Abids on Sunday the 20th of December … some more of the same … and others too …

My general Abids schedule is usually once a month, but after my previous trip (on the 6^th) where I got those old crime thrillers, and posted their cover pictures, KBS Krishna responded enthusiastically and imparted some more knowledge about writers of that period … he mentioned some more names and wondered if the Sunday pavements of Abids would have their titles … I was ready to go the next Sunday … Shruti appeared a bit worried … you went last Sunday, no … your visit is usually once a month … and all that … I sort of ducked those bouncers, but finally decided not to go … she also said, anyway, next Sunday we won’t be there in Hyderabad, you can go …

So, next Sunday came and off I went to Abids … I got down near the same pavement stall from where I got those ‘sensational’ crime thrillers to see if any books from two weeks back were still left unsold … oh yes, some of them were still there … I was slightly better acquainted with the 50s-60s-70s crime fiction scene now … I saw another Mike Shayne mystery (Brett Halliday), The Corpse Came Calling … I had bought a Mike Shayne mystery during my previous visit and had no hesitation in picking this up ... 

And then I saw two books by Richard S. Prather … I picked both and read the blurbs and discovered that this writer had his own private eye called Shell Scott and these two books featured him … one of the books was a novel, Pattern for Panic (1954), and the other was a collection of short stories Shell Scott’s Seven Slaughters (1961) …

  

The world wide web helped me gain some more information about Prather and his detective … Prather wrote ‘plentifully’ between 1950 and 1975, publishing around 40 Shell Scott books (novels and short story collections) … from what I read, Shell Scott is a different sort of detective … he is an ex-marine, sports a ‘bristly white-blonde buzz cut,’ no fedora or trench-coat, but Hawaiian shirts and ‘snazzy teal blue suits’ … and ‘remarkably little angst’ … he is, no doubt, tough, but with a touch of goofiness … the hedonism is very much there … now I am glad I got those two books, gives me some idea about the progression of the detective genre … the early ones and the later ones and so on …

After this purchase, I joined Vinod, Srikanth, and Umashankar at the Irani … there was a discussion on two recently released supposed-to-be-blockbusters Hindi movies … and also Telugu movies … the Hyderabad Book Fair had started and Vinod had already visited it twice, and maybe Umashankar too had … then there was this discussion on what books they saw and what they bought … and then, we started our journey …

Nothing much for a long time … then Umashankar found a slim book of aphorisms on love … and spent the browsing time reading aloud witty quotes and one-liners from the book … very enjoyable actually … and I found a book which I thought Mamoon might like … Your First Keyboard Method … I had purchased a keyboard looong back and Mamoon sometimes plays with the keys, making her own music … maybe, just maybe, Mamoon might get interested in ‘learning’ how to ‘actually’ play the keyboard … I ‘scanned’ and ‘skimmed’ the book and felt that the instructions and illustrations were simple enough …

Then we went down the road, eyes scanning the pavements on both sides … Vinod pointed out Elmore Leonard’s Bandits … I was not sure whether I already had a copy … Vinod said take it, it is a nice copy … he is a great believer in picking up multiple copies of second-hand books in good condition … makes good gifts for books-loving friends … I had done so previously on two occasions and gave those books to my student … I am glad I picked Bandits, because when I came home and checked, I didn’t have one …

And then we went till the GPO … saw some more books … came back to Bata galli and entered the shopping complex and surprisingly, many permanent shops that were usually closed were open (possibly because Christmas and New Year are close … ) and as a result many Sunday bookstalls were not … and from among the few stalls I saw this book … Perchance to Dream … this is sequel to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep written by another acclaimed crime fiction writer, Robert B. Parker … I had read Chandler’s The Big Sleep and had read about Parker’s sequel to that, and I had also seen the book at Abids earlier … and this time I picked it up … let’s see how it is …

And that sort of brought the book-hunt to a close that day … six books for Rs.80 … but Krishna, I couldn’t find any of the books by those authors that you mentioned … I would continue my search though and hope to have better luck during the next visits … 

Oh boy! I forgot to mention this book … Pauline Kael’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang … (this, then, inadvertently, becomes Part 4 now ... )

Yeah, I know … I might as well hang my head in shame … but how could I have accomplished such a monumental act of forgetfulness … it is a Pauline Kael book!!

See, such things happen … what to do … yeah, get on with the story now …

I found this book too among what I now call as the “Capt D. B. Parthasarathi Collection” of books published in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s … I didn’t realise what book it was and only when I picked up the book did I see the author’s name … I tried hard to suppress my excitement … it is not every day that one comes across a Pauline Kael book at Abids … every kind of praise has been heaped on her … she has been said to have had a “ … positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person … ”  and she is also said to have “ … re-invented the form of film reviews and pioneered an entire aesthetic of writing … ”  she was America’s top movie critic for much of the 70s and 80s … she also attracted criticism in equal measure for her highly opinionated reviews and her biting wit … anyway, there is lots that can be read about her and they are all there on the world wide web … so, I felt lucky to have first noticed this book and then to have the good sense to pick it up … (and, btw, for all the five books showcased in Part 3 and this, Kael’s, book, I had to pay a princely sum of Rs.80/- … soopper no … )

WP tells me that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is Kael’s second collection of reviews from 1965 through 1968 compiled from numerous magazines … (he he he … I was born in 1968 … yeah, I am that old …) KKBB features her review of The Sound of Music, which was published in McCall’s Magazine … she called it The Sound of Money (!!!) ‘… sparking outrage among the loyal readers of the magazine’ … the title of the book refers to James Bond and Kael says the words in the title are “ … perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies … ” 

Abids on December the 6th … Part 3 … a haul of the 60s crime and mystery novels ... and their sensational covers ...

I had mentioned earlier that I had seen this “stall selling really old crime fiction with those sensational covers that were published in the 50s and 60s …” and “he was selling them for 50 rupees each …” I looked at them and was tempted … wanted to buy a few for posterity at least … anyway, at that point I didn’t want to pay the price quoted … and then I went on to buy the books I mentioned in Part 2 … I completed the purchase and moved ahead … by this time Vinod, Uma, and Srikanth had left … as I moved towards the end of the road, I saw another spread on the pavement … and all these books were there … I hunkered down and started eagerly putting together my bundle … I asked the price and the chap said “some 20 Rupees and some 30 Rupees” … this was great and I was glad that I didn’t purchase similar books from the other chap at a higher cost … I wanted to pick up a representative haul from there … I picked up each book and saw the name of the author, read the blurb, saw the covers, looked inside … and curiously almost all the books spread were from the collection of one Capt D B Parthasarathi and he had presented these books to one Pasha Educational Training Institute, Hyderabad … anyway, I picked up five books from the spread …

I had read about Mickey Spillane and his detective Mike Hammer while doing some google research on the Macdonalds and discovered that Mike Hammer also belongs to the hardboiled detective brigade … it was negatively commented during Spillane’s time that the Mike Hammer novels contained a high dose of sex and violence … there were both supporters and detractors for Spillane’s novels … and the Signet editions were especially noted for their ‘dramatic front cover illustrations’ … the cover of the Spillane novel I bought last Sunday looks largely tame, but look at the crosshairs and you’ll see the ‘dramatic’ effect … and incidentally this is a 1963 edition …

I hadn’t heard about the authors of the next two books I picked up … I liked the name of the detective, Mike Shayne, in one and the name of the author, Dan Marlowe, in the other … from what I read, Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne series was very popular, went into many editions, and was also translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, Japanese and Hebrew ... oh wow!!  The novels were also made into radio shows and movies ... I don't know if Shayne too is hardboiled ... must read and find out ... Dolls are Deadly is a 1961 edition ...  

Dan Marlowe also wrote in the 1960s, going on till 1986 … and he had two series-es, sort of … one with Johnny Killain as the detective and the other with Drake … the one I bought that day is the first Johnny Killain mystery … the Doorway to Death copy that I got is a first edition, published in 1959!!  Isn’t that great …  ha ha …  and incidentally, both have ‘dramatic’ covers!!

I also picked up a June 1957 issue of Argosy … the magazine began as a children’s magazine and ‘graduated’ into a pulp short story magazine … it was published from 1881 through 1978 … a number of famous American writers have been featured in its pages … as I flipped through the book, I saw some old advertisements for tobacco, tools, and curiously, writing schools!!

Then there was this collection of stories presented by the Master of Suspense and Horror … Alfred Hitchcock … Bar the Door … I was never a fan of the horror and macabre genre … and this book is subtitled, 13 great tales of terror by masters of the macabre … eew … but I like watching Hitchcock movies, and picked this book as a fan of the presenter … the anthology contains stories by H G Wells, Ambrose Bierce, Peter Fleming, and others … this book is a 1962 edition …

And this nicely full-stopped my trip to Abids … very satisfying trip and haul … he he … and thanks to Capt D B Parthasarathi ... 

Abids on December the 6th … Part 2 … the first phase of my haul!!

Actually the books shown here were picked up earlier than Mamoon’s books, so this is technically the first part of the book haul at Abids on December the 6^th … but anyway, how does it matter, you know … but how would you know …

For a long time I didn’t find anything worth my interest … looking for and longing for coveted titles … the 30 rupees heap was too heapy (!!) … would have had to spend more than an hour to dive in and comb through and then come up for air … nah … I opted to skip the diving and combing operation … then there was this stall selling really old crime fiction with those sensational covers that were published in the 50s and 60s … I was tempted but the seller was a hardboiled type, like those books, and he was selling them for 50 rupees each … I skipped that and went ahead … Srikanth, Uma, and Vinod had already moved ahead … Uma suddenly surfaced with a Dashiell Hammett novel … he found it in the next stall … I wrung my hands in despair (all happening in the mind, mind you … ) … should have moved faster and reached that heap earlier than Uma … tcha … lost chance, re … you have to keep a brave face … and move on … but I lingered on at the same place as I had got some good stuff there during earlier visits … there was some sort of compensation when I found my first Simon Brett novel at Abids … it was a novel in the Mrs Pargeter series … Mrs Pargeter’s Package … 

Simon Brett has around 4 different series' of crime novels … I got one each in the Fethering series and Charles Paris series from secondhandbooksindia.com and the one I got now belongs to Mrs Pargeter’s series of crime novels … I had read a couple of ebooks in this series and had liked them … Mrs Pargeter is a widow with a shady past (along with her husband, who obviously was a sort of benevolent don or something of that sort), who solves strange mysteries with the help of her dead husband’s friends, who at one point of time had been sheltered or saved by him, and who are now more than willing to pull invisible strings for her … so, getting this book was some solace after the disappointment of missing out on a Hammett novel …

I persevered and stayed put in the same place … by this time Vinod had moved ahead, and now I see him coming back and he says he would be leaving now as he had some official work to attend to … and he also flaunted a book … I found a Ross Macdonald novel, Jai … tcha, tcha, tcha … missed again … first a Hammett, now a Ross Macdonald … both coveted novels …  but not for nothing is Vinod is known as the Bibliovenator© of Hyderabad … he can sense books, he can smell books from a distance … he he he … anyway, good only … Vinod left, and soon Uma and Srikanth too left … all three left early that Sunday … I found a Harlen Coben novel, Promise Me,  and a Robert Crais novel, Lullaby Town, after a bit of searching in the same place … both are crime fiction writers and have their respective series of novels featuring their detectives … if Robert Crais has his pair of detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, Harlen Coben has his Myron Bolitar and Mickey Bolitar series of novels … Coben’s Promise Me belongs to the Myron Bolitar series … I had found a Coben novel earlier at Abids and this was the second … aah, incidentally, 20 rupees each … he he he …

I was breathing normally now … got some oxygen into my lungs … those three books helped … I moved ahead and turned the corner and there were lots of stalls selling garments on the road … the books were on the pavement behind these garment stalls … one has to move in a narrow path between the books and the garments … and in one of these stalls on the pavement, I found this book … Wolf Hall  by Hilary Mantel …  

I had read about this novel … it had won the Booker in 2009, among other awards, and is a highly acclaimed novel … The Observer names this novel as one of the ten best historical novels … I picked it up and felt that I should buy it … I bargained and got it for 100 rupees … these booksellers go by size and at around 600 pages, 100 rupees for Wolf Hall was worth it …

So, that brings us to the close of part 2 … you mean, there is a part 3?  Why not? Arre, this time I got books like anything … be happy that there are only 3 parts … ha ha … the way I was moving that Sunday after my initial sluggish patch, there could easily have been parts 4 and 5 … 

Abids on December the 6th … Part 1 … haul for Mamoon …

My last visit to Abids was on September the 13^th … that was ages ago maan … so many things happened between then and now … not that I am a regular Sunday Abid-er, but even that once a month visit kept getting so indefinitely postponed that I started feeling like Derrida … things fell together this Sunday the 6^th of December and off I went to Abids … Shruti and Mamoon went to watch the Good Dinosaur and I proceeded on my hungry hunt … I texted Vinod that I would be Abid-ing that day …

I reached quite early actually and the book sellers were just about setting up their stalls … sacksful of secondhand books stood around these makeshift stalls with their mouths tied waiting for release into the Abid-ian air … I wandered around and Vinod texted back saying that he’s in Abids … I called and he said he’d be coming to the usual Irani … I met Srikanth as I was walking towards the Irani … and he asked me why I was letting my hair grow … it is quite grown down now and Shruti had ponytailed it in the morning … I told him I was living out my teenage fantasy in late middle age … he enquired after Mamoon … Uma was already waiting and he noticed the HMT Braille that was my on wrist … he too wanted to know how Mamoon was … and there was some HMT talk for a while and Vinod walked up … we went inside the Irani … Vinod had a book in his hand already and he showed it to me and said there’s a stall selling good children’s books and I could buy some for Mamoon … and then he gave me the book that he already bought and said in fact you could give this book too to Mamoon … haen? … I sort of protested … he said he bought the book because it was good and he was anyway going to give it away to a kid, so why not to Mamoon … oh wow … first book of the day for Mamoon … I made a mental tick to come this way to look for books for Mamoon at the place Vinod suggested …

After tea, biscuits, and banter, we sailed forth with hope in our hearts and courage in our heads … ok, let it be … couldn’t find anything worth my interest for a long long time … and then I sort of started finding books of the sort I liked … and some really old crime fiction books, which I bought solely for their covers … aah, but these will come in the next post (in a day or two … ), but this post is for books that I bought for Mamoon …

These came towards the end of my tramping, and there was a chotu boy who was ‘boy’ing the small stall arranged with all sorts of children’s books … extremely voluble and so enthusiastic that he kept pushing books at me and wanted me to buy everything … he wouldn’t let me focus on the books … I told to keep quiet after some time … I selected 8 books …

I bargained and bargained with that chotu fellow … and walked away twice and he followed me with the heap of books … he wanted 300 … I said 150 … he argued … and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, I forced him to accept 200 … he wanted 20 more … no … give me 10 more … nothing doing … basse re baba … kya saab … kuch bhi nai hota, le le re bhai …

I have to be careful, can’t buy what books I like … I have to try and look at the books from Mamoon’s viewpoint … each page should have not more than three or four lines … maximum five, sort of … and nice illustrations … Mamoon now reads at a faster clip and she finishes these kinds of books in quick time … it is a hit and miss actually … anyway, these 8 books were a mix of animal stories, songs, rhymes, activity, etc. …

This is the book that Vinod gave Mamoon ... the one that sparked off the search ... 

One of Mamoon's favourite rhymes ... mainly because she can jump on the bed with her friends ... and make a real racket ...  

A couple of cat books ... 

That's a very forlorn looking baby bear, isn't it?  Don't worry, he finally manages to get back home ... he he he ... but the Arctic scenes are dazzling ...