If it weren’t for the powerful lure of finding good books at the Abids book bazaar on Sunday I wouldn’t have stepped out of the home in this brutal heat. It was yet another very hot Sunday morning last Sunday when I started for Abids. But I was glad I went because I found three very good titles all at one place with one seller.
Not only do I love reading both fiction and non-fiction titles I also love reading literary criticism, essays on literature, books. Over the years I have managed to find a few wonderful titles by writers like Harold Bloom, Julian Symons, Cyril Connolly and such writers who write perceptive essays that help me understand literature better. One name I had come across so long ago that I almost forgot it until I saw it on the cover of a book I spotted last Sunday. It was Frank Kermode and the book was ‘The Uses of Error’ that was a hardcover book with a nice plastic covering. It had a stamp of the British Library but no mention whether it was a discarded title. But I was delighted to find that it was a collection of book reviews and essays one of which was on Cyril Connolly. The actual delight was in getting the book for only fifty rupees, a steal at any rate.
There were also two other titles near it and it appeared as if they all were a part of someone’s collection. One title was ‘A Tomb for Boris Davidovich’ by Danilo Kis. It was a Penguin paperback and this book too had a cover that was encased in a plastic jacket. I was thrilled to read on the cover that it had an introduction by Joseph Brodsky. I got this again for fifty rupees.
The third title was a Penguin edition of ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark, again with a plastic jacket over the cover. Though I already have a copy of this title I bought it to give it away to interested readers. I got this too for fifty rupees.
A cool haul on a hot day.
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