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 …