The Sunday Haul (on 28-01-2024)

 After getting the news that the Hyderabad National Book Fair will be from February 9-19, 2024 I thought I would not buy books at Abids and instead pick up books at the Book fair that is just ten days away. However once I reached Abids last Sunday I couldn’t help picking up four titles, all good ones. 

The first title I picked up was an old copy of ‘Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People’ by Fritjof Capra that I got for a hundred rupees. I don’t know if and when I will read it but I felt I had to buy it. I am going to Ooty again on a two-week trip and thinking of taking this book along to read. 

Another find was a hardcover copy of ‘An Unfinished Journey’ by Shiva Naipaul, a collection of six essays. Inside I saw the stamp of ‘Institute of Defence Management- MESS Library’ and wondered who decided to discard it. One of the six essays in it titled ‘My Brother and I’ is about his famous brother V.S. Naipaul. He writes of the absence of his brother in his life, and also about his own development as a writer.  I remember buying a copy of his novel 'Fireflies' long back but I do not remember if I had read it!

 

A year ago perhaps I had found a wonderful copy of ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis that I had read about in several places. I thought I was lucky to find it, and had also read it and found it to be a wonderful book. Last Sunday I came across another copy of the same title but with a different cover that at first I did not want to pick up since I already had a copy. But I couldn’t leave it behind and so picked it up.

 

When I want to know more about something current or something I am intrigued by I always try to learn the basic facts from sources that put it across in a simple way. Ever since the flare up of the conflict in Palestine I wanted to know the background facts. I found a copy of  ‘The Arab-Israeli Issue’ by Paul Harper, a hardcover title not more than eighty pages in which I learnt about how it all began. It was a discarded copy from the Seattle Public Library that I got for fifty rupees.