The Sunday Haul

Once again it was a cloudy morning last Sunday and there was even a light shower making me wonder if it would rain later in the day. Luckily, the rain stopped before I set off for Abids to look for books. I seem to be on an extended stretch of luck because within moments of parking my bike I found a good title that I already have several copies of. I found yet another copy of ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King that I cannot resist buying for some reason. So far I have found more than a dozen copies of this book and after giving out several copies to people who asked me for it, there are still about half a dozen copies of ‘On Writing’ on my shelves. Coincidentally, this is the fourth copy that I have found at the same seller where I had found my first copy of ‘On Writing’ which, incidentally, did not have a cover. The title was written with a sketch pen on a plain white cover and I was lucky to have spotted it. Anyway, like most of the copies that I had found so far I got this copy too quite cheap. I paid only fifty rupees for this copy which was in decent condition.

My next stroke of luck came minutes later. I have been looking for Romesh Gunesekera’s ‘Reef’ ever since I found his ‘The Match’ a couple of months back. At last I was able to spot it at Abids with a seller who had displayed it rather prominently but had no idea how valuable it was. I was able to bargain for it and ended up buying ‘Reef’ for only fifty rupees. The Granta Books edition that I found was in beautiful condition and I was glad to have found ‘Reef’ at last.

The third book in Sunday’s haul was John O’ Hara’s ‘Appointment in Samarra’ about which I had read somewhere very recently. In fact, it was in ‘Writing a Novel’ by John Braine in which the opening scene was taken as an example of a good beginning. After I read the opening I wanted to read the entire book and luckily, a few days later I found it at Abids last Sunday. Anyway, I got this book pretty cheap. It was the cheapest book in Sunday’s haul, at just twenty rupees.

With these three books the total haul this year has reached stratospheric heights. It is likely to go up further since there is the Hyderabad Book Fair coming up sometime in the next month. I am eagerly waiting to read the announcement about the dates and the venue of the next Hyderabad Book Fair.

The Midweek Haul

My streak of luck with books did not end on Sunday with the finding of another copy of GV Desani’s ‘All About H Hatterr’ but continued further. On Thursday I found five more books at bookstores I visited. I was on leave on Thursday since I had to run some errands. Luckily for me, I finished the jobs by afternoon and had a couple of hours to kill. The only thing that comes to mind is to seek out the nearest second hand bookstore and check out the shelves. I was at Begumpet and the MR Bookstore was the nearest bookstore and I dived into it.

One of the titles that had been elusive so far was ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad. At last I found it at the MR Bookstore and got it for a hundred rupees. The next find was another title that I had been looking for. I had read about Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’ somewhere recently and had wondered if I would be able to find it here in Hyderabad at Abids. This title too was there and I bought it again for another hundred rupees.

One discovery of an author that I am rather proud of is Alistair MacLeod. A couple of years ago at a sale by Best Books on a hunch I picked up a collection of short stories titled ‘Islands’ by Alistair MacLeod. Later I found that he was a master short story seller and I regretted not buying book by him titled ‘No Great Mischief’ that was also on the shelf at the sale. One reason was that it was too expensive and also I did not want to take a chance on a writer I did not know. A couple of days later I was surprised to find another collection of short stories ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ on the pavement at Abids which I got for an unbelievable price of ten rupees. After I read this wonderful collection of short stories I regretted not buying ‘No Great Mischief’ which is the only novel that Alistair MacLeod wrote. Last Thursday I found a paperback copy of ‘No Great Mischief’ for only fifty rupees. ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ is the only title by this wonderful writer that I do not have. Wish I could find it soon.

My next halt was at another MR store beside the flyover at Punjagutta. There I found another title by an author I had come to know only recently. I had read about Jean Giono’s ‘The Harvest’ somewhere and I had wondered about finding it at Abids. I did not find ‘The Harvest’ but found another title ‘The Slaughterhouse’ that I got for a hundred rupees. Since it was turning out to be a great day for finding books I decided to check out my luck at another store though I was spending more than I had planned.

I landed at the Best Books store at Abids where I stuck gold again. Sometime last week I had bought JM Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace’ which I am yet to begin reading. I know there is a famous Indian writer who said that JM Coetzee was ‘God’ to him. I also know enough to lap up any title by Coetzee. As luck would have it, I came across ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ at the Best Books store at Abids. But it did not come cheap and I had to shell out a hundred and fifty rupees for it.

In a couple of hours I ended up adding five more books to my ever increasing pile of books. With these five books the total number of books I have bought this year comes to 127. There’s more than a month and half for the year to end and I have no idea how many more books will get added to this total.

The Sunday Haul

If finding a third copy of a rare title isn’t enough proof that I am lucky when it comes to books then I don’t know what else would convince me about it. On the other hand it would also be a sign that I should finally start reading the book which is something I am putting off for some reason or the other. I am elated because last Sunday I found my third copy of GV Desani’s ‘All About H Hatterr’ which was a 1972 edition.

Having missed my usual visit to Abids the Sunday before last because I had to go to the office on work, I was quite restless the whole week. It was an anxious wait for this Sunday. Quite unusually, the weather had changed all of a sudden and it became cloudy and there was also a light drizzle in the morning. But that did not stop me from making the trip to Abids. Luckily, almost all the sellers were there and I went around checking out the treasures laid out on the pavements hoping to find something to take back home. There was nothing interesting I found so I started back with disappointment in my heart. There were four more sellers at Chikkadpally on the way back home.

It was at the seller in the corner of the junction of the RTC X Roads that I spotted the copy of ‘All About H Hatterr’ by GV Desani. The drizzle had grown into a steady rain and I was anxious to go home. I saw the book at the last moment, just the name ‘GV Desani’ and I stood still. The book was underneath another book obscuring the cover of Hatterr. It was also out of reach. The seller was taking a long time talking to another customer and I became a bit impatient. Though there wasn’t anybody around who seemed to have noticed the book and also interested in it I felt a bit nervous. So I got down to my knees and lunged forward to extricate the book from the pile. I was thrilled to find it was ‘All About H Hatterr’, an older and different edition than the two I had with me.

It was only in the first week of this month that I had found my second copy of ‘All About H Hatterr’ by GV Desani at Abids. I had found the first copy after several years of waiting, last year sometime in May I guess. It is a title that is difficult to find. So I was mighty pleased to find a third copy. I briefly wondered how many people would have three different editions of this book and imagined that I could be the only person in the country to have them in my possession. The first copy I found was a 1982 edition that I got for Rs 100, and the second copy I found was a 1986 edition that I got for Rs 100 and the latest and third copy that I found is a 1972 edition which makes it a 42 year old book. It is in good condition.

The surprising thing is that I got this book pretty cheap. The seller asked for only fifty rupees which I paid gladly.

The Sunday Haul

Despite the regular shopkeepers keeping their shutters open on Sunday in view of the Diwali shopping spree, many of Abids’s second hand bookseller were present. It is a comforting sight to see all those books laid out on the pavement and the anticipation of finding something rare or good.

One of Paul Theroux’s titles that I am looking for is ‘Fresh Air Fiend’ that I had once found long back but, quite foolishly, had not bothered to pick up right away and hence lost it. I still haven’t found a copy of it but last Sunday at Abids I found a good copy of ‘The Happy Isles of Oceania’ that I already have in my collection. I couldn’t resist buying this second copy since it was in a heap of books selling for only twenty rupees each. The Penguin edition was in perfect condition and I bought it the moment I saw it.

Recently, I came to know about a seller of second hand books in Matunga, Mumbai. In his latest list of books that he mailed to me on my request, I found a title I was unable to find anywhere. He had a hardcover edition of ‘Disgrace’ by JM Coetzee. I ordered the book from him and he mailed to me last week. I waited a whole week for it and I got it the other day.

I was glad to see inside that the hardcover edition was one of the 2500 copies printed to celebrate the centenary of Harvill Secker, the publisher. Though the dust jacket was missing it was more than the two hundred and twenty five rupees I paid for it.

The Sunday Haul

There is a large gap in my reading that I have been trying to fill since long but not quite succeeding. It is a bit embarrassing to confess that I haven’t read many classics. I haven’t read titles by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, the Bronte sisters, and many other writers. Somehow I feel daunted by the sheer size of the books and hence have avoided buying and reading them. Recently I made a beginning and read John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ that I found to be good. The Sunday before the previous I came across a good copy of ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen that I was getting for cheap. I bought it.

The next find was by a writer I had read about recently. Currently I am reading Paul Theroux’s ‘Sunrise With Seamonsters’ in which he wrote about Joyce Cary in an essay titled ‘An English Visitor’ which was about Cary’s novels. He had mentioned all the novels except ‘Mister Johnson’ which was the book I found on Sunday. Earlier after I found Chinua Achebe’s books I was looking on the net for reviews and articles on him. I found Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s essay in Salon.com where she mentioned ‘Mister Johnson.’ When I saw the book at Abids I picked it up without hesitation. It wasn’t exactly a good copy but then I have never seen this book at Abids or anywhere before so I have to make do with that I found.

There was a time when I was quite desperate to find GV Desani’s ‘All About H.Hatterr’ that I found sometime this year after a long search. I was thrilled when I found it since I had read that it was a rare title and copies were difficult to find. However, I found another copy, a beautiful one that was in pristine condition. I got this copy for peanuts, paying only hundred rupees for it.

I also found a book by another regional language author that I picked up based on the cover alone. I found Oriya writer, Gyaneswar Misra’s ‘Face of the Morning’ with the same seller where I found ‘Mister Johnson’ and got it quite cheap. I was very pleased to find it but I really wish I could find something by Fakir Mohan Senapati.

There was another bestseller that I did not buy for various reasons. The book was more than thousand pages long and was thicker than a brick, the price was two hundred and fifty rupees and besides, it wasn’t a title I wasn’t exactly dying to read. The book was ‘Infinite Jest’ by David Foster Wallace which I did not buy.

Sometime during the middle of the week before the last I happened to be in Secunderabad on some errand. Whenever I am in Secunderabad I make it a point to drop in at the Best Book store in YMCA. So I went there for a quick look and found a wonderful book. I saw a collection of ‘Great Love Stories’ in a collection titled ‘My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead’ edited Jeffrey Eugenides.

The hardcover book contains twenty seven love stories written by some big time writers. Here’s the list:

First Love and Other Sorrows by Harold Brodkey

The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov

Love by Grace Paley

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

The Dead by James Joyce

Dirty Wedding by Denis Johnson

Natasha by David Bezmozgis

Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg

The Hitchhiking Game by Milan Kundera

Lovers of Their Time by William Trevor

Mouche by Guy de Maupassant

The Moon in Its Flight by Gilbert Sorrentino

Spring in Fialta by Vladimir Nabokov

How to Be An Other Woman Lorrie Moore

Yours Mary Robinson

The Bad Thing by David Gates

First Love by Isaac Babel

Tonka by Robert Musil

Jon by George Saunders

Red Rose, White Rose by Eileen Chang

Fireworks by Richard Ford

We Didn’t by Stuart Dybek

Something That Needs Nothing by Miranda July

The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

Innocence by Harold Brodkey

The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro

All these great stories by some of the greatest writers in a hard-bound book, all mine for only two hundred and thirty rupees

The Sunday Haul

Neither festival nor anything seems to stop the second hand bookseller from setting up shop in Abids on Sundays as they have been doing since decades. They do it because they know those who love books (and there are many of them here in Hyderabad) come looking for them. The Sunday before the previous one some of the regular shopkeepers had opened their shops which meant the booksellers had to spread their wares in other parts. This Sunday more shops opened but the book sellers simply went a bit further away with their books on the pavement. I was there last Sunday but without the company of Uma and Shrikant which meant I did not have chai at our usual café. It was a solo hunt but it made me more focused which resulted in a haul of three books.

The first find was Dave Barry’s ‘Bad Habits’ that had been there on the pavements since long. I picked it up though I have another copy of this title. However, it did not come cheap and I had to pay eighty rupees for it. I am always reading one or the other title of Dave Barry to savor his crazy brand of humor which never goes stale.
The second find was a title by a writer I discovered only recently. I found Charles McCarry’s ‘The Last Supper’ in a heap of books selling for only twenty rupees. The bottom of the cover was in shreds and most of the title was also gone. However the author’s name was what caught my eye and thus I found this new title. I already have three of his titles one of which I am currently reading- The Better Angels- which isn’t as good as the first one I had read, which was ‘The Tears of Autumn.’ There is another of his titles that I had found recently- The Miernik Dossier- that I have yet to read.

The third find was not at Abids, but at a seller in Chikkadpally. I found Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘The Purple Hibiscus’ that I bought at a steep price. I got it for a hundred rupees which I think is reasonable enough given that the book was in a good condition and looked almost new. This is the second title by this Nigerian author that I have, the first being ‘That Thing Around Your Neck’ that I had found long ago and have also not found the time to read. At the back of TPH is a list of her ten favorite books and one of the titles is Amit Chaudhuri’s ‘A Strange and Sublime Address’ which I haven’t read. There were only two other titles in that list that I have read- ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Marquez, and ‘Arrow of God’ by Chinua Achebe who happens to be one of her favorite writers and her hero.

With these three books my haul of books till date in this year is 117.

The Sunday Haul

Usually I do not miss buying any copy of any of Dave Barry’s titles but I had almost half a dozen copies of ‘Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits’ and so did not buy the copy I kept seeing at a seller at Abids every Sunday. I had asked for the price and after hearing the price I decided to let someone else buy it. However, no one seemed very interested in picking it up and more than a couple of occasions I had been tempted to buy it. But I didn’t, until last Sunday. In a pile of books selling for only twenty rupees I saw the cover first. It had become detached from the rest of the book. I couldn’t bear to see it in such a condition so I picked up the book. After I got home I fixed up the cover and felt glad that I had bought it. There’ll always be someone who might enjoy the sort of humor that Dave Barry writes.

That was the only book I picked up on Sunday but earlier in the week I had bought another book. Last Friday on an unexpected visit to the MR Bookstore near the flyover at Punjagutta I found ‘The Penguin Book of American Short Stories’ edited by James Cochrane. I picked it up instantly since the price was only thirty rupees. The book has famous names and has the following stories: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, Bartleby by Herman Melville, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain, The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Francis Bret Harte, One of the Missing by Ambrose Bierce, The Real Thing by Henry James, An Unfinished Story by O. Henry, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane, Neighbor Rosicky by Will Cather, To Build a Fire by Jack London, Death in the Woods by Sherwood Anderson, Who Dealt by Ring Lardner, Flowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter, The Rich Boy by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Delta Autumn by William Faulkner, The Battler by Ernest Hemingway, The Jewbird by Bernard Malamud, Children on Their Birthdays by Truman Capote and Wife-Wooing by John Updike.

Sunrise@NecklaceRoad

One thing I wish I could do more often is go to Necklace Road early on Sunday morning and watch the sun rise over the calm waters of Hussain Sagar. I have done it many times in the past and it has never failed to be a magical experience that put me in a different frame of mind. It is something I’ve found to be worth getting up at five in the morning on a Sunday when all you want to do is to get up a little later than your usual time.

The last time I did it was a couple of months ago. Since then for some reason or the other I couldn’t find the time to go to Necklace Road to watch the sunrise. However last Saturday I resolved to go and there I was at Necklace Road much before the sunrise. It was really magical and I felt it can be called a minor soul-cleansing experience because all at once I felt calm and all the negativity inside just went down.

Later, as is my routine, I sat in Adarsh café reading the Sunday papers leisurely for more than an hour. After watching the magical sunrise no headline felt alarming. Life just felt wonderful, at least, until Monday dawned.

The Sunday Haul

The Sunday before last Sunday I couldn’t visit Abids to look for books because of the rain. It was an agonizing week I spent waiting for Sunday which turned out to be a wonderful, sunny Sunday. The wait was worth it because I found four fantastic books.

The first find was ‘Seeing Things’ by Seamus Heaney. It had a beautiful cover and I got it for just fifty rupees. It is a book of poems and contains nearly forty poems. I was terribly glad I found this wonderful volume brought out by ‘Faber and Faber’ for so cheap. It has some priceless poetry inside. For those who don’t know Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Another book I picked up along with Seeing Things at the same seller and at the same time and at the same price was ‘Dying Alone’ by Krishna Baldev Vaid. The book has a novella (Dying Alone) and ten short stories:- Silence, The Stone of a Jamun, The Voice Robber, My Effigy, The Sould of Darkness, the Fourth Window, The Thieves’ Thief, An Evensong, An Evening with Bhookh Kumari, and The Old Man in the Park. These are translated from Hindi by the author himself and I picked up this book since I have heard a lot about Krishna Baldev Vaid but hadn’t read any of his works. It would be interesting to read the original stories in Hindi if I am able to find them somewhere.

A few steps later I found another copy of China Mieville’s ‘Perdido Street Station’ in a heap of books selling for just twenty rupees. I had another copy with me that I had bought long back but this appeared to be a far better copy so I picked it up. However, I don’t know when I will get to read it since there are too many books waiting to be read.

Another book that I found not at Abids but at a seller near RTC crossroads was one I already have a copy of. It was ‘The Art of Living: Epictetus’ by Sharon Lebell that I got for fifty rupees. This is one wonderful book that teaches you so much about finding balance in your life and being calm at all times, in grief and in happiness which is something I am not able to do at all. It is at Abids I lose all sense of balance and proportion when I see all those books!

The Sunday Haul

These two books are what I came up with in the haul last Sunday, one at Abids and the other at another place.

Some of the best short stories ever are written by Irish writers and I have read quite a few collections by them. One of the writers who has left a deep impression on me is Alistair MacLeod whose collection ‘Island’ I found by chance at a book sale. The short stories in it were some of the best I have read so far. Since then I’ve been on the look out for collections of short stories and whenever I come across one I do not miss buying them.

On Sunday at Abids I was going through a pile of books selling for only twenty rupees when my eye fell on a pale green cover that I picked up to see more of. It was Frank O’ Connor’s ‘Collected Stories, Volume I’ that I bought right away. Frank O’Connor is a name that I have been coming across often along with Flannery O’Connor whose short stories I am unable to find anywhere. Now I want to find his ‘Bone of Contention’ and ‘Guests of the Nation.’ This collection is divided into two volumes, or rather two parts- Fish for Friday and A Life of Your Own.

The first part, ‘Fish for Friday, has the following thirteen stories:
A Sense of Responsibility
The Little Mother
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
The Old Faith
Vanity
A Brief for Oedipus
Father and Son
Private Property
Fish for Friday
Androcles and the Army
Achille’s Heel
The Wreath
The Weeping Children.

The second part titled ‘A Life of Your Own’ has the following twelve stories:
A Life of Your Own
The Impossible Marriage
Unapproved Route
Music When Soft Voices Die, Sue
A Mother’s Warning
The Corkerys
The School for Wives
The American Wife
The Cheat
Requiem
Variations on a Theme.

The other book I found on Sunday was one on screenwriting that I found with a book seller near RTC Crossroads in Musheerabad. I bought it hoping it would help me with a script I am struggling with since a long time. The book was ‘Screenwriting’ by Madeline DiMaggio that I got for ninety rupees.