The lure of secondhand books

© Prashant C. Trikannad

Secondhand books are like antique furniture. They have a musty but pleasing smell, great monetary value, and are much sought-after by discerning readers and serious collectors. But just as it's not easy to buy old furniture, it's not that simple to get hold of forgotten and out-of-print books. You have to establish contacts with used booksellers over several years, like a news reporter cultivating his source for a scoop or a cop working an informant for a tip on an elusive gangster. Once you have a mole or two in the used book trade, you can get almost any title you want and tick them off your wish-list.

I remember every secondhand book or comic-book I have bought over the past three decades, and it hasn’t been easy.

Some years ago, I visited a prominent new bookstore in South Mumbai to pick up a 1995 edition of DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favourite Comic Book Heroes by Les Daniels, a well-known historian of comic books. The 256-page hardback—described as "The complete story of America's favourite heroes and their talented and dedicated creators"—was on sale for the magical price of Rs 450 ($9). Naturally, I was elated. However, I resisted the temptation to buy the book. I thought I could use the money for something more useful, and walked away. When it comes to books, you can’t be blind all the time; sometimes you’ve got to be practical, too.

It was just as well.

A few weeks later, I spotted a near-mint edition of the volume at a pavement bookseller in Fort-Fountain area, a central business district about 7 km from the bookstore. It was sandwiched between an airtight stack of academic journals and coffee-table books. "It's yours for Rs 150," said the bookseller who knew his books better than I did. I offered him Rs 100. We finally settled for Rs 125 ($2.5). It was a bargain I would've been a fool to turn down. Of course, it helped that the bookseller was a "friend" of many years.

Not long after, I stumbled across a fine — and rare for me — edition of The Penguin Book of Comics by Englishmen George Perry and Alan Aldrige, 1967—a 272-page volume chronicling the evolution of British and American comic books. While Perry wrote the text, Aldridge designed the cover and the illustrations. The book analyses the rise and fall of comics in mid-20th century in the wake of Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code, and the influence of comic strips and comic books on popular culture, and entertainment such as art, films, and television.

Until the mid-nineties, booksellers lined the footpaths in that part of South Mumbai. Today, there are fewer than a dozen, thanks to eviction drives by the municipal corporation. Interestingly, the civic officer in charge of one such operation left the booksellers alone even as he went after other hawkers in the area. "Books are Saraswati (the Hindu goddess of learning and knowledge). I want people to buy and read books," he told me at the time. Since the turn of the century many sellers have dumped books—that few people are reading, let alone buying—for more lucrative goods like mobile phone accessories. Book collectors like me were the losers.

Secondhand books are not as elusive as you think they are. You have to keep your eyes open, know where to look. Sometimes they can be right under your nose, other times you have to sniff them out like a wolf sniffing out its prey. After years of browsing, I can home in on a ‘wanted’ title like some kind of a heat-seeking missile. All it takes is a quick, sweeping glance of stacks upon stacks of pavement books, provided the titles are displayed prominently. With practice, you can hone book-spotting into an art.

Some of the most rewarding secondhand book haunts in my city of 18 million are raddiwalas. These hole-in-the-wall paper marts, dotting the island city and its extended suburbs, are more than dusty repositories of old newspapers, plastic bottles, and assorted junk. You never know what reading treasures you will find there. While a few organised paper marts know the value of good books and pass them on to professional booksellers, most stack up books near the entrance and sell them cheap. 

Like an archaeologist digging for bones, I have been prospecting raddiwalas for well over two decades, and rather successfully too. I once bought a dozen rare Phantom and Mandrake comics, under the Indrajal imprint, from a paper mart close to my home for Rs 10 each ($0.16), almost as good as free.

Obviously, the raddiwala didn't know their real value considering that owner Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd, publishers of The Times of India, stopped printing Indrajal Comics in 1990. The result: booksellers and individual collectors have been quoting obscene figures for the comics which, apart from Lee Falk's Phantom and Mandrake, included Indian artist Abid Surti's hero Bahadur (the Brave), Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer, Allen Saunders' Kerry Drake and Mike Nomad, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby, and Phil Corrigan, and Steve Dowling's Garth.

Some of the other prized books I bought secondhand over two decades ago, and still cherish, are Art Spiegelman’s Maus (I & II), the 160-page The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History by Franz Rottensteiner, a hardback illustrated edition of Futuredays: A Nineteenth-Century Vision of the Year 2000 by Isaac Asimov, Cows of Our Planet: A Far Side Collection by Gary Larson, Sudden paperbacks by British writer Oliver Strange, a hardback of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Calvin and Hobbes volumes, and dozens of DC and Marvel comics including pocket-size war and western comic-books. Back then, it wasn’t easy to cough up money for a new Gary Larson or a Bill Watterson.

In this age of Amazon and Ebooks, the secondhand book trade is almost dying. Until it does (though I really hope it doesn’t), I will continue to hunt down elusive and priceless fiction and nonfiction. So far I have been lucky, managing to find a few gems every year. The secret to a productive secondhand-book hunt is patience and perseverance—and sometimes luck, when wanted titles leap out at you when you aren't even looking. Those are the ones I like best.

Book Tag: Q&A about reading habits

On June 17, my friend Tracy did a Book Tag post on her popular blog Bitter Tea and Mystery where she answered trivia questions related to books. I found it interesting. She was inspired by book tags at other blogs (links below the post) and I in turn was inspired by her edition of this addictive meme, and especially the variety of books she had read—and continues to read and review across several genres.

I’m not a well-read person. I have a long way to go the book journey. I have many authors to discover, many books to read, and many years before I can sit back and feel good about my reading. So I’m going to be honest. Is there any other way? To twist a famous Kurt Vonnegut line—“We are what we read, so we must be careful about what we pretend to read and the books we pretend to talk about.”

Let’s see how it goes.

What book has been on your shelf the longest?

My paternal grandfather’s 1965 Tudor edition of Shakespeare: Complete Works (The English Library). I’m saving it for retirement, though I bet the bard will have a lot of company by then. I try to read Shakespeare every other year but all I manage to do is brush the dust off the cover, the spine, and the yellowed pages, and put it back in the cabinet.

What is your current read, last read, and the book you plan to read next?

Current Read: The Midden by British satirical novelist Tom Sharpe (one of my favourite writers) and Shall We Tell the President?, an alternative fiction by Jeffrey Archer, one of several bestselling authors I read in college. I like Sharpe’s raw wit and offensive humour. Archer is an old hand at storytelling. Remember Kane and Abel?

Last Read: Past Tense, where prolific writer-blogger Margot Kinberg introduced me to her affable sleuth Joel Williams, former policeman and now academician.

Next Read: To be honest, I have no idea. It’s usually a random choice, though, I’m tempted to read a P.G. Wodehouse or an Agatha Christie from my wife’s formidable collection. It’s been a while since I did. Wodehouse has me in splits even though his humour is stereotyped.

What book do you tell yourself you’ll read, but probably won't?

I’m going to answer this question in a different way. I struggled with the first 30-odd pages of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and almost gave up. I had little idea what was happening. It was one of the most difficult books I read in recent memory. Faulkner seemed to be mocking me at every turn of the page—“My narrative style is not for you. Get off and read something else.” I did not like that.

What book are you saving for retirement?

Well, as I said, giving Shakespeare company will probably be some distinguished Russian authors, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Solzhenitsyn, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (which I never finished), and a few classics. Of course, it’ll all depend on my eyesight and state of mind.

Which book character would you switch places with?
 
James Green, alias Sudden, the Texas outlaw. I have liked the character ever since my paternal uncle introduced me to the cowboy when I was 14.

Sudden, created by British writer Oliver Strange, is my favourite Western. He earns both nickname and notoriety because of his lightning draw; branded outlaw for crimes he didn't commit. In reality, Green the gunman is a gentleman, defending ordinary folks against crooked gamblers, ranchers, rustlers and land-grabbers, even as he quietly hunts for the two men who killed the man who raised him. Sudden also has a badge, a secret identity: Deputy Marshal United States, reporting to the governor of Arizona.

While Strange, who never once travelled to America, wrote ten Sudden novels, fellow English writer Frederick H. Christian (Frederick Nolan in real life) wrote another five. You can’t tell the difference. This is the only series in any genre that I have read more than once.

What book reminds you of a specific place, time or person?

I’m usually so engrossed in a book that I never think of relating the plot, setting or characters to real places and people. Such things seldom occur to me.

Which book has been with you most places?

Plenty of spiritual books but mostly Love Never Faileth by the late Indian spiritual teacher and author, Eknath Easwaran, who established the nonprofit Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in California in 1961. This and most of Easwaran’s forty books serve as a useful and practical guide to leading a fulfilling life, through his simple eight-point programme of passage meditation. You can open any page in any of his books and you’ll be like, “Hey, this is for me!”

Which book have you reread the most?

The only books I reread the most are philosophical and these include books by Easwaran and other mystics, including my spiritual preceptor. They have been my comfort zone, my mental prop, for over three decades.

What book outside your comfort zone did you end up loving?

Not one, but two. The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I read these powerful classics over a decade ago, thanks to my wife’s recommendation. Until then, I’d never read a classic, not counting abridged versions in school.

What are your three bookish confessions?
 
1. I hoard books. I have several unread books that I bought in the eighties and nineties. Though, I have been exercising restraint—so far this year I bought just three books.

2. I will happily miss a bus or a train or an autorickshaw if I see used books on sale, even though I might not buy any and reach home late.

3. I will never lend books I treasure. My Corgi editions of Sudden novels and my comics? Don’t even think about it!

Do you prefer used or brand new books?
 
There is something about being among secondhand books, which comprise 97% of my modest collection. This includes over two dozen used but mint-condition paperbacks of Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: The Executioner. As for new, I buy more Kindle books than paper books.

Have you ever seen a movie you liked more than the book?

Maybe not more than books, but I liked all the movie adaptations of the novels of Jack Higgins (The Eagle Has Landed, A Prayer for the Dying) and Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra). I also liked the cinematic versions of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night. And that goes for the Harry Potter series, too.

Last page: read it first, or wait till the end? 

I have never read the last page first, even to end a book sooner, though I was tempted to do so with Irving Wallace’s The Second Lady. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know why. 

Name a book that you acquired in an interesting way.

DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Bulfinch, October 1995).

Many years ago, I found this DC collector’s edition on sale for Rs 450 ($9) at a new bookstore. I so badly wanted it. But wisdom prevailed, and I walked away thinking I could use the money to buy something more useful, like groceries. Weeks later, I was on my way to the office in another part of town when I spotted the volume at a roadside bookseller, in mint condition and a tag of Rs 125 ($2.5). I grabbed it and hurried off. Book providence, perhaps.

Final two questions, my own.

Which authors you wish you had read by now?

Most Indian authors. There is such variety in Indian writing in English, that I don't know why I neglected it for so long. Ideally, the focus of my blog should have been desi rather than western fiction. I do plan to review Indian fiction in future.

If you didn’t read books, what would you be doing?

If I didn’t read books, I’d be painting or playing a musical instrument. It’s essential to have a life among the arts and crafts; much of everything else is so mundane.

Bottom line: Now that you’ve read my answers, you can see that I haven’t read a lot of books. The important thing is to read, even if it’s one crawling book at a time.


Other notable Book Tag posts
 
Nancy Elin 

Brona's Books

On Bookes

Howling Frog Books

The definitive novels of Jack Higgins

Regular readers of this blog will know that Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) is my favourite author. In my opinion, the bestselling British writer is one of the finest storytellers of my time. He makes writing stories, including thrillers, look so easy, just like his compatriot Jeffrey Archer. Although I have not read all his 85 fast-paced action-espionage novels, I have read many, and I look forward to reading the rest with much excitement. I started reading Higgins in early eighties, with his most significant work, The Eagle Has Landed, followed by Hell is Too Crowded, The Last Place God Made, and A Prayer for the Dying. I remember each of these well. His heroes, many of them ex-IRA, are anti-heroes and vice versa; the kind you want on your side because you know they're good men, almost saint-like, and all very likeable. Here are six of my favourite novels of Jack Higgins, though, if you ask me tomorrow I'll replace them with another six including Night of the Fox, Toll for the Brave, and The Keys of Hell. Have you read Higgins?

 

It Might Have Been by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I don't usually share posts from my other blog B+ve where I post infrequently. But I thought I'd make an exception with my pithy review of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem that I like a lot. It's both inspirational and spiritual. I read a lot of the latter, more as an approach to life. I offer my take at the end of the verse.

We will be what we could be. Do not say,
"It might have been, had not this, or that, or this."
No fate can keep us from the chosen way;
He only might who is.

We will do what we could do. Do not dream
Chance leaves a hero, all uncrowned to grieve.
I hold, all men are greatly what they seem;
He does, who could achieve.

We will climb where we could climb. Tell me not
Of adverse storms that kept thee from the height.
What eagle ever missed the peak he sought?
He always climbs who might.

I do not like the phrase "It might have been!"
It lacks force, and life's best truths perverts:
For I believe we have, and reach, and win,
Whatever our deserts.

© Encyclopedia Britannica

Second Take: “No fate can keep us from the chosen way.” In my opinion, this one line perfectly sums up American author and poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s 1917 poem It Might Have Been. Many of us spend our lives dreaming about the things we want to do and the goals we want to achieve. And when we can’t — or choose not to — pursue our dreams, we spend the rest of our lives in regret and feeling sorry for ourselves. We blame our luck or the lack of it; we bemoan our fate for what isn't and what should have been. The truth is we have no one to blame but ourselves. When people with serious difficulties in life can swim against raging currents and climb hostile mountains and taste sweet victory, why can’t the rest of us climb a few rungs of the ladder to reach our destinations? The only way to change It might have been to I made it! is by substituting the proverbial “Impossible” with “I-am-possible”. Then we shall win, and have our deserts too.

Past Tense by Margot Kinberg, 2016

Kramer walked slowly in the direction Stephens had indicated. Then he stopped short. His face drained of colour and he gulped twice. He could see it clearly — a bone sticking up out of the dirt he’d been preparing to move.

It’s not often that the principal character in a work of fiction takes a backseat and allows the secondary players to lead from the front. In Past Tense, Joel Williams, the affable and self-effacing policeman-turned-academician, does just that and still walks away with honours. But then, he's the hero of the novel.

The professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Tilton, a fictional university in Pennsylvania, hasn’t lost his detective streak as he quietly investigates an old case buried by time and dirt. Construction workers on the campus are stunned when they dig up bones identified as those of Bryan Roades, a 20-year-old student who went missing four decades ago.

As coffee-drinking Tilton police detectives Donna Crandall and her partner Ron Zuniga work on the case with a steadfast resolve, Williams makes his own inquiries into the suspected murder of Roades. Along the way he cooperates with the cops, passing on useful leads that could help solve the riddle—who killed Roades, and why?

Investigations lead the campus sleuth and police detectives to people Roades was associated with 40 years ago. Inspired by journalists Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame, Roades was relentlessly pursuing a story on the women’s liberation movement for The Real Story, the Tilton University newspaper. He was trying to interview professors and fellow-students, including women, who were reluctant to talk to him because they didn't want their personal lives and secrets exposed. His fanatical zeal evidently cost him his life.  

The discovery of his remains opens a Pandora’s box, as those who knew Roades back then find themselves in the crosshairs of the investigation. As Williams and the police detectives inch closer to the truth, one of his old women acquaintances is found dead. And suddenly we have two murders, past and present.

Past Tense, the third in Margot Kinberg’s Joel Williams series, is a fine blend of police procedural and campus mystery.

Though Joel Williams greets us from page one, he gets into the thick of the mystery much later. Until then, he reads about it in the Tilton Sentinel over a cup of coffee. I found his character interesting: I don’t think I have read any mystery where a detective or private investigator keeps a low profile and solves the case from the sidelines; in fact, almost as a spectator, it’d seem. However, it’s clear from the start that his interest in the Bryan Roades case is genuine and it has more to do with his previous job as a cop and his passion for solving mysteries, than winning accolades and fans.

The narrative swings back and forth, offering a glimpse into the character of Roades and his relations with people we are familiar with in the present. There are few descriptions and plenty of dialogue, the way I like most fiction. The pace is easy, almost leisurely, but the author keeps the momentum going throughout the course of the 421-page generously-spaced novel. If you’re familiar with writer and blogger Margot Kinberg’s prolific crime-fiction blog Confessions of a Mystery Novelist..., you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Past Tense is engaging and entertaining, and the author, I assume, brings her vast experience as an academician to bear on this campus mystery of a high order. You won't be disappointed.

P.S.: Special thanks to Margot for sending me a signed copy of the book.


Other Reviews of Past Tense

Bitter Tea and Mystery
Clothes in Books
Reactions to Reading
Crimepieces
FictionFan's Book Reviews

On a blog break

I have not blogged for a month and nor have I visited other blogs in recent weeks. Unfortunately for me, that's going to continue for a few more days, probably until early May, as I rush to fulfil personal commitments and finish work-related assignments.

My review of Past Tense by my good friend Margot Kinberg is still pending and I owe her a big apology. The review will be the first thing I'll be posting on my return, though I hope I can do that much earlier. Joel Williams, the former police detective-turned-professor, is a likeable main character in this nice little mystery set on a campus. I enjoyed reading the book. It had a light and easy pace. You can read Margot's guest post about her new book and flash fiction by clicking on the above link.

Meanwhile, I remain active on Facebook and Twitter, as some of you may have noticed, but that's only because I mostly post while waiting for a bus or train or just before turning in for the night. That way I can at least follow what many of you are blogging about.

See you in May.

Daredevil TV Series

Wilson Fisk: The city and its future...seeing Hell's Kitchen to its fullest potential is very important to me.

Matt Murdock: I feel the same way.

The Daredevil TV Series (2015-present) has a popularity rating of 64 on IMDb, up 32, though I don’t know since when, but I’ve added to its growing appeal. I liked this show about Marvel’s much-underrated superhero. I found it dark, gritty, violent, flawed, and oddly unsettling, perhaps because I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I was on tenterhooks through Season 1. Besides, I've always been partial to Daredevil, as I'm to Batman, the Hulk, and Wolverine.

Going back, I liked the 2003 namesake film a lot because it lived up to my comic-book image of The Man Without Fear (unlike Tobey Maguire who didn't as Peter Parker in Spider-Man). Ben Affleck was perfect as Matt Murdock — blind lawyer by day and vigilante by night. For many years, I hoped there would be a sequel. There was none. And now the TV series has compensated for the gap.

British actor Charlie Cox steps convincingly into Affleck’s shoes and raises hell in Hell’s Kitchen, the dark side of Manhattan in New York City. He is not infallible. He makes mistakes and gets walloped a few times, including by arch enemy Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, who clobbers him like Bane smashes Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). And like Batman, the caped crusader of Gotham City, he falls only to rise stronger, wiser, and more determined.

A little wisdom is what Daredevil picks up after his often impulsive and bloody fights with local thugs, junkies, kidnappers, and extortionists. With every episode he learns more about the masterminds behind his battles—the Russian mafia, Japanese crime syndicate Yakuza, Chinese gangsters, and finally Fisk/Kingpin himself—who want to carve up Hell’s Kitchen between them. And slowly, he also learns to be one step ahead of his ruthless enemies.

A television series provides more reel for longer stories. Daredevil gives us more than the heroics of the vigilante. It also offers us a peek into the back stories of the familiar characters—Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), his buddy and law partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), their first client-turned-secretary Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), famous crime reporter Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio)—which adds to the twists and the suspense.

Daredevil is stark and realistic with a degree of brutality not common in superhero movies. Murdock and Fisk, while representing good and evil, share a tragic childhood, their lives haunted by demons of the past—prompting Hell’s Kitchen’s supervillain to say they’re not very different from each other. Although, they have their own reasons for making the seedy neighbourhood a better place.

As Daredevil, Cox is as good as Affleck, while, as Kingpin, D'Onofrio is several heads above Michael Clarke Duncan in the movie version. What works in his favour is his depiction of the bald Kingpin as a businessman who is both vicious and vulnerable. He reeks of evil and yet doesn’t necessarily seem like one, if that makes any sense.

Finally, what I found appealing about Daredevil is the music, the opening theme and the background score that plays during critical moments in every episode, heightening the thrill and tension of watching a series that deserves wider recognition.

Next up is Season 2 on Netflix, followed by Season 3 in 2018. This is because, in 2017, Netflix plans to release Marvel’s The Defenders comprising Charlie Cox as Daredevil, Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, Mike Colter as Luke Cage, and Finn Jones as Iron Fist. The last three superheroes also have their standalone series.

Have you seen the Daredevil TV series?