Spring Cleaning – Dusting Books

I dunno what it is about the monsoon season, it makes me want to clean my room and my collection of stuff while listening to some tunes. Of particular concern for me was this built in cupboard that I had a couple of carpenters put up for me when we first moved into this apartment back in October of 2006. I don’t have many clothes, all of which fits in one section really, so the top left section & the large bottom section of the cupboard are filled with my stuff. Among them are a lot of books, 99% of which I bought after we moved into this apartment building. I sold most of my collection of boooks & novels a while before we moved here.

On MG Road, just a 10 minute walk away from my apartment was a large open book stall / store (temporary for 6 months they said but they got it extended for almost 3 years). They sold mainly second hand (in some cases 3rd hand) or discount books. In some cases they were old library books (stolen??) from either Canada or the US (the library address was printed on some of the books) and sold in this store by a set of Tamilians who barely spoke any Malayalam or Hindi or English, except for the big guy at the cash counter who seemed somewhat knowledgeable.

Anyways from October 2006 till sometime in late 2008 my usual alternate Sunday routine was to go for a coffee and a muffin at Cafe Coffee day in the morning and spend an hour there. Then I’d head to this store and browse the various titles for a couple of hours. Once I selected the 2 or 3 book I wanted, I’d pay for them and then go to Oberois bar & restaurant which was about 800 feet away and settle down with a book, some vodka or beer and some lunch and read for 3 hours in the bar. I bought a lot of books and about 95% of my current collection is from either there or another discount store that opened in 2009. Here is some of the books that I dusted and cleaned with a slightly wet cloth.

From my favourite author of all time Stephen King – Insomnia & Needful Things and from another favourite Michael Crichton (RIP) are Timeline, Sphere & Congo. Except for Insomnia, all have been made into feature films which I have enjoyed watching.

I think it was my sister who turned me onto John Grisham (she studied law btw and my brother-in-law is a lawyer) and around the same time we also watched the 1994 movie The Client based on his novel of the same time. Since then I’ve accumulated quite a big collection of Grisham’s novels and I have most of them. Here’s a few that I cleaned up today including The Client, The Firm, The King Of Torts, The Runaway Jury, The Street Lawyer, The Partner, The Broker & The Litigators. He likes using ‘The’ a lot in his titles, doesn’t he?

Me, the big time atheist has only two books in my collection by famous atheists. Well it’s usually because I hardly read any non-fiction and prefer fiction a whole lot more. Still, I needed to get these two in my collection – The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and the late great Christopher Hitchens had his memoir called Hitch-22 which I got last year. I don’t know how the latter book got into this pile as the rest of them haven’t been touched in 2 years or more.

And last but not least, certainly not as I give it a special place here, a hard cover novel version of the Star Trek : Generations movie. This is one of only two books I have from the Star Trek universe I’m afraid as I haven’t been to find any over here in my city. This book also has some great photos from the movie and I love it. I only read the book once but seen the movie around 10 times or more. I love & prefer hard cover books as they last long, as they are studier and look much better on your shelf.

Now when I can afford to, I have to buy a shelf or two to display my collections properly.