The Sunday Haul (on 12-07-2020)

It was another Sunday at Abids scrounging for good titles among the many spread out on the pavements. I found ten books but I am writing about only four of them as the others are titles I already have or are books for kids I picked up to give away.

In the lane where I park my two wheeler a seller had a nice copy of ‘Social Change in Modern India’ by M.N. Srinivas that I had been seeing since the past four Sundays. Of late I have become interested in knowing more about such topics and thought it would be useful knowledge to gain. Finally I decided to pick it up since I know that it is a good book.

Sometime ago there were piles of books being sold for only ten rupees at Abids. Nowadays the minimum rate is twenty rupees. But last Sunday I saw another ten rupees pile. Going through it I found a copy of ‘The Long Divorce’ by Edmund Crispin. I had only heard of Edmund Crispin but have never found anything by him or read any book of his. This book looked promising and on a hunch I bought it.

In another pile I saw a copy of ‘Beyond Illusion’ by Duong Thu Huong. A couple of weeks ago I had picked up a Thai novel, a collection of short stories by a Chinese author, and earlier I had bought and also read a book by a Vietnamese writer about the war. Reading these books sparked a desire to read more literature from the South East Asian countries. ‘Beyond Illusion’ is published by Picador and that alone was confirmation that it was a good book so I bought it without much hesitation.

The previous Sunday I had seen two books that I promised myself to buy the following Sunday i.e., last Sunday. Out of those two books only ‘Misery’ by Stephen King was in the pile where I had last seen it. It was a hardcover copy and published in 1987 by Guild Publishing and on the back there’s an interesting picture of Stephen King taken by Andrew Unangst. I bought the book for the picture alone.

I was disappointed not to find the other title- War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon. I couldn’t spot it. Somebody must have picked it up or it might turn up next Sunday. I have to wait until then. I will find it if I am lucky otherwise I will think I had made a stupid decision not to have picked it up as soon as I saw it.