The Sunday Haul (on 24-12-2017)

Last Sunday I found a title by a writer with the sort of background not many writers care to have. To start with he was a professional burglar. Obviously he’s also a convict. Bob Dylan dedicated an album to him. He was also a mountaineer, playboy, traveller, filmmaker, and one of the founders of an underground welfare group known as ‘Diggers’ in San Fransico, and wrote an autobiography called ‘Ringolevio’ which was an international bestseller it appears. I remember seeing ‘Ringolevio’ somewhere but I haven’t noticed the author. So next time I come across ‘Ringolevio’ by Emmet Grogan I am going to grab it. ‘Final Score’ is Emmet Grogan’s first novel with the sort of cover that screams ‘Crime fiction’ and that’s something I cannot help buying. I bought it for just thirty rupees.

But ‘Final Score’ wasn’t the first book I found last Sunday at Abids. The first find was another book with a wonderful cover. I found a copy of ‘The Go-Between’ by L.P. Hartley in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees. I have come across the name ‘L.P.Hartley’ before but haven’t found any books by him so far either at Abids or at other places. There’s high praise for L.P. Hartley in the front pages of the book. L.P. Hartley had been fiction reviewer for the Spectator, the Saturday Review, the Observer and so on. He also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and also the Heinemann Foundation Prize of the Royal Society for Literature and a film version of one of his books ‘The Hireling’ also won the principal award at the Cannes in 1973. So all this means that I have found a book by a truly wonderfully talented writer. I got this book for just twenty rupees.
So, the final score at the end of the penultimate Sunday of the year is 186 books.

It is now official that the Hyderabad Book Fair is beginning from 18 to 28th January, 2018, the last three days coinciding with the Hyderabad Literary Festival that’s from Jan 26-28, 2018.