I spotted a copy of ‘Suttree’ by Cormac McCarthy that made me get down from my bike hurriedly and pick it up. I got this title for just a hundred rupees and boy was I glad because the copy I found was in very good condition. 

The Sunday Haul (on 06-08-2023)

 Last Sunday was a sort of special visit to Abids. Someone who follows me on Twitter messaged me that she would be visiting Abids and asked me to show her around. I was a bit nervous but the lady turned out to be an avid reader like her mother who accompanied her. She bought ten books and I gave her six copies of some of my favorite titles including ‘All About H Hatterr’ by GV Desani, ‘Summer of 42’ by Herman Raucher, a collection of stories by Mavis Gallant, a Dave Barry title. It is for this reason that I buy multiple copies of titles I loved to read. Anyway it all went off well and I was pleased about it all. 

I too picked up four titles on my own. The first title I picked up was a beautiful almost new copy of ‘The News: A User’s Manual’ by Alain de Botton. Over the past weeks and months  I have found Alain de Botton’s ‘How Proust Can Change Your Life’, ‘Essays in Love’, ‘The Art of Travel’, ‘The Consolations of Philosophy’ after reading which I was convinced that de Botton was a wonderful thinker and writer.  

 

Somehow I like reading accounts by individuals who lead interesting lives doing something not many people do or can do. One such title I found last Sunday was ‘The Shepherd’s Life; A Tale of the Lake District’ by James Rebanks that I picked up also because it was a Penguin title. I did not mind paying a hundred and fifty rupees for it. 

Of course any title related to travel does not escape my eye and so when I spotted a nice copy of ‘Without a Guide’ edited by Katherine Govier I picked it up knowing it would be a good title. I wasn’t wrong as the book is a collection of travel pieces by seventeen celebrated women writers like Annie Proulx, Alice Walker, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ann Beattie, Margaret Atwood and also Robyn Davidson whose ‘The Ribbon and the Ragged Square’ I had bought at Bengaluru, and from which book an excerpt is included in ‘Without a Guide’. 

 

I never seem to write good English so I am always trying to improve my writing by learning the basics of writing, grammar, style and so on. Sometime last month or the month before it I had found a nice copy of ‘The King’s English’ by H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler that I plan to read along with Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’ that I had got cheap earlier this year.

The Sunday Haul (31-07-2023)

 It did not rain last Sunday, mercifully since it had rained all through the other week. It was cloudy though but no sign of any rain. As usual I rushed to Abids and returned home with three good titles. 

The first find was a nice copy of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ by John Boyne that I bought right away. I had come across many copies in the past but none of them were in a good enough condition. So when I found an almost new copy I picked it up for fifty rupees.

 

The second find was at the seller who has copies of new and almost new titles in the piles he displays. I found a nice hard cover copy of ‘The Pleasures of Leisure’ by Robert Dessaix that I got for hundred and fifty rupees. I read that Robert Dessaix was an Australian writer since I had not heard of his name anywhere before. Anyway I was pleased to find this non-fiction title that I have already started reading. 

I found a most interesting title that I seemed to have read about somewhere very recently. I do not know where I read about ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’ by Carlo Levi but when I read that title on the cover of a tattered looking book I stopped and picked it up. I was pretty excited finding this book that I got for only twenty rupees. Now I want to recollect where it was that I read about this title recently.