Friday Double Post: Post- 1: The Sunday and Other Haul

The recent five book haul at Bengaluru notwithstanding my book buying spree continues. It was a holiday last Friday due to a festival and with nothing much to do at home I dropped in at the Best Books store at YMCA in Secunderabad. There I found another title of Dashiell Hammett –‘Red Harvest’ that I read is another classic. I am glad I found it so easily and also for so cheap- Rs 150. Another title I found right after I picked up ‘The Red Harvest’ was Anne Lamott’s ‘Bird by Bird’ that I had heard so much about. It is invariably included in the list of writing books recommended for people who want to become writers . Anyway, that wasn’t the only haul of last week. There were more books on Sunday at Abids.

The first book I spotted and picked up at Abids was ‘The Collected Poems of A.K. Ramanujan’ that was a hardbound copy. It had a faded cover page that was slightly torn in places. But the inside pages were intact and that was what mattered. It was a good find because this one volume seem to have almost all the poems of A.K. Ramanujan. The volume has four books, three of which were already published. Book 1- ‘The Striders’ (41 poems), Book 2- ‘Relations’ (33 poems), Book 3- ‘Second Sight’ (36 poems) and an unpublished book, Book 4- ‘The Black Hen’ ( 60 poems) which I read has been published in this collection for the first time. I got it for only thirty rupees which I guess is very reasonable considering the collection has in all nearly 170 poems that one cannot find anywhere at one place.

The second book was Chinua Achebe’s ‘Anthills of the Savannah’ that I had read about in the articles about Achebe following his death recently. I do not know when I will get the time to read it but I bought it nevertheless for fifty rupees. I haven’t seen any of his books except ‘Things Fall Apart’ at Abids so far.


PS: The photographs here look far better than the ones I put up usually because they have been shot by my ace photographer friend- Uma Shanker. Thanks, Uma.

THE BANGALORE SUPER HAUL

It is four days since I returned from a trip that took me to Bangalore and I am unable to believe I’ve been so lucky while I had been there. All the claims that I’ve been making so long that I am lucky when it comes to finding good titles weren’t so light after all. Otherwise what luck can explain being sent (by plane, no less) to the very city that I’ve been wishing to visit of late. I had been dreaming of making a trip to Bengaluru to look for books in a few stores like Select, Blossoms etc., but for some reason it wasn’t materializing. Then last Saturday, in an incredibly lucky manner, I got an opportunity to be in Bengaluru where I hauled in five good titles.

Just a day before, on Friday a colleague who was supposed to make that trip backed out at the last minute and I was asked to go in his place. I was supposed to receive a team of officials coming from Delhi at Bangalore and accompany them to villages in the districts of AP bordering Bengaluru. In a move that I can only now call as smart I decided to reach Bengalure in the afternoon and spend the rest of the day meeting a friend and also browse in bookstores on the MG Road and Brigade Road. Everything went according to plan. I reached Bengaluru by noon and went to the hotel where I had lunch. Afterwards, I took along the guy who had come to receive me and together we went to MG Road first. While I was unable to meet my friend I found five good titles after browsing through just three book stores.

The first place I went to was ‘Book Worms’ on MG Road where I found two books. Here I found another title that I was desperate to find and read since a long time- Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’ that I was very thrilled to find. I got it at a steep price though, at Rs 235. The next find was a Dave Barry title that I do not have in my collection of Dave Barrys. I found ‘Taming of the Screw’ and got it for a price that I found too high for Hyderabadi standards. But I wasn’t complaining since I would not have found these titles, at least not ‘The Maltese Falcon’ at Abids in Hyderabad.

Next stop was Select Bookstore, just a few steps away, on Brigade Road. Inside the two cramped rooms filled with books both old and not so old I looked in vain for other titles by Arun Joshi. I had hoped to find at least one Arun Joshi title there so I was sort of disappointed I couldn’t find any. But I found another title by Ryscard Kapuscinski that I do not have- ‘Travels with Herodotus’ that was a real treasure. I also picked up another Ashokamitran title that I hadn’t heard of- ‘The Colours of Evil’ that was a good copy. Both these books did not come exactly cheap though once again I wasn’t complaining. However I was a bit worried, wondering, having already found four good titles, if I’d find some more books at the next bookstore, which was Blossoms on Church Street, quite close by.

Honestly, though I have seen quite big bookstores, I wasn’t prepared for the sight that Blossoms presented- three storeys packed with miles of shelves stacked to the hilt with books, books and more books. Not only was I staggered at the sight of so many books I also lost my memory for some time. After I found that the store had a computer search facility on each floor I thought it made my job easier considering how little time I had. I had no time to go through all the shelves at Blossome. But when I tried to recollect some of the books on my ‘Must Buy’ list I had on my notebooks back home I could remember neither the name of a single title or the name of a single author that I wanted to read. After a great struggle to recollect only WG Sebald’s name came to mind. I told the young and helpful girl at the computer to look for his books. The search threw up ‘Austerlitz’ as available. I almost gave a whoop of joy at that news. While I looked for other titles in the shelves the girl went to look for the copy of WG Sebald’s ‘Austerlitz’ elsewhere in the store. I saw a decent copy of Pico Iyer’s ‘Tropical Classical’ and also Lajos Egri’s ‘The Art of Dramatic Writing’ that I did not buy. After sometime the girl returned with a fat book, a Penguin edition of ‘Auserlitz’ that was priced at Rs 180, which is very, very cheap considering how difficult it is to find Sebald’s books. Not many know about this marvelous writer.

‘Austerlitz’ was the best find on the Bengaluru trip and next comes ‘The Maltese Falcon’ both which I had not expected to find. Though these five books burned a rather large hole in my pocket I thanked my lucky stars for putting this trip in my way. For once I did not regret being away from Hyderabad on a Sunday because I would miss my Abids trip. The next day was Sunday and the second leg of my trip began and also ended on Sunday. It was an arduous trip before me but the thought that I had five good books in my bag comforted me.

The Sunday Haul

Only in Hyderabad can anyone think of such a thing. On Sunday morning I read about a book launch to be held at ten in the morning! It was the launch of a Telugu translation of ‘October Coup’ by Mohammed Hyder. Since it had been quite a long time since I had attended a book event so early in the day I decided to go. Another reason I wanted to go there was that the venue (Andhra Saraswat Parishat) was on the way to Abids. As expected, and in true Hyderabadi style, the event began a good three quarters of an hour after the official time. However I did not mind it a bit because the gathering was most interesting. There were people of that forgotten era, that gracious old world Hyderabadis, of the time of the Nizams. There were very senior citizens but very alert and active, walking in for the event organized by Hyderabad Book Trust and Anveshi, an NGO. I felt like I was in the midst of a gathering of those people who had witnessed a lot of history.
I bought a copy of ‘October Coup’ and read that it was a different version of the story of Hyderabad’s liberation, written from the view point of someone who was not from the ruling family or from the Indian side. It was by a bureaucrat of the Hyderabad Civil Service, Mohammed Hyder, who was the Collector of Osmanabad district. It seemed like an interesting memoir about how things came to being in those times when the Nizam ruled Hyderabad state was coerced into joining the Indian state. Unfortunately I could not stay for the panel discussion by some prominent journalists and other Hyderabadis because I had friends waiting at Abids. I left reluctantly since the discussion promised to throw up a lot of interesting facts about that time around 1948.

At Abids we began the hunt after our usual cup of tea at the Irani. It was damn hot but we went in like intrepid hunters intent on snagging something good. Shortly after we stepped into the bazaar I found Jean Rhys’ ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ and the Penguin edition I found was okay though filled with a lot of scribbling. The guy wrote his name and the title of the book in pen wherever there was some space. I bought it since it was pretty neat copy other than the pen scribbles. I got it for just twenty bucks and later I discovered that it was a minor classic. It seems one has to read ‘Jane Eyre’ to get the story which means there’s another classic I have to read.
The second find of Sunday was yet another copy of Somerset Maugham’s ‘Summing Up’ that I got for only twenty rupees. I already possess a couple of copies of this title but the copy I found on Sunday had a foreword by Glenway Wescott that I wanted to read. It is a book I give to people who tell me they want to be writers but have no idea how to go about it. After I’ve read this book a long time back and reread it almost every year I have a pretty decent idea of what good writing entails. I feel it is a book that everyone who has a desire to write must read at least once to understand something about writing and writers.


There are a few titles on my list I believed I’d not ever find anywhere, least of all in Hyderabad. Some such titles were WG Sebald’s ‘Rings of Saturn’; Freya Stark’s ‘The Southern Gates of Arabia’ ; Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’; Diana Athill’s ‘Stet’; Anne Fadiman’s ‘Ex-Libris’; Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep’ and other books. Incredibly enough I’ve found these titles in second hand bookstores in Hyderabad and at Abids on Sundays. But one title on my list I did not ever expect to find. Unlike other titles I did not even remotely fantasize about finding it and also reading it. I simply added it to my list of good books and left it at that. Last Tuesday I dropped in at the MR Bookstore at Begumpet. I had visited their branch at Punjagutta where I was told there was new stock had arrived at the Begumpet store. On Tuesday I went there and found truck loads of books. I looked at the titles patiently and saw only multiple copies of books by Bernard Schlink (The Reader) James Patterson, Maeve Binchy, Catherine Cookson, Nora Roberts and others but not one title that interested me. Then suddenly my eyes hit on a title that sounded unusual. It was ‘The Blind Rider’ by Juan Goytisolo, that one title on my list I least expected to find! I was overjoyed at this serendipitous discovery and gladly paid the hundred rupees it was worth.
When I looked inside the book I was surprised to discover that the book was published in 2003, just ten years ago, originally in Spanish. The English translation came out in 2005. I was under the impression that it was a book published a long back, sometime in the fifties or earlier. Anyway when I read the blurbs on the back cover saying Goytisolo was one of the greatest living Spanish novelists I was glad the book came my way on Tuesday. Now I have another great writer whose other books I have to look out for. But I do not think I will find any of his other books in Hyderabad or anywhere in the country. I was just too damn lucky to find this copy.

Friday Triple Post: The Sunday Haul

Post No. 3 of 3

With 37 books in the past three months I was in no mood to buy any more books. I am running out of space at home to arrange all the books I am picking up quite regularly from Abids and also from second hand bookstores in Abids. After finding two Arun Joshi titles I felt I had enough quality reading and so was firmly determined to go Abids on Sunday and only just look. When you are a serious addict it is impossible to just look at all the books spread out on the pavements at Abids and refrain yourself from picking up something that you think might be a good read. Not surprisingly, I ended up buying three more books on Sunday at Abids. These were titles I couldn’t ever leave behind for others to buy.

At Chikkadpally I saw the first book of Sunday’s three book haul. It was Manohar Malgonkar’s ‘Four Graves and Other Stories’ that I wanted to buy the moment I spotted it. First reason was that it was a Penguin title and the other reason was that I could have the book for only thirty rupees. Of late I have begun picking up books by Indian writers and collections of short stories by them are rare to get so I took ‘Four Graves and Other Stories’ that has a total of fifteen stories- Pack Drill, Top Cat, Green Devils, Blame the Army, Chikmaglur Hookshot, Home Delivery, Palace Orders, A Little Sugar, A Little Tea, Four Graves, Snake and Ladder, The Nut Pickers, Tactical Surprise, Sitting Bull, Maggie, and Tipu.

The discovery of the second book was mildly dramatic. I read somewhere about Pauline Kael, the movie critic and jotted down the title of her famous book- I Lost it at the Movies- somewhere. On Sunday I was going through a pile of books at one of the sellers when I spotted an old and tattered copy of Pauline Kael’s ‘I Lost It at the Movies’ at the bottom. I took it out and saw that it was in a condition enough to read the articles in and picked it up. The surprise was that the book was in a heap selling for only ten rupees. After I got home I read the review of ‘Devi’ a film by Satyajit Ray that was very well written and made wish I could somehow watch the movie.
I thought I wouldn’t find any more books worth buying after finding these two books but I was proved wrong. Last Sunday I had picked up Gangadhar Gadgil’s ‘Crazy Bombay’ and after reading the introduction got the impression that it was the only book the author wrote in English. I was surprised to find a collection of short stories in English titled ‘The Woman and Other Stories’ which I bought for only thirty rupees. The collection has sixteen stories: The Coin, The Wan Moon, The Rough and the Smooth, A Dying World, The Hollow Men, Gopal Padhye: A Kind of a Man, the Fledglings, The Age of Kali, The Truth of the Matter, Farewell, A Contented Soul, The Third Class Coach, The Lost Children, This Way and That, The Dog that Ran in Circles, and The Woman.

Friday Triple Post: The Holiday Super Haul

Post No. 2 of 3

Ever since I finished reading Arun Joshi’s ‘The Foriegner’ an overwhelming desire to read all his other books like ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ ‘The Apprentice’, ‘The City and the River’ and ‘The Survivor’, has taken root in my mind. But I cannot hope to read them until I find them. I learnt that his books are hard to find since they are out of print. There seemed to be no hope of getting these titles anywhere except physically look for them in bookstores. I know of only one bookstore where I might be lucky and find Arun Joshi’s books and that book store is the Best Books Centre at Lakdikapul. I have been there several times and have seen many titles by Indian writers so I had a hunch maybe there might be a title by Arun Joshi that I had missed earlier because I did not know he was such a good writer.

Last Wednesday was a holiday on account of ‘Holi’ and so I had a full day to look all over the store for Arun Joshi’s books. I know there are a couple of shelves on the first floor of Best Book Center store in Lakdikapul which are filled with hard to find titles by the first generation of Indian writers like Kantha Rao, Anita Desai, KA Abbas, Manohar Malgonkar, Mulk Raj Anand, Kamala Markandeya and so on. On Tuesday morning I rushed to the store full of hope and started the search. I did not go straight to the shelves upstairs but began from the shelves on the ground floor. Though I was eager to rush upstairs I restrained myself and made my way through all the titles on display on the shelves on the ground floor. I saw a copy of Pankaj Mishra’s ‘The Romantics’, William Zinsser’s ‘On Writing Well’ and other titles I might have picked up on another day. After half hour’s futile search I climbed up the winding staircase to the first floor.
Earlier too I had said that when it came to books I was damn lucky. I am not wrong because soon after I rifled through the titles on the book shelf I spotted ‘The Last Labyrinth’! I was overjoyed at finding another Arun Joshi title and the joy was doubled when I saw the price on the sticker- Rs. 50 only. It was a good copy and I was pretty pleased with myself for following my hunch.

That wasn’t all. I saw three new Spenser titles- ‘Now and Then,’ ‘A Catskill Eagle,’ and ‘Early Autumn’ by Robert B. Parker. I couldn’t resist buying them and so bought all three titles though they did not come cheap.

Friday was again a holiday due to Good Friday. I somehow felt that I had not looked properly in the shelves at Best Book Centre on Tuesday and wanted to look again. Since I did not have anything else to do on Friday I once again set off to Lakdikapul. I wasn’t really expecting to find another Arun Joshi title but then that was what happened. I discovered a copy of ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ at the bottom of a tall stack in a corner of one of the shelf that I had looked at only a day before. I was puzzled how I could have missed since I had looked carefully at each and every title. On Tuesday while paying for ‘The Last Labyrinth’ I had told the person at the counter that I was looking for titles by Arun Joshi and had requested him to keep them aside if he happens to find them. Maybe he had found another title and kept in the bookshelf. But whatever, I am terribly glad at finding the book that fetched Arun Joshi the Sahitya Akademi award and which Aditya Sudershan in his article in TLR termed as ‘…’. This title too came cheap, though not as cheap as ‘The Last Labyrinth’ but at Rs 95 it was cheap enough considering how difficult it is to find these books. I could have paid a couple of hundred rupees for the book but I got it for under hundred rupees.

As I bounded down the stairs with the copy of ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ in my hand I couldn’t help feeling a wee bit disappointed. I wished I had found ‘The Apprentice’ also because I want to read it before anything else. I have a feeling that I will find it very soon and until then I have the two titles to read.

Friday Triple Post: 2013 Trips: Trip No. 2

Post No. 1 of 3

For as long as I am in this post here at the Secretariat, I now realize belatedly, almost all my official trips are going to be to New Delhi only. All such visits I make are either to handover important reports to important officials there or to attend important meetings. Last week’s trip to Delhi, this year’s second official trip was to hand over an important report to someone at New Delhi. Since everything is important I usually go by plane to make it more important and so this trip too was by plane. I would have been happy if it was some ten or twenty page report but the report I was carrying was nearly two hundred pages neatly bound. Again it would have been not a problem if I was carrying just one copy. I had to take along all 35 copies of this report which added up o nearly thirty kilograms.

However I did not mind carrying all that weight because I had something else on my mind. Every since I found Arun Joshi’s ‘The Foreigner’ at Abids only recently I’ve been rather restless to start reading it. I wanted to read the book in one sitting, in one day if possible, without anything to distract me. The trip to Delhi offered me just that opportunity because it would take around two hours to get from Hyderabad to Delhi and another two hours on the way back. In four hours I could easily finish the book that was only 185 pages long. So I took along Arun Joshi’s ‘The Foreigner’ with me on the important trip to Delhi.

Since I had no appointed time to give the report at Delhi I took a slightly late flight than my usual early morning ones. As planned I started the book in the plane even before it took off breaking off only for breakfast. I reached Delhi by noon and was surprised that it wasn’t as hot as Hyderabad was these days. By one in the afternoon I had accomplished my task of handing over the reports I had brought along. I set off to my brother’s at CR Park for lunch. On the return flight home I read the rest of the book and finished it before the plane touched down at Hyderabad. It was one heck of a book that changed my views about Indian writers of the earlier generation. Aditya Sudarshan was right in calling Arun Joshi as ‘India’s Greatest Novelist’ and what puzzles me is that why there is almost nothing written about Arun Joshi’s books anywhere. Thanks to ‘The Literary Review’ in ‘The Hindu’, Thanks to Aditya Sudarshan’s article on Arun Joshi, Thanks to my habit of browsing at Abids or I would never have known about Arun Joshi.

The Sunday Haul

Sometime during 2011 I found a copy of 'The Penguin Book of Modern of Indian Short Stories' during my hunt for books on Sunday at Abids. The only story I read in the book was titled ‘The Dog that Ran in Circles' by Gangadhar Gadgil. I remember it was about a man waiting at a bus stand and watching the dog. I liked the story very much and wondered where I would be able to read more stuff by Gangadhar Gadgil. Last Sunday at Abids I got lucky and found Gangadhar Gadgil’s ‘Crazy Bombay’ which is a collection of his English articles on Bombay. It was a slim book and I got it for thirty rupees.Inside I read that Gangadhar Gadgil was a 'towering figure' in Marathi literature and is credited to be the creator of the new short story in Marathi. He has written over fifty books in Marathi in almost every genre- short stories, humor, travelogues, novels, plays, literary criticism and so on.


I was also surprised to read that Gangadhar Gadgil was an economist and was the Principal of Narsee Monjee College of Commerce at Bombay and was also an economic advisor to leading industrial houses. With such a busy profession I wonder how he got the time to write so much. I am both glad and also a bit depressed at finding the book which is in English. The rest of his books are in Marathi, incidentally, my mother tongue. It was the first time I wished I had learnt to read and write in Marathi. Of the nineteen articles in the book I read 'Tea in Bombay' and I was amazed that it ran into eight pages. I enjoyed reading the lengthy article which was humorous and did not have any sort of repetition. There was even a mention of the Nizam of Hyderabad in the article and it gave me quite a thrill.


However, the book I found first on Sunday was an English translation of ‘The Quran’ by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan with a wonderful cover. I got it at an unbelievable price of fifty rupees considering the book was hardbound and almost new. One of these days I am going to start reading it. Another find was John McPhee’s ‘Coming into the Country’ that I got for twenty rupees only. I already have a copy of this book but picked it up anyway since there’d always be someone who might enjoy reading it.

The Sunday Haul

The first book I found at Abids shortly after I parked my bike was VS Naipaul’s ‘Finding the Centre’ that I had been looking for since a longish time. I got the copy for only forty rupees which is something of a miracle. The seller is a crusty fellow who doesn’t yield much to bargaining and it felt good to browbeat him and get the book at my price. It was a good beginning to the Sunday hunt for books at Abids though I was secretly hoping that I wouldn’t find any other book.


More than half a decade after I first read about ’84 Charing Cross Road’ by Helene Hanff I found the book about two or three years ago. When I first found it I thought I’d start reading it right away since it was about books and the reading habit which is something I cannot resist reading. However, I started reading it only a couple of months back almost two or three years after I found the book. Incidentally, it is one of the books I read in the car on my way to the office. Needless to say it was a wonderful book and not surprisingly it has been made into a movie too. ’84 Charing Cross Road’ is a book that everyone who genuinely loves to read books must read at least once. Those who do not understand guys like us who love books and buy them also must read it. Last Sunday I found another copy of ’84 Charing Cross Road’ and bought it in the hope that there’d be someone I can give the book to. The book also came cheap to me, only thirty rupees.

The next find of Sunday was a title by an author I hadn’t heard of before. But since it was a travel book and moreover on Andalucia, I bought ‘Andalucia: A Portrait of Southern Spain’ by Nicholas Luard. Andalucia is another of those places in my long list of places I can never hope to visit on an official trip. I am glad I found it but the only worrying thing is whether I will find enough time to finish the book which is almost three hundred pages long. The last find of Sunday was yet another book on screenwriting- ‘Teach Yourself Screenwriting’ by Raymond G. Frensham- that I got very cheap. I do not know how many more books on screenwriting I have to read before I get the hang of it.

The Sunday Haul

This month’s Literary Review in ‘The Hindu’ of 3/3/13 had an article by Aditya Sudarshan titled ‘The Strange Case of Arun Joshi’ on an Indian writer in English who he calls as the ‘greatest Indian novelist’ who we have forgotten. Arun Joshi is a name I was not aware of till I read the article. For all my reading it is a pity that I still do not have knowledge of several good Indian writers writing in English. Until recently I was aware of only well known writers like RK Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai and few other writers. After I found and read books by Balraj Khanna, and Chaman Nahal I realized I had missed reading some little known writers who wrote as well as their famous counterparts. So I was pretty excited reading about Arun Joshi, especially about one of his books ‘The Apprentice’ listed in the article. It appears ‘The Apprentice’ is about a young government servant and his descent into corruption which is something I have dealt with in my own novel. I desperately want to read ‘The Apprentice’ but have discovered that the book is out of print.

Luckily for me, last Sunday I found Arun Joshi’s ‘The Foreigner’ at Abids and was quite pleased with myself for having spotted the book. It was a good copy and though I would have gladly paid anything that the seller asked I got the book for only forty rupees. The blurbs at the back of the book say that it is a fantastic book and in fact Kushwant Singh has this to say about ‘The Foreigner’ – ‘One of the most compelling works of fiction I have read for a long time’ which is enough reason for anyone to read it and I am glad I found it. Aditya Sudarshan’s praise for Arun Joshi’s writing made me wish I could find the other four novels by Arun Joshi: ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ ‘The Labyrinth’ and ‘The City and the River. I will keep an eye for these books at my usual haunts at Abids and the second hand bookstores of Hyderabad. Apart from ‘The Apprentice’ which I am curious to read I also want to find ‘The Survivor’ which is a collection of Arun Joshi’s short stories. I hope I find at least one of these books soon.

The other find of Sunday at Abids was Laurie Lee’s ‘Cider with Rosie’ that I had earlier seen but hadn’t picked up. This Sunday however I bought it since it was a good copy and also did not cost me more than thirty rupees. I am of the opinion that all titles published by Penguin are damn good reads and so since this book too was by Penguin I picked it up.

The Sunday Haul

The only way I can stop the books from overrunning our house is to stop buying them and the only way I can stop buying them is to prevent myself from going to Abids on Sundays. It isn’t just possible; it is like asking me to cease breathing. So I go to Abids on Sundays, the books pile up in all corners of my house, and I occasionally think when I will be finally able to finish reading all the books I have bought so far. But I think I will keep reading till my last breath because I simply cannot resist buying books especially at Abids every Sunday. Last Sunday too (3-3-2013) I came home from Abids with three books.


Though it is only very recent I do not now remember where I read about ‘Felicia’s Journey’ by William Trevor that I found last Sunday at Abids. It was a Penguin title and in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees. The next find was another book in another pile of books also selling for twenty rupees. It was the classic- ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac that I already have a copy of. This was again a Penguin edition so I bought it because it is not usual to find this book and also because the copy I found was in good condition. I found my first copy of this book sometime last year I guess but I haven’t yet started reading it. Maybe it is time for it.


My third find of Sunday was not at Abids but at a seller at RTC Cross Roads who has some good books at a corner at the traffic junction. I make it a point to stop and check out the collection he has every Sunday because I have found a couple of good books with him. It was when I removed a book on top of a pile that I saw Haruki Murakami’s ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’ that I immediately grabbed. It was a pretty good copy but I had to pay hundred rupees for it which I did not mind paying. I already have more than half a dozen titles of Murakami and this is my eighth Murakami title.

About six or seven years ago I read an article on writing by Ruth Rendell in which she recommended reading Ford Madox Ford’s ‘The Good Soldier’ that she says has been described as the finest novel in English language. She had high praise for the way the book is written and that it has taught her something about writing. She also wrote that she read the book once a year so I added to my list of books that I have to read. I was at the YMCA branch of ‘Best Books’ today morning and found the book there. It did not come cheap though; I paid ninety five rupees for it.


So, that was the week’s haul of books.