Missing three Sundays of browsing at the second hand book market of Abids made me so desperate to be back in Hyderabad that I couldn’t wait for it to be Sunday since the day I returned from Ooty last Tuesday. After four agonizing days it was finally Sunday and I rushed off after breakfast. Returning from a much cooler Ooty I felt it was uncomfortably hot on Sunday morning at Abids. However, it did not really bother me because I was fixed on the titles displayed on the pavements.
The first title that caught my eye was a hardcover copy of ‘A Saga of South Kamrup’ by Indira Goswami that had a tattered and torn cover that did not prevent me from buying it. It was a novel and I was glad I found this title by an acclaimed writer. A long time back I had found a collection of short stories by Indira Goswami that, I regret to say, I haven’t yet found the time to read.
In a heap of books selling for only fifty rupees I spotted a new title by an author I haven’t read about before and who I read on the back cover was an acclaimed South African writer with many other artistic talents. It was a copy of ‘The Textures of Silence’ by Gordon Vorster that I picked up.
Next find was a title I read about in a book my son picked up a couple of weeks ago when he came along with me to Abids. I read about ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ by Daniel Gilbert in ‘Tools of Titans’ by Tim Ferris, and luckily I recollected having read about it when I actually spotted it at Abids last Sunday.
When I found a copy of ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk at Abids a couple of months ago I felt ecstatic about finding a title everyone seemed to praise to the skies. Incidentally it was a Fitzcarraldo edition that I found. However, last Sunday at Chikkadpally where I stopped to take a look at the books with a seller, I spotted another copy of ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk with a different cover and published by Riverhead Books. Though I already had this title I picked up this copy too.
The last find was with the same seller. I managed to spot this title at the last minute just when I decided to leave. It was a copy of ‘Up & Down & Around; A Publisher Recollects the Time of His Life’ by Cass Canfield. I had never heard of the name Cass Canfield, and since my interest extend to reading memoirs of editors and publishers too I felt it would be an interesting read so I picked it up.
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