A Weekend Haul

It was a long weekend break for us in the government last week due to the Bakrid Festival. On Saturdays I buy three business papers- Business Line, Mint, and also Business Standard for their weekend supplements that have some interesting features. I usually buy them from a newspaper vendor in Lakdikapul who keeps them aside for me. Last Saturday just before reaching the vendor, I stopped at a second hand bookseller with his books on the pavement opposite the BSNL office. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘In the Land of Oz’ by Howard Jacobson that I bought right away.

After that I collected the papers from the vendor. Since it was a holiday with nothing much to do I sat in an Irani café and flipped through ‘In the Land of Oz’ by Howard Jacobson and read a few pages. I found it to be very funny and felt glad that I had bought the book since Howard Jacobson’s observations of places and especially the people during his travels in Australia are exceedingly funny. Presently I am reading and enjoying the humor in it.

A couple of minutes’ drive from the Irani café where I sat was a second hand bookstore, the Best Book Centre, Lakdikapul branch. It was where I headed next just to take a look and ended up finding another wonderful book. I found a copy of ‘Over By the River and Other Stories’ by William Maxwell. I have four books by William Maxwell-Time Will Darken It, They Came Like Swallows, So Long See You Tomorrow. He is one of the best writers I have ever read and I cannot resist buying anything written by William Maxwell.

‘Over by the River and Other Stories’ has a dozen short stories. These are: Over by the River, The Trojan Women, The Pilgrimage, The Patterns of Love, What Every Boy Should Know, The French Scarecrow, Young Francis Whitehead, A Final Report, Haller’s Second Home, The Gardens of Mont-Saint-Michel, The Value of Money, and The Thistles in Sweden. I got it for only seventy rupees.

Less than twenty four hours after buying these two books I was again looking for more books. The next day was Sunday and I was at Abids scouring the pavements for interesting titles that could be in the piles of books the second hand book sellers had spread out. At one seller I found a copy of ‘The Way of the World’ by Nicolas Bouvier and I decided to buy it right away. The reason was that it was a travel book and on the cover it said there was an introduction to the book inside by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Then on the way back to my bike I spotted a cover on a book that seemed to stick out in the pile of books it was nestled in. I went closer and picked it up. I saw that it was a beautiful copy of ‘This Time Next Week’ by Leslie Thomas. It was a memoir of the author’s childhood. Leslie Thomas is the author of ‘The Virgin Soldiers’ that I had seen only recently, and also other books. I decided to buy it and since it was in a pile of books selling for twenty rupees only that was what I paid for it.
That was one terrific weekend haul with four wonderful titles.