A Midweek Haul and The Sunday Haul (on 21-06-2020)

A MidWeek Haul:

While at home during the Lockdown and unable to visit bookstores I resolved to make a round of all the second hand bookstores in Hyderabad. Sometime during the last week I dropped in at the Best Book Centre branch in Lakdikapul. There I found two titles that I bought right away.
I have read very few titles by Ngaio Marsh and found them interesting. I like to read memoirs and autobiographies by writers and have about two dozen such titles with me. So when I saw a copy of ‘Black Beech and Honey Dew’ by Ngaio Marsh with her picture on the cover I picked it up. It was her autobiography and I was thrilled that I had found another autobiography to add to my growing collection.

Right now there is a lot going on about the BLM protests and it looks like it is not going to fade away any time in the near future. ‘Mandingo’ was one book about slavery that absolutely horrified me with its savagery and violence. I am yet to read any of Toni Morrison’s titles and plan to read them now when it is the time to learn more about such lives. At the Best store I found a copy of ‘Coming of Age in Mississippi’ by Anne Moody, another autobiography.

The Sunday Haul

Last Sunday I was at Abids again ignoring the pleas by the family not to step out. Here the cases are rising and things look scary, and it would appear dumb to go out at such a time. But you know how I am when it comes to books. Reason doesn’t take the back seat, it isn’t even allowed to get on my bike when I go to Abids. Anyway, I take along a small bottle of sanitizer that I take out and squirt on my hands after I handle the books, and of course, I wear a mask. Thus prepared I went to Abids last Sunday. It was cloudy though when I reached and began to go around looking for books to buy.

The first title I found was a hardcover copy of ‘Beastly Tales’ by Vikram Seth. There was a stain on the cover but I bought it though I had a feeling at the back of my mind that I already have a copy.

Then a small miracle. Spread out on the pavement before an indifferent seller where a few books and my eye zoomed in on one title that stood out. It was the red cover of ‘Ex-Libris’ by Anne Fadiman. I already have three copies of this title and made it four copies by picking the one lying on the pavement.

A couple of years ago I happened to be regularly reading ‘Lifehacker’ or some such site where I read a few essays by Gretchen Rubin. I liked the style and the content since things were a bit messy in my life at that time not that they are any less messy now. I had actually seen a copy of ‘The Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin around the same time and I, for some reason, did not buy it and it had disappeared when I looked for it on my next visit to Abids. But last Sunday I found another copy in the same pile of books where I found ‘Ex-Libris’ by Anne Fadiman. There were other titles I should have bought but didn’t. The most interesting thing is that I had to pay only fifty rupees for the Fadiman title.

There’s a seller at Abids who rises to meet me enthusiastically when he sees me approaching and takes out books that he has kept aside to show me. When I reached his place he showed me a copy of ‘Wolf’ by Jim Harrison. I had a vague feeling that I may have read about him but it did not strike me as something I must buy. But I thought of not leaving the seller disappointed because by then he had an eager look on his face. He thought I would buy it. Then he took out another title by the same author. It was a copy of ‘Legends of the Fall’ by Jim Harrison that the picture on the cover indicated that it was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. So I bought them.

I had a cup of tea at Grand next to the Head Post Office and saw a copy of ‘Chronicles Vol-I’ by Bob Dylan. I don’t listen much to music but I know almost all the big names. I also remembered that Bob Dylan got the Nobel. Plus it was an autobiography, something that I don’t miss buying. I bought‘Chronicles’ by Bob Dylan

A couple of years ago I had found a very interesting collection of short stories by the renowned Tamil writer Sundara Ramaswamy. I loved the stories and sometime later I found another title by the same author but I haven’t read it yet. I knew he was one writer not to be missed. So when I saw a beautiful copy of ‘Tamarind History’ by Sundara Ramaswamy with one of the sellers at Chikkadpally I added it to my haul. But it did not come cheap since I had to pay hundred and fifty rupees for it.

There was another title that stirred a memory in my mind but somehow I did not buy it. It is a book by a Malayalam writer and next Sunday I am going to buy it. The name is M. Mukundan.

The Sunday Haul (on 14-06-2020)

This is the third Sunday after the lockdown here has been lifted here that I am going to Abids in Hyderabad in search of books. Almost all the book sellers are back on the pavement but it still feels that some are missing. There isn’t much of a crowd and that’s what is making Abids look so desolate. Some of the sellers I chatted up told me they aren’t doing much business as not many people are visiting.

I do not know about others but I am coming and buying books which is what matters to me. Last Sunday I bought five titles. I own a few books of literary criticism, something that I try to read to understand literature. Though most are academic sounding with a lot of theories I enjoy reading such books. Last Sunday I spotted a copy of ‘Axel’s Castle’ by Edmund Wilson with a seller near Hollywood shoes in the lane where I park my two wheeler. I got it for forty rupees. Leafing through the book I saw that Edmund Wilson is also the author of ‘Memoirs of Hecate County’ that I had picked up a long time ago but had not read yet.

Next find was with the same seller where I had found a copy of ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ by George V. Higgins. It was another title with the same author- ‘Trust’ that I got for forty rupees. I liked ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ that I started reading ‘Trust’ later in the day and finished it last night. It wasn’t as good as Eddie Coyle but interesting enough.

The 3 for 200 pile was still there but a lot diminished. But I was able to fish out three titles. The first was a nice copy of ‘Sick’ by Porochista Khakpour, and the second was a copy of ‘Scent of a Woman’ by Giovanni Arpino, and the third was a copy of ‘Going to the Wars’ by Max Hastings. It was a surprise when the seller took only a hundred and fifty rupees from me instead of 200. Sometimes I am lucky. With the money I saved I had a couple of chota samosas and a cup of chai at Grand near the GPO.

The Sunday Haul (on 07.06.2020)

If the previous Sunday at Abids it wasn’t a full house of the second hand booksellers then last Sunday it was a half-house with only a little more than half the sellers spreading out their books on the pavement. However it was more than enough for me. There weren’t many buyers around except for a few regulars like me. After weeks of being deprived of the joy of looking for books here, I felt like I was in heaven though it would be another couple of weeks before I become normal. I am buying books like there is no tomorrow. Looking at the way the Covid cases are rising and the rumour floating around who knows there could be another Lockdown which means another spell of deprivation. So I am making most of it and buying whatever looks interesting. Last Sunday I ended up buying seven wonderful titles.

Since finding a nice copy of ‘The Sorrow of War’ by Bao Ninh which was about the Vietnam war from the Vietnamese perspective I haven’t found anything from the SE Asian countries. I had found a book by Pramodeya Ananta Toer but nothing from Thailand or China. Last Sunday I found a book of short stories by a Chinese author and also a novel by a Thai writer. I found a copy of ‘Chestnuts and Other Stories’ by Xiao Qian published by Panda Books. It had twelve stories and I have no idea who Xiao Qian is.

The other book, the Thai novel was a copy of ‘The Path of the Tiger’ by Sila Khoamchai and was in beautiful condition with a lovely cover. I haven’t read anything from a Thai writer so I was quite excited finding this lovely book. I got these two books for just fifty rupees.

At another spot with another seller I saw a copy of ‘The Lighthouse’ by Alison Moore, and on the cover it was mentioned that the book was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker. I picked it up without a second thought. I got it for sixty rupees only.

Next I came to a heap of brand new books, all of them titles by well-known names selling three for two hundred rupees only. There were so many beautiful titles that I couldn’t decide which to buy though I would have preferred to buy all of them. But there were a couple of hundred books in that heap and I can’t afford to buy all of them and even if I bought them all there is no space at home to keep them. So I sifted through the piles carefully and picked up a nice copy of ‘Friend of My Youth’ by Amit Chaudhuri still in its plastic wrapping! It was brand, brand new and the price on the back cover said Rs 499.

Then the next find was a beautiful copy of ‘The Lost Estate’ by Henri Alain-Fournier with a stunning cover in blue and white. I had picked up a copy of this book but the title on it was ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’, and this was at Blossoms at Bangalore a few years ago. It was supposed to be a classic of French Literature and I am unable to locate my copy when I wanted to read it during the Lockdown.

I picked up this copy too because it was too beautiful to let go and added it to my growing haul. The third book was another beautiful copy of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ by Raymond Carver. It had seventeen stories in all. I was excited to find this book since I already have a copy of his ‘Fires’ and also ‘Where I am Calling From’ that I had found at the Hyderabad Book Fair earlier this year, and had been looking for since a long time. . So these were the three books I got for two hundred rupees.

On the way home I stopped at one of the sellers at Chikkadpally and spotted a copy of ‘Collected Poems: 1957-1987’ by Dom Moraes with a beautiful illustration on the cover. I did not even look inside to see how many poems were there but bought it right away and paid fifty rupees for it. Later after I got home I counted the poems in it. There were 101 poems in it divided into several sections.

The Sunday Haul

In my previous post I had predicted that the second hand book sellers would be out in full strength at Abids the next Sunday. Well, it almost happened though less than half of them were around. From two to almost ten sellers was a great improvement I thought as I went around the lanes looking for titles to pick up. It was at just one seller that I picked up the entire Sunday’s haul of five books. The previous Sunday too I had come home with a few books though they were not from Abids. But this Sunday’s haul was all from Abids.

I picked up the following titles:

‘Coolie’ by Mulk Raj Anand. It had a wonderful cover and was published in 1978.

‘Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary’ by Ngugi. It was a hardcover title in good condition.

‘Maigret in Court’ by Simenon. Not such a great copy but I bought it nevertheless.

‘Writing Fiction’ by R.V.Cassill and ‘Making Shapely Fiction’ by Jerome Stearn because I cannot resist books on writing. All these five book I bought for three hundred rupees.

The day before I had dropped in at the ‘Unique Books’ second hand bookstore at Lakdi ka pul where I found a copy of ‘Tibetan Foothold’ by Dervla Murphy. I was looking for her ‘Full Tilt’ but hadn’t found it yet so I settled for ‘Tibetan Foothold’ since I have not read anything by Dervla Murphy till date. I got it for hundred rupees.

I am hoping next Sunday it would be a full house with all the second hand booksellers showing up.

The Sunday and Other Lockdown Hauls

Last Sunday, since the lockdown was relaxed for shops to open, I felt there could be a possibility of the second hand booksellers making an appearance at Abids after almost two months. But next day was Ramzan and most of these sellers would be preparing to celebrate it and besides the regular stores at Abids would be open for Ramzan shopping however little it may be. All these I felt would also mean that the booksellers would not be there at Abids.

So when I went to Abids on Sunday morning there was no one except two sellers. One was just setting up shop putting pirated copies of the latest bestsellers on a wooden shelf, and another near the Head Post Office with a handful of books for children and textbooks. I was disappointed but there was one hope. On the way to Abids I had noticed at a corner of the RTC X Roads junction the usual bookseller who has his second hand books there every Sunday. It was on the other side of the road and I thought I would take a look on the way back. So I rushed there with a desperation I hadn’t felt since a long time. There were a few novels and I thought I would pick up at least one book. I saw a nice copy of ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy that was double the thickness of a brick that I picked up. Then I saw a copy of ‘If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him’ by Sheldon B. Kopp that I also picked up along with a copy of ‘Ithiyamala’ a collection of stories from Kerala published by CBT. I got all these three books for two hundred and fifty rupees.

Just before I left the seller told me he would get more books the next day since the store before which he kept his books would be closed on account of Ramzan. I decided I would drop in the next day too. So Monday morning I was out again in search of books but before stopping at RTC X Roads I decided to go up to Chikkadpally where I had seen someone selling tea before a hotel. It had been a long, long time since I had tasted tea in a hotel so I stopped there. Then on the way back I saw another seller at Chikkadpally who had a few books on the pavement. I found a nice copy of ‘Anywhere But Here’ by Mona Simpson that I decided to buy. However I did not find anything interesting with the seller at the RTC X Roads.

On Wednesday I had to go to my Institute in Jubilee Hills though we are closed due to the Lockdown until the end of the month. In the evening while returning I spotted a board that said ‘Book Sale’ near the MacDonalds outlet near the Jubilee Hills Police Station. I had crossed it by the time my mind registered it so I took a U turn and came back. Another board said each book was for Rs 100. I went in and looked around. There were a few titles worth buying but it was a beautiful copy of ‘A Month in the Country’ by JL Carr that I picked up. Only last week I had seen many tweets about this title so I bought it. It is just eighty five pages long so I managed to read it today in a couple of hours. It is a lovely book.

I am quite positive that next Sunday the second hand book sellers would be out in full strength at Abids. See you there if you are in Hyderabad.

A Pandemic Novel

Since a couple of years I have been drawn to titles by Indian writers originally in English and also those translated into English, especially those writers I haven’t heard about before and also little known names. I have novels by Uma Vasudev, Nergis Dalal, Mayah Balse, Leena Dhingra, Veena Nagpal and such writers not much discussed anywhere. To avoid taking a nap in the afternoon during the lockdown I am reading books by these writers most of which are around two hundred pages and therefore short enough to complete in a couple of hours.

But there is a novel that I am able, with great difficulty at that, to read only a few pages a day. It is ‘Trapped’ by Narendrapal Singh, originally in Punjabi. I had found it sometime last year I reckon and had bought it after seeing it with the same seller for a few months. I did not want to buy it for some reason other than the illustration on the cover. I thought I would be missing a great book so I bought it.

On the cover of’Trapped’ it says it has won the Sahitya Akademi award and also was banned in Punjab for obscenity. It won the Sahitya Akademi alright though I do not find anything in the novel deserving of that award. Then there’s no obscenity either. But what got me interested was that in the novel about a Punjabi guy trapped in the airport at New York while waiting for his American girl friend, there’s a pandemic that sweeps around the world at the same time. It is called ‘Hemi Parisec’ and though it was not fatal the symptoms were that the left side of the person was paralysed, the person experienced blackouts. But it caused enough alarm for the US and the USSR to get worried about it, especially the President of the US, and not surprisingly it is in India that the cure for it is found.

It is a bizarre cure, and two doctors in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh discover it. Apparently, people in areas on either side of the Tropic of Cancer are not affected by it, and only such area in India is free of Hemi Parisec. It seems that the banyan trees are somehow related to the cure of this virus. The Swedish Academy hands out two Special Nobel Prizes for these two doctors! It is an outlandish story and I am yet to finish the novel.
More about it after I am done with the novel.

The Lockdown Reading

I had been dreaming of something like this, long days at home with nothing to do except read all the time. So ever since the Lockdown began I have done exactly what I dreamt of except that I did not read all the time. I spent a major part of the day reading, though and have managed to read more than twenty eight books so far from March 23. Here is the list divided into two categories: Books that took me more than a couple of days to finish, and books I read in half a day.

1. ‘Something for the Pain’ by Gerald Murnane
2. ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ by IA Richards- Boring
3. ‘The Long Firm’ by Jake Arnott
4. ‘Nine Faces of Kenya’ by Elspeth Huxley
5. ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ by John Le Carre
6. ‘The Dirty Life’ by Kristin Kimball
7. ‘Dear Life’ by Alice Munro
8. ‘The Secret Lovers’ by Charles McCarry
9. ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’ by David Foster Wallace
10. ‘Break, Blow, , Burn’ by Camilla Paglia
11. ‘Under the Dragon’ by Rory Maclean
12. ‘Everywhere I Look’ by Helen Garner
13. ‘The Old Forest and Other Stories’ by Peter Taylor
14. ‘And Why Not’ by Barry Norman
15. ‘Pyada’ by Surendra Mohan Pathan (Hindi)
16. ‘The Plains’ by Gerald Murnane

The Half Day Reads:
Since they were not more than two hundred pages I would sit down after lunch and finish these books before I went to sleep. I got the idea half way through or I would have read only those books I could finish in half a day from the beginning of the Lockdown.

1. ‘Sunday at the Pool in Kigali’ by Gil Courtemanche
2. ‘The Mystic Masseur’ by V.S. Naipaul
3. ‘This Side of Paradise’ by Scott F. Fitzgerald
4. ‘The Root of His Evil’ by James.M. Cain
5. ‘The Search Warrant’ by Patrick Modiano
6. ‘A Man, A Home, and A World’ by Jayakanthan S
7. ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark
8. ‘Bullitt’ by Robert L. Pike
9. ‘Yakshi’ by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan
10. ‘The Bang Bang Birds’ by Adam Diment
11. ‘Tim’ by Colleen McCullough
12. ‘Samskara’ by U.R. Ananthamurthy

Still Reading
1. ‘Of Human Bondage’ by Somerset Maugham
2. ‘Trapped’ by Narendrapal Singh
3. ‘So Many Books So Little Time’ by Sara Nelson

I am glad I got read so many books. I enjoyed reading all these books except ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ which was a tough read, and ‘Trapped’ by Narendrapal Singh that I have yet to finish is one of the most stupid books I’ve ever read, and I don’t know why I want to read it until the end. I reckon I will read another half a dozen books before the Lockdown ends here.

The One and Only Dave Barry

There are humour writers and then there’s Dave Barry. He is perhaps the only humour writer who won the Pulitzer Prize. Personally I rate him as the funniest writer in the world whose articles make me almost roll on the floor laughing. Discovering Dave Barry’s columns was one of the luckiest things in my life.

I first discovered Dave Barry’s writings in ‘The Asian Age’ newspaper that carried his columns in its Sunday editions. I used to eagerly look forward to buy the Sunday’s Asian Age that in those days used to reach Hyderabad the next day. His goofy humour appealed to me and I was glad to learn that there was someone who could write what would appear to others as silly humour. I used to laugh uncontrollably and still do whenever I read his articles. It is another thing that there are very few things that can make me laugh in that manner.

I did not realize Dave Barry also wrote books until I accidentally found a copy of ‘Dave Barry Does Japan’ in the Gangarams store in Hyderabad. It was in a discount shelf that I chanced upon this wonderful and extremely funny book. I was so happy to find it that I began to search for his other titles that were listed inside the book. Not very long after that I found a hard cover copy of ‘Dave Barry Turns 40’. Over the years I have bought more than a dozen copies of this title and also other Dave Barry titles. Another Dave Barry that I have multiple copies was ‘Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits’ and as the title says it has some of Dave Barry’s funniest pieces.

Along the way I found ‘Dave Barry is Not Making This Up’ and also ‘Dave Barry is Not Taking This Sitting Down’ and his other titles. I was the happiest when I found a nice copy of ‘Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys’ and later a beautiful hardcover copy of ‘Dave Barry’s Guide to Life’. I am finding it difficult to say how incredibly funny Dave Barry is. Others may find his humour to be juvenile but I think his humour is in a different class in itself.

Unable to bear the tension of waiting for his new title to turn up in the bookstores here and one would never find copies of Dave Barry titles in any store since I used to find them second hand on the pavements or the second hand book stores. I asked a relative in the US who was visiting to get me a copy of ‘Boogers are My Beat’ and my brother who also stays in the US brought ‘Dave Barry’s Money Secrets’. I have found almost all books written by Dave Barry except a couple like ‘Claw Your Way to the Top’ and another title I am not able to recollect now.
So far I have managed to find almost two dozen of his titles. It is interesting that he also wrote two novels one of which was ‘Big Trouble’ that I did not particularly like. But I love all his other books that I think are some of the best cures for bad moods.

How It All Began

In the early years I wasn’t such a regular visitor to the Abids Sunday second hand book market. I went occasionally when I was in town because I was posted in a place quite far away from Hyderabad. In those days I used to come home only during the weekends. With just one day- Sunday- of holiday I just couldn’t find the time to go to Abids as I had to catch up with friends, get the laundry done, run other errands and not to mention, get some rest after a week’s hectic work.

Also, I did not buy books at Abids with the intention of starting a collection. I bought the books only to read them. So I bought only those books I thought might be an interesting read. I do not remember many of the titles I bought in those early years. Later I came to know about le Carre, Len Deighton, Bill Bryson, Dave Barry and began to look for their titles. I would come across many books by Indian writers but at that time I foolishly believed that their books were no good so I did not buy many books by Indian writers. Much, much later after it dawned on me that Indian authors writing in English were good, and after I began to read the reviews in LR I began to buy such titles like ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy, ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie and so on.

Pradeep Sebastian, the bibliomane as he would like to refer to himself, columnist and author of ‘The Groaning Shelf,’ and one of my favourite books is my chief inspiration. It is through reading his column in The Hindu’s ‘Literary Review’ that I came to know about several wonderful writers and books that I would otherwise have not known. I used to cut out his columns and preserve them and in fact I still have a few cuttings including the one where he wrote about Bill Bryson. It was in his columns also that I first read about Anne Fadiman’s ‘Ex-libris’ that I was lucky enough to find almost a decade after first reading about it. ‘The Groaning Shelf’ by Pradeep Sebastian is perhaps the first book on books in India. It is a collection of his various columns where he talks about books, printing, type and so on. I love TGS so much that I have snapped almost every copy of TGS that I have come across. I have two brand new copies and also three second hand copies that I have found at various times.

So far I must have bought a few thousand books in the almost three decades that I've been collecting books. I am 57 now and I have no idea how many more books I will buy.

Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher

Decades ago when I was in my early twenties and in a Harold Robbins-Sidney Sheldon-Robert Ludlum-Alistair Maclean phase a friend gave me a copy of ‘Summer of '42’ by Herman Raucher. It remained unread for nearly a decade and half because I thought it wouldn’t be so interesting whatever my friend might have told me. When I finally read it, (why, I don’t know) I realized how incredibly stupid I had been to have not read that gem of a book for so long. But having read it I experienced a strange tender feeling that overcomes me whenever I happen to see the cover of the book. It takes its place in a separate shelf I have filled with my favorite titles that I treasure and never let go out of my sight.

For several years it was the only copy I had. My friend did not ask for it, and I did not want to return it to her. I found a second copy at Abids that had the same cover. I do not remember now when I found this second copy. But sometime in July of 2010 I found my third copy of this classic. This too had the same cover and I got it for just twenty rupees.

Over the years I reread ‘Summer of '42’ several times, and I reread it only recently a couple of months back and experienced the same feelings I had when I read it the first time decades back.