The Book Fair Haul-2

The first visit to the 33rd Hyderabad Book Fair on the very first day yielded only four books but my second visit a few days later got me more than double in the haul. If the first visit was a hurried one rushing from one stall to another and grabbing whatever caught the eye the second visit was a more leisurely and deliberate one. I found these nine fantastic titles but I don’t remember the names of the stalls where I found them except that they were all stalls selling only second hand boooks.

A long time back I had found a copy of ‘Fires’ by Raymond Carver and if my memory serves me well it was at a similar book fair where I found it. On the second visit I found a copy of ‘Where I am Coming From’ by Raymond Carver that I got for a hundred rupees.

In the same stall I found a nice copy of ‘Reflections’ by Graham Greene. It is a collection of his essays.

A few years back I had seen a copy of ‘The Country of the Pointed Firs’ by Sarah Orne Jewett at Abids that I somehow did not pick up. The next time I went to look for it I couldn’t find it and I felt foolish for letting it go. However at the book fair I found it and got it for fifty rupees

I buy whatever travel books I come across and about a quarter of my collection of books are travel titles. One of these is by Eric Newby- ‘A Short Walk in the Hindukush’ which I liked very much . When I saw a copy of ‘A Merry Dance Around the World’ by Eric Newby I grabbed it. I was thrilled when I saw another title by him. I found a beautiful copy of ‘On the Shores of the Mediterranean’ by Eric Newby and bought it.

I had come across the name Otessa Moshfegh several times online and wondered if I would ever find anything written by that author. When I saw a copy of ‘Eileen’ by Otessa Moshfegh I did not think twice and bought it without even bothering to read the blurbs at the back.

Another classic that was missing from my shelves was ‘Brideshead Revisited’ by Evelyn Waugh and when I saw a nice copy of it I bought it right away.

In one of the stalls set up by someone from Mumbai I spotted a copy of ‘A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali’ by Gil Courtemanche, and bought it after reading the blurbs on the back cover. Since it was a Penguin title I would have bought it anyway.

More than half of the second hand book stalls at the Book Fair were put up by those who are regular sellers at the Abids Sunday book bazaar. Almost all of them are known to me and when one of them asked me if I had found anything good in his stall I picked up a copy of ‘Modern Indian Short Stories’ just to please him. I already have a copy of this title and I do not understand why I did not pick up some other title.