The Sunday (on 25-07-2021) and an Online Haul

    One of the few genre of books I am fond of reading is spy fiction, and also crime fiction especially if they are well written and the authors are famous names like le Carre, Len Deighton, Ross MacDonald and such writers. I recently finished reading ‘A Swell Looking Babe’ by Jim Thompson and was looking out for more such titles when I saw a copy of ‘Old Flames’ by John Lawton, a name I had not heard previously. What attracted me to it was first that it was a Penguin title and secondly the blurbs comparing John Lawton to le Carre, a writer I like very much.

The Online Haul

    A couple of years ago I had come across a copy of ‘Detours’ by Salil Tripathi at a seller in Chikkadpally. It was a hardcover book and the seller asked for what I thought was a very high price. I wasn’t willing to pay that much and so undecided I left hoping I would be able to buy it the next Sunday. But next Sunday much to my disappointment I couldn’t find it. The seller told me someone had bought it last Sunday itself that made me terribly annoyed with myself for not having the sense to buy a good book when I saw it. However, on one the WA groups of an online seller of secondhand books I happened to spot this title and I quickly claimed it before anyone could. Luckily for me no one wanted it so I got it. ‘Detours’ are a collection of Salil Tripathi’s essays about his travels all over the world. It was exactly the sort of book I was looking for, a travel book by an Indian author. I have already started reading it and finished the first two essays. In the essay about his time in Indonesia I read about Promodeya Ananta Toer whose one title of a trilogy I had found some time back. Another place was Toer was mentioned was in Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens’ memoir.

 

    I had come across the name Vikram Paralkar somewhere very recently but did not know it was the name of a writer. When I saw a copy of ‘Wounds of the Dead’ by Vikram Paralkar in the same WA group I decided I would claim it. Once again no one seemed to want it so I got this title too. After I received the book this Monday I flipped through the book and found that the author was a medical doctor. This too was a hardcover book a little over 200 pages long that I can finish in a couple of days but when I would find the time to read it I do not know.

The Sunday Haul (on 18-07-2021)

 It is the rainy season over here with the monsoon very active bringing in rain almost every day. However, it did not rain in the morning on Sunday enabling me to go to Abids to look for books in the second hand book bazaar. I returned home with two good titles and luck was on my side since it began to rain shortly after I came back.

                 I have little doubt about what a treasure trove the Abids second hand book bazaar is since I’ve found too many good titles here over the years. It is also incredible how one finds good titles so cheap that one cannot believe it. Last Sunday I found one such title. I already have a copy of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ that I had found almost a decade ago in 2012. It is a collection of some wonderful short stories that I had bought for sixty rupees. But the copy I saw at Abids last Sunday was only ten rupees. It was in a good condition and I did not have the heart to leave it behind so I picked it up. This was the only book I found at Abids and the second book I found at another place. 

At a seller in Chikkadpally I found a copy of ‘Skippy Dies’ by Paul Murray. I vaguely remember having come across the title mentioned somewhere and moreover it was a Penguin so it roused my interest enough to buy it. I bought the book for hundred rupees. 

An Online Haul

It rained almost all day in Hyderabad last Sunday. It started around the time I usually leave for Abids after breakfast. I waited hoping it would stop but it went on and on coming down heavily. By the time it stopped it was sometime late in the afternoon and I couldn’t go to Abids to look for books as I had other things to do. I was disappointed about missing the visit to Abids but it lasted less than a day since on Monday I received a couple of books I had bought from a WA group of a second hand book seller.

Almost thirty years ago when I was just starting out to buy books at Abids I came across a thick book that I bought though I neither knew the author nor the title but felt that the book was good. It was a copy of ‘Danube’ by Claudio Magris that I am embarrassed to confess is still somewhere on my shelves unread. I had come across another title by Magris in the WA sale- ‘Microcosms’- that I immediately claimed before anyone could. It is a collection of essays, nine of them, translated from the Italian by Iain Halliday.

The other book was also by another Italian writer- Italo Svevo. I had bought ‘Confessions of Zeno’ by Italo Svevo a couple of years ago recognising the name I had read in a collection of essays by J.M.Coetzee. The copy I had received last Monday was ‘A Perfect Hoax’ which was a slim book.

The Sunday Haul (on 04-07-2021)

 

What I love about the second hand book market in Abids in my city of Hyderabad is that it is a virtual treasure trove from which I’ve picked up hundreds of wonderful titles, but also that one would find great books being sold for as little as ten rupees which is less than what you’d pay for a cup of chai here. There are a few sellers who have heaps of books selling for just ten rupees. In one such heap I spotted a copy of ‘The Oranging of America’ by Max Apple. I was intrigued to see that it was a faber &faber title and so picked it up. It turned out to be a collection of short stories by an author I had not heard of before but looked quite promising so I picked it up.

I can never get enough of Africa and books about Africa. I am always on the look out for books set in or about Africa and if I don’t find any new titles I reread books on Africa that I already have. Only last week I had finished reading ‘The Healing Land’ by Rupert Isaacson that is about the Kalahari and I was wondering what to read next when I spotted ‘Swahili for the Broken-Hearted’ by Peter Moore on a makeshift bookshelf of a seller at Abids. It was just the book I needed so I bought it even though the seller asked for a hundred rupees for it. I have already started reading it and Peter Moore is quite funny. I want to read his other books now if I can find them.

No matter how many books on writing I have on my shelves I can never resist buying books on writing. At Chikkadpally I spotted a nice copy of ‘Writing with Power’ by Peter Elbow with a seller. Expecting that he would ask two hundred rupees for it which I was ready to pay I was pleasantly shocked when he asked just fifty rupees for it. I already have another Peter Elbow title on writing I don’t remember which but this title was a welcome addition to the large collection of books on writing that I have managed to amass over the years.

 

So far I must have picked up more than half a dozen copies of ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’ by Paul Theroux and given them away to friends and others. I had seen another nice copy of the same title at a seller at RTC X Roads the previous Sunday that I did not take though it was for only fifty rupees. Last Sunday however I picked it up when I saw it at the same spot. It was a beautiful copy that appeared almost new.

The Sunday Haul (on 27-06-2021)

 

        It was the usual Sunday morning routine last Sunday here in Hyderabad for me. I was in Abids after a hearty breakfast topped by a cup of hot ginger chai, and feeling good though up there it was quite cloudy. A couple of times I had seen a title but did not buy it because the price appeared too high for me. But last Sunday when I saw a copy of ‘India in Mind’ edited by Pankaj Mishra again I decided to buy it whatever the price. I was quite surprised when the seller said it would be mine for only hundred rupees. It is a collection of extracts on/about Indian from books by well- known authors. There are twenty five of them including some books I have read like ‘The Snow Leopard’ by Peter Matthiessen, ‘A Writer’s Notebook’ by Somerset Maugham, ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’ by Paul Theroux, and also from a few books that I have but haven’t yet read like ‘Hindoo Holiday’ by J.R. Ackerley, ‘Abandon’ by Pico Iyer. There are excerpts from some books by authors I haven’t even heard about. It looks extremely interesting and I plan to read one excerpt a day and finish the book inside of a montth.

            Right now I am in some kind of an ‘Africa Phase’ reading books set in/about Africa, and currently am rereading ‘African Calliope’ by Edward Hoagland for the second time. I was surprised when I read on the back of a book I picked up for a closer book to find that it was set in Africa. This is, perhaps, the first book by an Indian author featuring Africa as the background. It was a copy of ‘The Mountain of the Moon’ by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay translated into English by Jayanta Sengupta

        One of the most interesting titles in my Africa collection is ‘The Africans’ by David Lamb that I had recently finishing reading for the second time. I found it to be extremely well written and I gained a lot of knowledge about the African countries mentioned in the book.  I had no idea that David Lamb had written other books too and one of them was ‘The Arabs’.  I had finished a bit early at Abids and not wanting to go home too soon I decided to check the stock at the ‘Best Books’ store in Abids. I felt my excitement rise when I spotted ‘The Arabs’ by David Lamb on the spine of a book low on a stack of books on a bookshelf. I took it out and realized that it was by the same David Lamb of ‘The Africans’.  However the price was a steep six hundred rupees but somehow the seller gave it to me for half that price saying I was an old customer.

An hour after I returned home it began to rain heavily for more than two hours. I wondered how the booksellers protected the books and how they got home after the downpour. I hope none of the books have been drenched in the rain because I feel sad if any book is damaged even slightly.

The Sunday Haul (on 20-06-2021)

When the lockdown was imposed sometime last year I was distraught for a few weeks as it meant I couldn’t go to Abids to buy books. But luckily I discovered a couple of sellers of second hand books on WhatsApp who held regular sales and I ended up buying a lot of books from those sellers. Last Saturday a large consignment of books were delivered about which I will write in the next post. On Sunday I went to Abids because the weather was perfect and the lockdown was totally lifted which meant I could browse all day if I wanted. But I usually browse for only a couple of hours and return before lunch. I found three nice titles last Sunday at Abids.

One of the first travel writers I read was Bill Aitken and ‘Seven Sacred Rivers’ was the first of his several books I read over the years. Still there were a couple of titles by Bill Aitken that I hadn’t found was ‘Footloose in the Himalaya.’ It was my first find at Abids last Sunday, and turned out to be an almost new copy that I got for just fifty rupees. The seller was someone who knew me well and always gave books to me far cheaper than to others.

There are a few classic books that I haven’t yet got around to reading and ‘Tales from the Arabian Nights’ is one of them. Though I have come across several editions of this book I haven’t found one that I really liked and wanted to read until last Sunday when I came across a beautiful copy of ‘Tales from the Arabian Nights’ edited by Andrew Lang. This book too I got very cheap. I paid only fifty rupees for it without bargaining.

Not many know it but NBT or National Book Trust is a fantastic treasure house of some really wonderful titles. I think they must have published all the famous Indian classics by Indian authors. I have bought several such NBT titles but none of them were poetry collections. Last Sunday I found a copy of ‘Both Sides of the Sky’ edited by Eunice de Souza. Published in 2008-9 it is a collection of poems by fifty eight poets starting with Nissim Ezekiel and including all the famous names of Indian poetry such as Kamala Das, A.K. Ramanujan, Adil Jussawala, Keki N.Daruwalla, Arun Kolatkar, Gieve Patel, Dom Moraes, Agha Shahid Ali, Dilip Chitre, Jayanta Mahapatra, Imtiaz Dharker, CP Surendran, Jeet Thayil, Vijay Nambisan, Menka Shivdasani, and also younger poets like Meena Kandasamy, Tishani Doshi, Anjum Hasan and many others. I was quite thrilled to find it because it was a treasure that I got for just twenty rupees!

The Sunday Haul (on 13-06-2021)

After more than a month I finally got to go to Abids. The odd relaxation timing during the lockdown here, from six in the morning to ten for a couple of weeks, and until one in the afternoon for another couple of weeks meant I could not go to Abids on Sundays. Now that the relaxation is until five in the evening I thought I’d go and check out the pavement book bazaar. I really missed going to Abids for my weekly book hunting so when I arrived at Abids and found that almost all the booksellers were at their usual places I felt pretty excited at the prospect of finding something good.

While at school and college I used to participate in quizzes where one of the questions would be who wrote ‘Thirukural’? Also in the many competitive tests I wrote there would be the same question- author of ‘Thirukural?’ I knew what it was but never got around to finding more about it. I never thought that there would be English translations of the great Tamil classic until I saw a copy of ‘Kural’ by Thruvalluvar last Sunday.

A few Sundays ago before the lockdown I had seen a copy of ‘Autumn Lights’ by Pico Iyer, that for some reason, I did not buy right away. The seller told me he had another copy so I went away thinking I would buy it another Sunday. When I looked for it again, needless to say, it was gone and the seller did not remember telling me he had two copies. Once again I felt stupid for having let go of a good book. However, last Sunday the second copy surfaced on the shelf of the seller and I grabbed it. I got it for two hundred rupees.

Next to this seller is another seller I like very much because he doesn’t have any clue about the value of the books he sells. He has only one way of pricing the books, all books big or small at the same price. Since a few weeks I have been on an Africa binge reading all books about or set in the African countries. In the past few weeks I have read ‘French Lessons in Africa’ by Peter Biddlecombe, ‘Africa’ by David Lamb, ‘When a Crocodile Eats the Sun’ by Peter Godwin, and ‘The Healing Land’ by Rupert Isaacson as part of a plan to read all Africa titles in my collection. I do not know why but I am fascinated by Africa, and want to read as many books on Africa as I can find. Luckily, the clueless seller had a copy of ‘Carcase for Hounds’ by Meja Mwangi, another title in the African Writer series. A while back I had picked up another title from this series, ‘People of the City’ by Cyprian Ekwensi. Anyway I got ‘Carcase for Hounds’ that is set in Kenya and is about the Mau Mau struggle that I am keen to know more about since I had read different versions of this struggle. I got this book for just twenty rupees.

On the way back home from Abids I stopped, as usual, to look at the titles that one of the three book sellers at Chikkadpally had on the pavement. I spotted a title I had seen earlier- ‘The House on Mall Road’ by Mohyna Srinivasan. I hadn’t felt like picking it up the last time I saw it but on Sunday I bought because I noticed it was a Penguin title and also had a blurb by Pico Iyer, a combination impossible to resist. I got it for a hundred rupees. 

An Online Haul

With the lockdown restrictions in place in Hyderabad I haven’t been able to visit Abids for almost a month now. I had this restless urge to buy books and so when there were a couple of sales of second hand books on WhatsApp groups I claimed six good titles. After a long time I felt pleased that I had bagged some really good books though it burned a bit of a hole in the pocket.

In February, 2019 while on a visit to Bengaluru along with my son, I found a copy of ‘Bang, Bang Birds’ by Adam Diment at the Blossoms store that I bought for just seventy rupees. Only weeks before I had read about Adam Diment, and I felt glad I had bought the book since I had read it after I got home and found Diment to be a terrific talent. I wished I had found more of his titles but I couldn’t until last week when I found not one but two Adam Diment titles up for sale on a WhatsApp group.

I was surprised that no one claimed ‘The Great Spy Race’ by Adam Diment and ‘The Dolly Dolly Spy’ by Adam Diment. I was quite thrilled to get these two titles.

Later in the same year Jokha Alharthi won the Man Booker Prize for her ‘Celestial Bodies’ that is still being talked about. I wanted to read it and luckily a copy was on sale on the WhatsApp group and I claimed it before anyone else could and got it. I do not know when I am going to read it but read it I will.

A long time ago I had found a copy of ‘Paraja’ by Gopinath Mohanty that I haven’t read so far because it is a large tome and I am hesitating to begin it. Sometime last year I also found another hardcover copy of another collection of stories by Gopinath Mohanty with the title ‘The Bed of Arrows’ that too I haven’t read so far.  On the WhatsApp sale I saw a copy of ‘Stories’ by Gopinath Mohanty that I claimed and also got. It is a small and slim book with just three stories- Ants; The Shelter; and The Bed of Arrows. 

For a long time I had been looking for a travelogue about the Carribean countries but couldn’t find any. When I saw ‘A Walk Around the West Indies’ by Hunter Davies on the sale I decided to claim it and to my surprise I got it because no one else had claimed it.

There’s no need to mention about Martin Amis’ writing because everyone knows how good he is. Only the other day I read an entire chapter on Martin Amis in Christopher Hitchen’s ‘Hitch-22’ where references to Martin Amis are aplenty. I have a few titles by Martin Amis including two copies of his most famous  title- ‘The War on Cliché’ the first copy of which  I found at Daryagunj in Delhi a couple of years ago. When I saw ‘The Moronic Inferno’ by Martin Amis on the sale I claimed right away and nervously prayed that no one would claim it before me because it was a non-fiction and a travelogue kind of work. To my relief I got it and a few days back when the books were delivered I saw that it has 27 essays on various places and people. This looked like a book I am going to enjoy immensely.

The Sunday Haul (on 09-05-2021)

With only a few regular shops open for the Ramzan shoppers the second-hand booksellers who set shop before such shops in Abids shifted elsewhere last Sunday. Many of them were at their regular spots and I was glad to see them again after the previous Sunday’s no-show. It is so comforting to be among familiar surroundings and to see so many books spread out on the pavements waiting to be bought. It was a warm morning and there were not many people other than the regulars browsing there. In the couple of hours I was at Abids I picked up four good titles.

I had read about ‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang when it was in the news for being shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2016. It was a slim book of less than two hundred pages and I got it for just eighty rupees. Now with the lockdown in force I am planning to read it one of these days.

A long time back, more than ten years ago I had found a hardcover copy of ‘Travels’ by Michael Crichton at Abids. I had also read it and forgot all about it until I found another copy last Sunday. This was a paperback copy though but somehow I wanted to read it again so I bought it. I paid fifty rupees for it.

Again, long back, sometime in the early nineties I guess I had attended a talk in Hyderabad Central University where Bill Aitken too had come. I remember taking his autograph too on a notebook that I cannot find now. I loved his ‘Seven Sacred Rivers’ that I still have somewhere in the house. I don’t have ‘Travels by a Lesser Line’ by Bill Aitken that I saw with a bookseller who gave it to me for only twenty rupees.

After I had found ‘Look at Me’ by Anita Brookner sometime ago and read I wanted to read all the books she had written. I found a couple of her titles afterwards but ‘Hotel du Lac’ still eludes me. I saw a copy of ‘The Rules of Engagement’ by Anita Brookner that I got for eighty rupees. It was a nice copy and I was glad I spotted it half-hidden under other books.

An Online Haul

Last Sunday I couldn’t go to Abids as there was a wedding in the family. My niece’s marriage was on Sunday, the 2^nd of May so there was no way I could go to Abids as it was held at noon and I was busy all day. The marriage was originally scheduled last December but due to travel restrictions and problems of leave from the office my niece couldn’t make it to India so it was postponed. Even though the pandemic was raging all around we had to conduct the marriage after following all precautions to the extent possible.

However, I did not really miss books though I missed going to Abids last Sunday.  About two weeks ago I had claimed a book on a WhatsApp sale by a second hand book seller. In that sale I came across ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis that I instantly claimed. I had been on the lookout for this title after I read a few references to it in reviews online.  I had wondered if I would be able to get it here in Hyderabad but luckily I found it online. It was delivered last Thursday and I was more than happy to see it on my table when I returned from work.

The copy of ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis that I got was a beautiful almost new copy that was lovingly encased in a plastic jacket. I think I paid Rs 200 for it including the postage charges. I am filled with an indescribable joy holding the book in my hand and feeling that I now own a good book.  I am glad I was able to claim it before anyone on the group did though later I saw that no one had claimed it.

In these times of anxiety and despair at the damage the virus is wreaking across the world reading is the only thing that is keeping me sane.