Small haul @ Best Books sale...

I think this has become a kind of pattern with me...I write my posts in spells...it is not that I don't have anything to write...I have lots actually, but some kind of mental thing acts as a block...and not that I don't do anything during these lean spells...and during this current lean 'blog' spell, I was translating from Kannada to English... three essays, a short story, two poems...and all this is due to appear in an anthology sometime later this year...hopefully...so I was excited about this...and somehow my blog didn't get updated...and then this Best Books sale came up at YMCA, Secunderabad and I didn't find time for that too...my fellow blogger Vinod had two posts on his two visits and I was getting nervous...he he he...and he also had a warning at the end of one of second post for all of us who are regular BB sale visitors and who hadn't yet visited that he intended to visit one more time and if we didn't make haste, we wouldn't find anything worthwhile to buy...and I thought about it and looked at my imaginary schedule mentally and saw that there was no slot anywhere...despite the extension of the sale date...and all of a sudden I found a little speck of an opportunity in between two stops in Secunderabad and Hyderabad, and dropped in at YMCA...

As usual I went around looking for Robert Parker books...I have become an addict, you see...and this time I had the list of Parkers that I had with me...and there was not a single Parker book...I checked at the counter...no, sir...any Dave Barrys? (I asked without much enthusiasm)...you might find a couple of them, sir (he replied without much enthusiasm)...I went in search of Dave...wandered around and was about to give up...and then I spied a copy of Yes, Prime Minister...I must have watched the TV Series episodes of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister many many times, and have become a great fan of this Series...and always wanted to read the books...so, here was an opportunity...I brought it down from the top rack...was this the only book that I was going to take back?...unless you have a haul, however small, you haven't really visited a books sale...it is better to return empty handed...

With dogged determination (and catted conviction!!)...I resumed my search...is that a Milan Kundera book?...yes...and non-fiction too...great...The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts...there was blurb on the cover which said..."Not since Henry James, perhaps, has a fiction writer examined the process of writing with such insight, authority, and range" (Russell Banks, NYTBR)...[that should get Vinod interested]...I have always enjoyed non-fiction by novelists and had earlier read and enjoyed Kundera's The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betrayed...and The Curtain was a welcome addition...two books now...feeling slightly elated...went back to the crime fiction section hoping to get at least one good CF book...aahaa...and wow...I found a book that I was looking for but could not find it during the previous BB sale...John Le Carre's The Spy who Came in From the Cold...and there's Graham Greene's appreciation on the cover..."The best spy story I have ever read"...this has to be good...I was also looking for Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (made into an acclaimed movie recently)...but can't expect too much luck when the going is slow...I was happy with this...but still not satisfied...went around again hoping to find Dave...and happily found around 5 books in the humour section...picked up two...Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States and Dave Barry's Guide to Life...Guide to Life looked interesting with lots of illustrations and a different kind of page format...



Finally, some kind of round figure...five books...but it burnt a big hole in my pocket...I was reluctant to leave out any of these five books from my small haul and took them home...