The previous Sunday was at Bengaluru so missed my weekly trip to the Sunday second-hand book market at Abids here. So it was with a bit of excitement that I started for Abids last Sunday as I would meet my bibliophile friends over chai and also meet a new friend I met online who wanted to check out the books at Abids.
At Chikkadpally I saw two titles that I already had but wanted to buy anyway. However, they were massive tomes and would cost me a bomb so I decided to check them out next Sunday.
A few minutes later I reached Abids and met the person who was waiting for me. We both set out to browse further since he had already bought about half a dozen books by then. Having bought more than a dozen titles at Bengaluru only a few days earlier I was in no mood to buy any more unless something really exceptional turned up.
As usual, something really exceptionally turned up shortly afterwards. I spotted a copy of ‘No Country for Old Men’ by Cormac McCarthy that had a fantastic cover. I already have a copy of this title that I found in 2012 but this copy was something I had to buy just for the irresistible cover. I turned to the back cover and read that the cover was designed by David Pearson. The title filled the cover in a type of lettering I hadn’t seen before. Though a bit of the cover on the front was torn and some of the pages inside seemed to have a touch of the damage by moisture this Picador edition was otherwise in beautiful condition. I got it for a hundred rupees.
Then my friend said he wanted to check out the Best Books store which was where we headed for next. I had asked him if he had read anything by Elmore Leonard as I wanted to give him a book as a gift. But there were no Elmore Leonard titles at the store so I settled for a J.M. Coetzee title to give to him. I was surprise when he pulled out a copy of ‘Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River’ by Alice Albinia from the shelves to give to me in turn. I was very pleased to get it and thanked him before he left.
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