The Sunday Haul (on 26.10.2025)

It was another bright and sunny morning on Sunday morning in Hyderabad as I started for Abids and stopped at Chikkadpally enroute. There are four sellers at X Roads and also Chikkadpally with limited stock but sometimes they have wonderful titles. Every Sunday I find something or the other that interests me. Last Sunday I found a wonderful set of books on history. I found two volumes of ‘The History of Europe Vol I’ by H.A.L. Fischer & ‘The History of Europe Vol II’ by H.A.L. Fisher that were quite voluminous but looked very interesting. I got t hem for a hundred rupees each.

I remember reading about John Ruskin somewhere recently and so when I saw a copy of ‘Unto This Last and Other Writings’ by John Ruskin I picked it up to check out what it was all about. It was a ‘Penguin Classics’ a sign that it is a good book so I did not read further and bought it. I got this book too for a hundred rupees.

Then at Abids I sat in Star of India café with two friends and we talked about a lot of things including, of course, books. I told them about ‘The Summing Up’ by Somerset Maugham and also about ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King, two of my favorite books. Then we set out to look around and I spotted a copy of ‘The Writing Life’ by Annie Dillard that made my pulse race as I took it out. I had read about this book a long time back and I wanted to read it since I have a copy of her ‘Living with Fiction’ that I had found years ago. I was thrilled when the seller asked for only fifty rupees for it.