Last Friday, after a short gap I again dropped in at the office to catch up on some paperwork. Since we are not maintaining regular office hours and can come and go anytime I left early after lunch. I did not feel like going home so early and coincidentally I was near a second hand bookstore when I had this thought. I decided to spend an hour browsing the shelves of the smallish bookstore. A few minutes after I checked the first shelves at the entrance I found a copy of ‘Miami Blues’ by Charles Willeford. A long time back, in February, 2009, I had, on a hunch, picked up a copy of ‘The Shark Infested Custard’ by Charles Willeford. Sometime later I learnt that Willeford was a major crime writer and his ‘Miami Blues’ was mentioned as one of his better titles. Anyway, I haven’t yet opened ‘The Shark Infested Custard’ and read it to find out how good it was. But I decided to buy the copy of ‘Miami Blues’ because it was only an uncorrected proof copy as it clearly said on the top of the cover.
Not
very long ago I missed buying a beautiful title of Herodotus because I was a
bit foolish thinking that no one would buy it. It was gone in no time and I have
regretted it since. I found another title ‘Snakes with Wings & Gold-digging
Ants’ by Herodotus a few moments after I had found ‘Miami Blues’ and I decided
to buy it. It was
On Sunday, as usual, I was at Abids glad that it wasn’t raining. However the dark clouds in the sky above indicated that it would rain in a couple of hours. I hoped it wouldn’t rain while I was browsing. It did rain a little but after I had bought three titles.
The
name ‘Balwant Gargi’ is burnt into my memory. I haven’t read any book by him
but I remember he was the one who wrote ‘The Naked Triangle’ that I found last year. A long
time back I had appeared for the Civil Services preliminary exam and there was
a question in the General Knowledge paper- ‘Balwant Gargi’ wrote, followed by
four choices one of which was ‘The Naked Triangle’ that I ticked. It was the
right answer I learnt later and was thrilled to know. That I did not get
through the exam is another story.
The
thing was I spotted a copy of ‘Purple Moonlight’ by Balwant Gargi. It was a
memoir, not a novel. I flipped through it and found references to Mulk Raj
Anand who was his friend and other things. I love to read memoirs and
autobiographies especially by writers so I grabbed this book right away. I had
the feeling that I had made a good start finding ‘Purple Moonlight’ by Balwant
Gargi. Incidentally I paid only fifty rupees for it.
On
top of a pile of books with another seller I saw a copy of ‘From the Holy
Mountain’ by William Dalrymple that I hadn’t read. I have not seen any copies
of this book at Abids so I wanted to take a closer look at it. Only recently I had
finished reading ‘Balkan Ghosts’ by Robert D. Kaplan that left me with a desire
to read about the Balkans and how the people there protected their religion,
their churches. ‘From the Holy Mountain’ was something about the same but dealt
more elaborately. It was the book I needed so I bought it.
Down
below in the same pile the bottom portion of a book stuck out revealing the cover
with the word ‘A great traveller, a woman of astute judgment and an extremely
sensitive writer’ that made me pull out the book. I was thrilled to see it was ‘The
Coast of Incense’ by Freya Stark. A long time back I had found a copy of ‘Ionia’ and also 'The Southern Gates of Arabia' by her that I found to be wonderful reads. I love to read travel literature,
serious stuff by good writers, and finding ‘The Coast of Incense’ which was an
autobiography, the third volume, made me elated. However, I wish I could find
the remaining two volumes too.
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