The Sunday Haul (on 06-02-2022)

Not very long back, in fact after reading ‘Balkan Ghosts’ by Robert D. Kaplan sometime last year, I developed a desire to know more about what happened in other parts of the world, and what is happening now. In short, history and geo-politics is what interests me of late. Fortunately I found more such books by other writers most of them journalists. Though I haven’t read all such books that I‘ve managed to buy I am glad I had decided to read such titles because it increases my understanding of the events in different parts of the world.  Each such title that I read makes me want to read more such books so I buy all such books whenever I come across them.

Last Sunday at Abids I spotted a mammoth book and at first I was hesitant to even look at it. But when I looked at the cover I decided to buy it though the first few pages were damaged a bit. It was a copy of ‘The Great War for Civilization-The Conquest of the Middle East’ by Robert Fisk. Right away I knew it was a great title and the blurb on the cover seemed to strengthen my feeling.

Sometime ago I had been lucky to find a beautiful copy of ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius that I now cannot find in my shelves. I do not remember reading it but I feel that I was lucky to find it. I had read about it in ‘English August’ by Upamanyu Chatterjee in which the main character refers to it. Also very recently, last month in fact, I had found a title in the ‘Penguin Books Great Ideas’ series, small books that easily fit in a small bag and very convenient to read while travelling. It was a copy of ‘Why I Write’ by George Orwell that I bought for a hundred rupees at Abids. At Abids again last Sunday I came across a beautiful copy of ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius with a cover I couldn’t take my eyes off and bought it.

In the past few years I must have bought more than half a dozen copies of ‘The Art of Living’ by Epictetus that I gave away to friends and others. Somehow I am very attracted to this beautiful book and when I saw another copy at Abids last Sunday I couldn’t resist buying it. I got it for fifty rupees only.

I don’t really know why but I keep buying several copies of a few titles that I liked. I also buy copies of some books I haven’t read. One such book is ‘An End to Suffering’ by Pankaj Mishra that I found some time ago. This is another title I haven’t read yet I bought another copy I saw last Sunday at Abids. The reason why I bought it was that it was a hardcover copy that was for sale for just fifty rupees. It was in good condition so I picked it up.

The Sunday Haul (on 30-01-2022)

It was a foolish of me not to have picked up a copy of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ by Jared Diamond when I first saw it in a pile of books at Abids a couple of years back. I was not aware it was such a good book so it was just ignorance that made me skip buying the book the first time I saw it. After some time I read somewhere about ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ and began to look for it at Abids and other places but I could never come across it until last Sunday when I finally found it again. This time I did not hesitate but just swooped on it and picked it up. I got it for hundred and fifty rupees.

The next find too was something I did not think twice before buying it because the title itself was enough for me to want to buy it. It was a copy of ‘The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa’ and the word ‘Africa’ was enough to make me grab it right away. ‘The Weekenders’ contains a couple of short stories and travel essays by writers like Alex Garland, Giles Foden, Victoria Glenndinning, and Irvine Welsh who were sent to Sudan to write about the place and the conditions there. This was commissioned by Daily Telegraph and all proceeds from the sale of this book would be spent on aid in Sudan.

The next find too turned out to be a travel title. I saw a copy of ‘Far Horizons’ by Frank Gardner. I hadn’t heard of Frank Gardner till I saw the name on the cover of ‘Far Horizons.’ On the back cover and inside it says that Frank Gardner is the security correspondent for the BBC and has travelled widely covering many events, and places all over the world. The title further says ‘Unusual Journeys and Strange Encounters from a Travelling Life’ which was enough for me to buy it.

The last find was another interesting book. This is the second dictionary related non-fiction book that I found recently, the first one being ‘The Professor and the Madman’ by Simon Winchester and it was a title on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Coincidentally,  ‘Satisdiction’ by Ammon Shea is a compilation of some unusual words he came across in the Oxford English Dictionary. I love words and always want to know more about them so I didn’t think twice before picking up the book for fifty rupees. I started reading the book right after I got home. One of the words I liked was ‘Agelastic’ meaning someone who never laughs. It seems the right word to describe me.

The Sunday Haul (on 23-01-2022)

2022 doesn’t seem to have begun well for me blogging-wise because I haven’t been able to post about the rest of the books I bought at the Hyderabad Book Fair last month. I have also not been able to post about the Sunday Hauls of the past three Sundays either. That’s because I had no time to write the posts since I was busy with work and also last week I was in bed with fever. However I will post the backlog stuff later but will begin with the haul I made last Sunday at Abids.

It was another of those mornings that begin cloudy and gradually become sunny. After a week spent in bed ill with cold, cough and a mild fever I was glad to be outdoors at Abids. The first find was an old looking book that had an attractive cover. It was a copy ‘Conflict’ by Aamir Ali, a name I haven’t heard before. I was intrigued by the cover as well as the name of the author and the fact that it was published in 1947 by National Information & Publications Ltd., Bombay. There was a stamp saying ‘Growth Centre, Hill Fort Hyderabad’ that made wonder what it could be. There was also a name written on it- Mohinder Singh on one of the front pages and while reading it I came across another name inscribed in black ink- Rajinder Singh. I wish I could find more about all these that I found about the book. It was not in a good condition with the cover on the spine torn but since it looked like an interesting book I picked it up.

The next find was a copy of ‘Gaff Topsails’ by Patrick Kavanagh. I had read about Patrick Kavanagh somewhere so I picked it up hoping it would be a good read. Another thing that made me buy the book was that it was a Penguin title. It says on one of the inside pages that it is Patrick Kavanagh’s first novel. There’s also a stamp on one of the front pages saying ‘Barter Books, Alnwick Station, Northumberland’ that I found interesting. I didn’t come cheap though as I had to shell out a hundred and fifty rupees for it.

Day 2 of the Hyderabad Book Fair

The next day at the Hyderabad Book Fair in the same stall where I had found a copy of The Mute’s Soliloquy’ by Pramoedya Ananta Toer I got one of the most pleasantest shocks of my life. I was speechless when I spotted the four titles of the Buru Quartet by Toer on the same shelf where I had found his memoir the previous day. I simply couldn’t believe I could get so lucky. I grabbed them off the shelf before anyone could lay their hands on the titles, did not bargain with the seller and paid him whatever he asked. Only after I dropped them in bag and walked out of the stall did I feel a kind of joy fill up my heart. Later at home I checked out each of the four titles that make up the Buru Quartet: This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, and House of Glass. I am now wondering what to with the copy of Footsteps that I had found long time back. 

Next find on Day 2 of the HBF was a copy of ‘A Dandy in Aspic’ by Derek Marlowe. I remember having come across this title mentioned somewhere and thought it might be good so I bought it.

Sometime back I had found a copy of ‘The L Shaped Room’ by Lynne Reid Banks and after reading it decided to buy every book that Banks has written. I found a copy of ‘The L-Shaped Room’, soon afterwards and also a copy of ‘Two is Lonely’ by her a year later. The next find in HBF was a copy of ‘An End to Running’ by Lynne Reid Banks that I saw on top of a stack of books. I got this title pretty cheap at fifty rupees.

Another find, the last book of the day, was a nice copy of ‘Funny Boy’ by Shyam Selvadurai. I had read about this book somewhere but couldn’t find a decent copy all these days. So when I saw this copy I immediately pounced on it and bought it.

The prices were a bit high but I did not mind because the book fair comes only once a year and all the books I bought were pretty good titles that would have been difficult to find all at one place.

The Haul at the Hyderabad Book Fair-1

 

The day I was waiting for eagerly for almost two years finally dawned on the 18^th of December when the 34^thHyderabad National Book Fair opened. Though I keep buying books all through the year, at Abids on Sundays and in bookstores, there’s something thrilling to look for books in the stalls at the Book Fair. I’ve been coming to the Hyderabad Book Fair for nearly three decades right from the year it began and not missing a year. Usually I end up buying a lot of books at the Book Fair and almost all of them second hand books. 

This year too it was no different as I ended up buying several books in all in the numerous visits I made to the Hyderabad Book Fair that was quite conveniently not very far from where I live. 

 

Day 1

As is my wont I landed up at the venue of the Hyderabad Book Fair on the first day hours after it was inaugurated.  I only looked in the second hand book stalls, most of them put up by the sellers at Abids. There were only a few, not more than five, second hand book sellers from other places. However I ended up buying four good titles on the first day itself and spotted many good titles that I hoped to buy in the subsequent visits I planned to make. 

 

Not so long back I had picked up a title by an author with an intriguing name. It was a nice copy of ‘Footsteps' by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. It was the second title in a quartet, and I bought it knowing it was near to impossible finding the other three titles in the quartet, after reading on the cover that Toer was an Indonesian writer with quite a reputation. The first title I saw at the book fair was a copy of ‘The Mute’s Soliloquy’ by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. I was thrilled to discover that it was a memoir as I love to read writers’ memoirs. 

 

The next find too turned out to be a memoir of a famous writer. It was a copy of ‘Memoirs’ by Kingsley Amis. Coincidentally, I have his famous writer son’s memoir too titled ‘Experience’ that I had found a few years ago in a second hand bookstore in Hyderabad. I have read it but I don’t know when I will find the time to read Kingsley Amis’ memoir. 

 

I haven’t read anything by Yukio Mishima though I have heard and read a lot about him. I hadn’t been able to find titles by this author until last week when I found a copy of ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’ by Yukio Mishima in a stall run by a person from New Delhi. I got it for just hundred rupees. 

I hadn’t even covered three stalls in the fair and it was already close to closing time. There were several second hand book stalls I had to check out and I was running out of time. However I planned to visit almost every day and check out all the stalls selling second hand books in the next eleven days that the Hyderabad Book Fair would be held. I had time to check out one last stall and it was where I found the next title. I saw a beautiful copy of ‘And Yet…Essays’ by Christopher Hitchens that I grabbed right away. 

As for the prices of  the books I felt they were a bit higher but since the Book Fair didn't happen last year I guess it is reasonable for the sellers to recoup their losses during the pandemic. I have nothing to complain.

Haul on the second day's visit will be in the next post soon.

Happy New Year. 

The Sunday Haul (12-12-2021)

 I feel unreasonably guilty when the latest book by an author whose bestselling first book I haven’t yet read comes out. I had this feeling last Sunday at Abids when I came across ‘This Land is Our Land’ by Suketu Mehta whose ‘Maximum City’ a book about Bombay (now Mumbai) became the book about the city of Bombay. Actually I had found a copy but after I read a few pages I realized it was a pirated edition and threw it away. Since then I haven’t come across another good copy so it went unread. 

 I found the copy of ‘This Land is Our Land’ by Suketu Mehta with a seller who was also selling other titles @ of 3 titles for Rs 200. But this hardcover copy I got for two hundred rupees which I think is quite reasonable considering the good condition it was in. This was the only title that I found on Sunday at Abids. However I was pleased that I found a wonderful book that I had not expected to find at Abids. 

 

The 34^th Hyderabad National Book Fair is only a day away and I am eagerly waiting to go there on Saturday as soon as it is thrown open. I don’t know how many books I will end up buying but it is going to be a large number considering the fact that the book fair wasn’t held last year. 

The Sunday Haul (on 05-12-2021)

At last came the news that I had been eagerly and anxiously waiting for since the last one year. The Hyderabad Book Fair was to start from December 18 and end ten days later on the 27^th. I know I would be picking up at least a dozen books in the almost daily visits I planned to make to the Book Fair over its duration. So even as I waited anxiously for December 18^th and the many delights that would follow I couldn’t help but make another bountiful haul on my weekly visit to the second hand book market at Abids last Sunday.

There’s a seller at Abids who regularly stocks copies of only new titles that are in almost new condition. A few of them he sells at different but higher prices (but lesser than the original price on the sticker) but a large number of titles he heaps in piles that he sells for Rs 50 or Rs 100 each. Last Sunday in his pile of Rs 50 books I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘The Testament of Mary’ by Colm Toibin. When I read on the cover that it was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize I decided to take it.

When I reached the GPO at Abids with Grand Hotel behind it I realized it had been a long time since I tasted bun-maska. After having the bun-maska amidst the noise and din of a busy Irani café, I spotted a book with an eye-catching cover with a seller a few steps away from Grand Hotel. I picked it up and saw that it was a beautiful copy of  ‘Across the Chicken Neck: Travels in Northeast India’ by Nandita Haksar. It was about author’s travels in the North East states where I had been only twice in my life- once to Nagaland to attend a workshop in Kohima. It was here that I had the rare opportunity of shaking hands with the Chief Minister of a state. A year later I was in Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh to attend another workshop. I went on a trip to Ziro valley that seemed too beautiful to believe. It was an unforgettable experience. 

My next find was in another pile of Rs 50 books with another seller in front of the Bata store. I saw a small sized book- ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ by Charles Baudelaire and added it to my haul without a second thought. 

On the way home I stopped at the first of the four sellers at Chikkadpally to take a look. The books were laid out in such a manner that only the spines faced up. But even they were arranged in a haphazard manner making it difficult to read the titles on the spine. Anyway turning my head this way and that way I managed to spot a title that I had not expected to find- ‘Our Non-Veg Cow and Other Stories’ by Mahasweta Devi translated by Paramita Banerjee, with an introduction by Nabaneeta Dev Sen. Seagull Books is the publisher of this wonderful collection of stories. 

It has the following ten stories:

Those Boys; Nyadosh, the Incredible Cow; Not a Cock and Bull Story; Phalgu’s Story; Phalgu and the Cheetah-Man; The Seven Ghosts; Khudey the Dacoit; Shivaji’s Horse; All Alone; and Chittu. 

The Sunday and Other Hauls

 

The Sunday Haul (on 28-11-2021)

 Though it was a cloudy day last Sunday but for me it was filled with a lot of brightness as I managed to find half a dozen wonderful titles on the pavements of Abids.

I have read all the books by Arun Joshi except ‘The Survivors’ that I have not been able to find so far. Not only reading all the Arun Joshi titles I’ve picked up every copy of all his novels that I have come across so far. I have multiple copies of ‘The Foreigner’, ‘The Apprentice’, ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’, ‘The City and the River’ and ‘The Last Labyrinth’ on my bookshelves. Last Sunday at Abids I  was pleasantly surprised when I came across a nice copy of ‘The Foreigner’ by Arun Joshi that I instantly picked up. ‘The Foreigner’ was the first Arun Joshi title I had read and I became an instant fan of his writing.

A few years ago I had found a collection of short stories by Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer, an old tattered copy that I cherished. I was floored by Basheer’s range of themes and his writing. After that I did not come across any other Basheer title and last Sunday at last I saw a beautiful Katha India Library edition titled ‘Basheer Fictions’ edited by Vanajam Ravindran.  It is a collection of twelve stories translated from the original Malayalam into English by various translators including Geeta Dharmarajan.

The next find was another collection of short stories. I spotted a copy of ‘Things Not Seen’ by Lynna Williams in a heap of books selling for fifty rupees each. I decided to buy it when I noticed inside that it was published by Back Bay Books imprint of Little, Brown and Company. It has nine stories.

 Sometime back I had found a title by Don DeLillo and had not found the time to read it so far. Last Sunday I spotted a nice copy of ‘Underworld’ by Don DeLillo that was of a forbidding thickness. I hesitated a long time before finally deciding to buy it. However I have no idea when I would begin to read it.

I come across the name Roberto Calasso quite frequently on Twitter and I had no idea who he was until I found a copy of ‘The Unnamable Present’ by Roberto Calasso at Abids last Sunday. It was a hardcover copy with a slightly damaged jacket but otherwise in quite a good condition. It was a non-fiction title so I bought it. I got it for just a hundred rupees.

With the same buyer I also bought a copy of ‘The Way of the Strangers’ by Graeme Wood, a paperback title. I decided to buy it after I read on the back cover that Graeme Wood is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. This title was another nice find in the haul on Sunday.

 A WhatsApp Sale Haul

This was one title I wanted to read since long. At last I came across it when a seller on WA put it for sale. I immediately claimed it and luckily I got it since I was the only one who claimed it. It was a nice copy of ‘Zindaginama’ by Krishna Sobti that I received in the post a few days back. I was thrilled to see it was in a good condition. I am raring to read it but my Hindi is rusty and it would take me a couple of months to finish reading it. But I am going to read it no matter what.

The other title I claimed in the same sale was ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ by Nelson Algren that I had read about somewhere as a book not to be missed. It is more than three hundred pages long and I wish I could find the time to finish reading the book in one sitting.

The Sunday Haul (on 14-11-2021)

Though the Diwali shopping season is long past the regular stores in Abids that normally close on Sunday remained open last Sunday. Much later I came to know that the marriage season has begun with hundreds of marriages to be performed in the coming weeks. However, the second hand book sellers of Abids were around with their books on the pavements. Unlike the past few Sundays when I returned with hauls of more than a couple of books last Sunday I found only one good title. It was one I had seen the previous Sunday but had not bought it. 

 

In the late eighties and nineties I was an avid reader of weekly newsmagazines such as Sunday, India Today etc. Outlook wasn’t yet born so India Today ruled the roost. There was one particular journalist whose stories I used to read with great interest. It was Anita Pratap who dared to go into areas not many Indian journalists at that time went. After a few years she seemed to disappear and I had actually wondered where she was. Last Sunday I came across a nice copy of ‘Island of Blood’ by Anita Pratap that I had seen the previous Sunday but somehow had forgotten to buy. When I saw it again last Sunday I immediately grabbed it. 

 

As if the books I buy at Abids every Sunday and sometimes in bookstores is not enough I have also begun to buy books in sales held by some booksellers on their WhatsApp groups. These sales happen fairly regularly, at the rate of once every week and I am in three such groups.  Sometime last week in two such sales by two different sellers I managed to claim two nice titles before anyone did. 

 

Along with Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer MT Vasudevan Nair is one writer in Malayalam that I love to read all that they’ve written. Of course in English translation. When I saw the copy of ‘Varanasi’ by MT Vasudevan Nair on the seller’s group I thought it was a book on Varanasi. I love to read accounts of places and journeys by well-known writers so I was glad when I claimed the book and got it. But when I saw it after getting it in the mail I realized that it is a novel. I was a wee bit disappointed but anything by MT Vasudevan Nair is bound to be good, fiction or non-fiction. 

 

It was with a belated feeling of regret at having missed picking up something really good that I found a copy of ‘Monkey Grip’ by Helen Garner about a decade ago in 2012. After having seen the book for a couple of Sundays, and coming back to it again after a gap of a few weeks I finally had the sense to buy it. It turned out to be a wise decision for ‘Monkey Grip’ was a novel that haunted me for a long time. A couple of years ago ( 2018) I found another Helen Garner book at the Sunday book market that was in its last days in Darya Ganj in Delhi. It was a hardcover copy of ‘Everywhere I Look, a book of her non-fiction. 

 

I claimed ‘The Spare Room’ by Helen Garner the minute the seller opened the group for claims. Luckily for me no one seems to have heard of Helen Garner because other than I no one claimed it. 

The Sunday Haul (on 07-11-2021)

 It was one of the best hauls of the year that I landed last Sunday at Abids with a couple of titles I have not heard of and also authors I haven’t read about anywhere. Once again I was amazed at the kind of gems one finds at the second hand book market at Abids. I felt that I am extremely fortunate to live in Hyderabad where every Sunday I can visit to Abids and pick up gems to fill my bookshelves. 

 

The first title I spotted at Abids was a copy of ‘With Two Presidents’ by Major CL Datta, an aide-de-Camp to Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who were the first two Presidents of India. I usually avoid reading such accounts since it is nothing more than ‘I saw’ and ‘I went’ and such stuff which is usually boring. But after I flipped through the pages and read a few paragraphs at random I thought it sounded interesting and so picked up the book. 

 

I love to read African literature. Ever since I read ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe I have developed this great desire to read everything written by African writers and also everything written about Africa. Though I have managed to find many such titles and read a few essays about African literature and writers I have never heard of Es’kia Mphahlele. Maybe because I haven’t read enough to know about him. Anyway last Sunday I spotted a book with a splendid cover which turned out to be a beautiful copy of ‘Down Second Avenue’ by Es’kia Mphahlele. It was a Penguin title and I knew I would buy it no matter what the prize was when I saw on the cover that inside was a Foreword by Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, another writer I live very much. I got this book for a hundred and twenty rupees. 

 

I had been seeing this copy of ‘Purity’ by Jonathan Franzen at Abids since a couple of months but did not feel like buying it because of its length. The book runs into 563 pages and I wondered if I would get the time to read such a lengthy book since many books of that length that I had picked up earlier are still sitting unread on my bookshelf. However last Sunday I decided to buy it after I found that the seller was ready to sell it to me for just fifty rupees. 

 

A couple of day back I finished reading ‘The Big Bookshelf’ by Sunil Sethi, the last title in a handful of books on books and reading by Indian writers that I had managed to collect. ‘The Groaning Shelf’ by Pradeep Sebastian, ‘Would You Like Some Bread with that Book’ by Veena Venugopal, ‘The Girl Who Ate Books’ by Nilanjana Roy, ‘Bombay, London, New York’ by Amitava Kumar, and Navtej Sarna’s ‘Second Thoughts’ and ‘Bookless in Baghdad’ by Shashi Tharoor were the titles. Just when I thought that I had read them all and did not expect there would be any more such titles I got a pleasant shock when I spotted another title at Abids last Sunday. I saw a copy of ‘50 Writers 50 Books-The Best of Indian Fiction’ edited by Pradeep Sebastian and Chandra Siddan nestled in an untidy pile of books laid out on the pavement. I was surprised to find it since I had not heard of this wonderful title before. It was a treasure, I thought, since there were fifty individual essays about fifty titles that the essayists thought were outstanding. 

 

My collection of travel titles by Indian writers is slowly growing with new titles getting added quite frequently. A couple of Sundays ago I had found two titles and last Sunday I found another title that has become a bestseller. I had been thinking of buying a new copy of ‘Truck De India’ by Rajat Ubhaykar but last Sunday I came across two copies, brand new looking, with a seller. I bought one of the better copies.