The Sunday Haul (on 15.09.2019)

Sometimes, but very rarely though, I get the feeling that I am perhaps too lucky finding good titles almost every Sunday at the second hand book market at Abids. I cannot stop myself from buying all the good books that I see even if it means there are books piled up all over the place at home. Last Sunday, once again, I found four good books that I couldn’t resist buying.

The first book I found at Abids was one that attracted me with its cover. It was a bright yellow one and on the cover was the information about John Updike’s introduction, that it was ‘The Classic novel of Life and Death in an American Hospital’ which was more than enough for me to pick up the copy of ‘The House of God’ by Samuel Shem. On the inside of the back cover I read that Samuel Shem was the pen name of Steve Bergman, a Rhodes scholar and a doctor on the faculty of Harvard medical School and he had written three novels and a non-fiction title with his wife.

By a strange coincidence the second book I found at Abids- ‘The Death of a Beekeeper’ by Lars Gustaffson- was also published in the same year as ‘The House of God’ by Samuel Shem, the first book I found at Abids last Sunday. Published by Collins Harvill, the book has a classy attractive cover which was the first thing that drew my attention to the book. There’s a lot of praise for this book on the back cover so it was another reason, apart from the cover, why I bought this book too. This I got for seventy five rupees.

There’s something about Australian writers and also about Australia that I find very difficult to ignore. Sometime back I had found ‘Monkey Grip’ by Helen Garner and was quite taken up by the unforgettable story. Recently I read Howard Jacobson’s ‘The Land of Oz’ his account of his travels in Australia in the company of his wife who had lived in Australia. There’s another Australian writer I am looking forward to read soon- Gerald Murnane. I have found Ray Ericksen’s ‘West of Centre’ and also ‘Sydney’ by Jan Morris a long time back and also read those books. Last Sunday I found a copy of ‘The Mint Lawn’ by Gillian Mears. I picked up the book after I saw the Penguin logo on the cover and later I read on the cover that Mears was an Australian writer. Needless to say I bought it but I had to pay a hundred rupees for it.

There’s another thing I picked up at Abids along with these three books. It isn’t exactly a book of fiction or non-fiction but it can be called as a student’s guide book on Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Dutchess.’ It had that sort of cover that suggested that it belonged to the 40’s or 50’s but I couldn’t find the date of publication anywhere inside. But the reason I bought it was the name on the cover- The Deccan Publishing House, and the name ‘Chandragupta Press, Afzal Gunj’ on the last page. I don’t think The Deccan Publishing House exists now. This is historically interesting, and I hope to find out more about it.