The Sunday Haul (on 21-01-2024)

 It wasn’t a normal Sunday as I sort of reversed my usual Sunday routine. Instead of going to Abids in the morning I went instead in the afternoon as I had to go somewhere in the morning. Going to Abids in the mornings felt a bit odd but apart from the time everything else was the same. Of course, the afternoon crowd is a bit different from the morning crowd at Abids which in my opinion, is made of the serious book types like yours truly. It is so because all week along we are impatient to come to Abids and grab as many good titles as one can find well before anyone else grabs them. 

Anyway, coming in the afternoon in no way changed my luck at finding good titles because I spotted a nice copy of ‘A Writer at War- with the Red Army 1941-45’ by Vasily Grossman. I Though I haven’t read much about Vasily Grossman the name stuck in mind and when I spotted this title I picked it up. I got it for a hundred and fifty rupees.  

 

Though I am not riding a two-wheeler after my accident in October which would have made it easier for me to stop at Chikkadpally after visiting Abids first, I am getting down at the Chikkadpally bus stop to check the titles that the three sellers there display on the pavement. At one of the sellers I spotted a copy of ‘Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain’ by Maryanne Wolf that I thought would be interesting to read. I got it for a hundred rupees. 

The Sunday Haul (on 14-01-2023)

 

It was festival time last week due to Sankranti, and due to which we (in the government) had a three-day holiday spell that included Sunday last. So it was in a rather relaxed mood that I went to Abids to dig out good titles from the pavements. 

The first title I found was a new looking copy of ‘Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations’ by Ronen Bergman that was thicker than a brick. I only know that Israel has a policy of assassinating people who it considers as its enemies and the assassinations after the Munich Olympics were on my mind when I picked it up to know more about how it happens. I got this title for two hundred rupees though I could have bargained for a lesser figure but it being the festival I did not bargain and paid the money and took the book. 

Sometime last year I had managed to successfully claim a copy of ‘The Blue Nile’ by Alan Moorehead in a sale on WA by a second-hand bookseller. I bought it because I had a copy of ‘The White Nile’ and so I wanted to read ‘The Blue Nile’ also along with it. However, I couldn’t read them both and in the meanwhile I came across another copy of ‘The Blue Nile’ by Alan Moorehead at Abids. This was a different edition as it was illustrated as well as bigger in size than the copy that I had. It looked quite attractive though there was a tear in the front cover at the bottom. I got it for a hundred and fifty rupees. 

The Sunday Haul (on 07 January, 2024)

  

On most Sundays I get lucky finding good titles in the Sunday book market at Abids. But on some Sundays I get very lucky and finding some wonderful titles there. Last Sunday was one such day when I found a wonderful title though it was at Chikkadpally and not at Abids. 

 

I spotted a copy of ‘Only Man is Vile’ by William McGowan and picked it up to take a closer look. It looked almost new and was a hardcover copy and I had a feeling that I had come across the title somewhere earlier. I couldn’t recollect where I had read about it and so decided to buy it and got it for two hundred rupees. It is about the situation in Sri Lanka written by a journalist.

 

I left Abids soon after finding this title and got into a bus upto Koti and from there I got into another bus and got down at Chikkadpally after some hesitation since I wanted to go home and have lunch as I was feeling quite hungry. However, I decided to check out the two booksellers and got lucky since I spotted a brand-new looking copy of ‘The Border Trilogy’ by Cormac McCarthy. A couple of weeks ago I had found a copy of ‘Suttree’ with the same seller and coincidentally it was at the same place that I found ‘The Border Trilogy’ that I got for just a hundred and fifty rupees. 

 

Hyderabad Book Fair dates

At last someone tweeted the dates of the Hyderabad National Book Fair. It is from 9-19 February, 2024. I am not very glad because I would be travelling from 12^th Feb and would be able to go to the Book Fair for only two days!  

The Sunday Haul (on 31-12-2023)

 In a coincidence last Sunday happened to be the last day of 2023 and also the last Sunday of the year. Somehow this year I haven’t kept count of the number of books I’ve bought at Abids as well as online but the figure could be somewhere around 200 which is quite high. As I set out for Abids last Sunday I wondered how many titles I would find that I really want to buy. I ended up buying three good titles.

The first find was ‘The Road to San Giovanni’ by Italo Calvino that I remember having bought earlier. But since the copy I saw last Sunday appeared to be reasonably good I bought it. It has five autobiographical essays that I am raring to read as soon as I finish the books I am reading currently.

The next find was a book I felt everyone in the country should read. It was a copy of ‘What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures’ that has twenty four essays in English and a few in Hindi by various JNU faculty about nationalism and other issues.

It was the last find that got me pretty excited after I picked it up and read the blurbs on the cover. When I first spotted the book the title intrigued me and I had that feeling that it could be a good book. I told myself even before I actually picked it up that I should buy it. However I did not pick it up right away but came back and read the blurbs. On the cover the blurb by Frances Wilson of Sunday Times said ‘You have in your hands a masterpiece’

It was a copy of ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance’ by Edmund de Waal that had me quite excited as I flipped through the pages and read the blurbs on the back cover. Apart from praise by others it was the praise by Diana Athill - ‘A complex and beautiful book’ that convinced me that my hunch that it was a good book was correct.