The Sunday Haul (on 02-03-2025)

It was a bit late by the time I reached Abids last Sunday almost breathless. I had to meet a follower on Twitter and we sat in the ‘Star of India’ Irani café and over chai talked about books, when we began to read, our Abids routine, and our lives for a long time. I gave him a copy of ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy that I had found a little earlier. Unfortunately, he reads Telugu books mostly but I was excited to see a copy of a popular Telugu novel, one of the few that I had read a long back. It was a 1965 edition of Gopichand’s ‘Oka Asamarthuni Jeevitha gaatha’.  We parted with the intention of meeting every Sunday at Abids if possible. 

The first find of last Sunday at Abids was a copy of ‘The Year of the Runaways’ by Sunjeev Sahota. Many years before I had seen copies of ‘Ours are the Streets’ quite often at Abids but somehow I did not think I would be able to read it so I missed out on buying it. Recently I had read about his latest title and when I saw ‘The Year of the Runaways’ I bought it right away. I got it for sixty rupees. 

The next find was a copy of ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ by David Remnick. Of late I’ve begun to swing towards reading more of non-fiction especially accounts by journalists about happenings in particular countries, and also books about geopolitics and such. When I saw the copy of ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ by David Remnick with a sticker on the cover saying it had won the Pulitzer Prize I grabbed it. I got it for just hundred rupees. I do not want to put off reading this book that promises to be a good read.