The Sunday Haul (on 04-02-2024)

 

It’s just beginning to get a bit warm during the day in Hyderabad which means summer is just around the corner. It wasn’t hot enough to need a cap but next Sunday I might need it when I am at Abids. Last Sunday though it was sunny it wasn’t hot and I got around and found these four books. 

Of late I am tilting towards non-fiction titles especially journalistic accounts of places where there is conflict like the Middle East. One such title I came across at Abids last Sunday was one that I picked up immediately. It was a nice copy of ‘My House in Damascus; An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution’ by Diana Darke.

 

I am travelling by later this month and thought I’d read some crime fiction during the long journey. I was unable to decide which title to take out of the many I had on my shelf and so when I spotted a copy of ‘The Quiller Memorandum’ by Adam Hall that was also made into a movie as mentioned on the cover I decided it would be this book I would take with me to read. I got this title for just twenty rupees. 

 

The other Sunday I had found a wonderful title at Abids- ‘A Writer at War’ by Vassily Grosman that was about the fighting in Russia in the Second World War that I am yet to read. Last Sunday at Abids I found another title set in Russia- ‘Ten Days that Shook the World’ by John Reed that was about the Russian Revolution that I found at Chikkadpally. 

 

At Chikkadpally again with the same seller I found a copy of ‘Secrets’ by Nuruddin Farah about whom I had read about somewhere recently. It was a Penguin title so I picked it up without much hesitation. This was also the first title by a Somalian writer that I found. 

The Sunday Haul (on 28-01-2024)

 After getting the news that the Hyderabad National Book Fair will be from February 9-19, 2024 I thought I would not buy books at Abids and instead pick up books at the Book fair that is just ten days away. However once I reached Abids last Sunday I couldn’t help picking up four titles, all good ones. 

The first title I picked up was an old copy of ‘Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People’ by Fritjof Capra that I got for a hundred rupees. I don’t know if and when I will read it but I felt I had to buy it. I am going to Ooty again on a two-week trip and thinking of taking this book along to read. 

Another find was a hardcover copy of ‘An Unfinished Journey’ by Shiva Naipaul, a collection of six essays. Inside I saw the stamp of ‘Institute of Defence Management- MESS Library’ and wondered who decided to discard it. One of the six essays in it titled ‘My Brother and I’ is about his famous brother V.S. Naipaul. He writes of the absence of his brother in his life, and also about his own development as a writer.  I remember buying a copy of his novel 'Fireflies' long back but I do not remember if I had read it!

 

A year ago perhaps I had found a wonderful copy of ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis that I had read about in several places. I thought I was lucky to find it, and had also read it and found it to be a wonderful book. Last Sunday I came across another copy of the same title but with a different cover that at first I did not want to pick up since I already had a copy. But I couldn’t leave it behind and so picked it up.

 

When I want to know more about something current or something I am intrigued by I always try to learn the basic facts from sources that put it across in a simple way. Ever since the flare up of the conflict in Palestine I wanted to know the background facts. I found a copy of  ‘The Arab-Israeli Issue’ by Paul Harper, a hardcover title not more than eighty pages in which I learnt about how it all began. It was a discarded copy from the Seattle Public Library that I got for fifty rupees.