Last Sunday it wasn’t a normal one at Abids because nearly a quarter of the second hand book sellers hadn’t set shop. One of the sellers who did not set up his books but came to Abids told me that there weren’t enough buyers to make it worthwhile. I felt a bit disappointed because I had seen a title he had that I wanted to pick up but I would have to wait until next Sunday for it. That is, if he sets shop. But no matter that there were fewer sellers than usual I managed to land in a good haul of eight titles.
I have a weakness for crime fiction of the 60’s and 70’s and that’s the reason why I picked up three titles from a seller who seem to be new to Abids. The covers of these titles are of a different style. I found a copy of ’13 French Street’ by Gil Brewer, someone I have never heard before.
It was the same with GG Fickling. I found a copy of his ‘Honey in the Flesh’ by G.G. Fickling
Then there was this copy of ‘The Smugglers’ by Paul Petersen that I simply couldn’t resist. I got all these three books for just eighty rupees.
A long time back I had missed picking up a title that I should have taken. It was too good to resist and a Penguin to boot. But somehow I had seen that title too many times and thought I’d pick it up when there was nothing else. The title simply disappeared and coincidentally only the other day I was thinking of ‘Meatless Days’ by Sara Suleri which was the title I had missed buying in the past. Suddenly there was this wonderful copy of the same book on a bookshelf and I grabbed it. I got it for hundred rupees.
In all the thirty plus years of looking for good titles in the Sunday book market of Abids and also at other second hand bookstores in Hyderabad and elsewhere I never came across a title by Susan Sontag. I was desperate to find something even if it was a small book. Last Sunday I found exactly that. I found a small book- a Penguin Modern, ‘Notes on Camp’ by Susan Sontag that had just two essays- Notes on ‘Camp’ and, One Culture and the New Sensibility. I felt glad finding this little gem that I got for fifty rupees only.
In the year Doris Lessing won the Nobel I found a copy of her ‘The Golden Notebook’ and kept it aside to be read some time in the future when I had the time to read the hundreds of pages of this book. But unfortunately I gave it away, a foolish thing to do, yes, thinking I could never read it. That was before I read other Doris Lessing titles. Last Sunday I found a nice copy of ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing and picked it up.
The other Sunday I had seen a nice copy of ‘The War Poems’ by Siegfried Sassoon that I did not pick up because I had bought too many books by then. I wasn’t in a mood to pick up anything and left it behind praying no one would buy it until the following Sunday. But the next Sunday when I went I couldn’t find and saw the copy ‘Misery’ by Stephen King I had seen along with ‘The War Poems’ and which I picked up. But I knew that ‘The War Poems’ would turn up again and turn up again it did last Sunday. It was a beautiful faber & faber paperback that I bought for a hundred rupees.
With the same seller where I bought ‘The War Poems’ I saw a copy of ‘The Blindness of Insight’ by Dilip M.Menon, a book of essays on caste in modern India. The title is published by Navayana, and I got it for fifty rupees.
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