BARGAIN BIN BOOKS: Thrill of the Find

THIS eminently sound advice was proclaimed by Richard Ford in his book A Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1847). Darkwood elaborates: "Unless you are particularly agile, my recommendation is: If your eyes need massaging, then try rubbing them with somebody else's elbows instead." The chapter on 'Hostilities and Personal Security' cautions us as follows: "No amount of prowess shown at the fathers' egg-and-spoon race at the school sports day can prepare you to outrun a cheetah, for example." Well, current perception of what constitutes 'hostilities and personal security' and the ensuing terror - is more likely to present itself in the form of today's body search and tomorrow's body scan all in the name of war on terror. This purchase left me CA$6.99 out of pocket versus its original pricing at CA$24.95.
Jon and Rumer Godden's evocative memoir Two Under the Indian Sun (1966) of a childhood spent in Narayangunj, East Bengal in the 1910s was retrieved in a long and narrow, comfy second hand bookshop also on Yonge Street, Toronto that is run by a devout book lover who could easily pass - I imagine - as one of the sisters themselves. The delightful read in the mode of Ruskin Bond's writings is a remembrance of times past and it cost me CA$4.50. Their father was posted with one of the steamer companies that navigated throughout Assam, Bengal and Bihar and the two sisters spent a memorable period of five years growing up in a bungalow lost in the midst of a sprawling compound, climbing trees, eating raw mangoes, exciting excursions into the bazaar across civil lines and visits to Dehra Dun, Kashmir, Musoorie, Nilgiiris and Shillong hill stations..
A perfect bargain at US$1 is my purchase of The Peacock Spring (1975) by Rumer Godden in the summer of 2004. The purchase was made in a book-shed (not bookshop) within a parking lot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Already enamoured by her writing, the bargain bin find was a happy discovery. Set in New Delhi in the 1970s, once again two children join their British diplomat father on his posting. The presence of an Eurasian woman in the household (their tutor and their father's companion) reveals the delicate undertones and complexities that surface between various castes, communities and social relationships.
However, my bargain hit is a copy of National Geographic magazine (June 1984) that I bought at the same parking lot book-shed for the princely sum of US 25 cents. The striking cover of a black steam engine juxtaposed before the pearly white Taj Mahal led me to read the article caption: 'Pakistan to Bangladesh: India by Rail: How a 38,000 mile lifeline grew.' With text by one of the Grand Masters of travel literature, Paul Theroux and photographs by the legendary global photographer Steve McCurry, the account of the gripping adventure on rail across the body of the Indian subcontinent is a researcher's dream material and remains a collector's item. We travel by train from Peshawar through Lahore, Simla, New Delhi, Varanasi, Calcutta, Darjeeling, Chittagong and Dacca via a Herculean network set up during the British Raj which to this day remains one of its lingering legacy.
Getting off at Marble Arch tube station in London, window-shopping past Selfridges, I was heading for Daunt Bookshop on Marylebone High Street. Recommended by a resident friend, Daunt Bookshop remains a ritual destination. An original Edwardian bookshop with long oak galleries and graceful skylights, it has been declared by Daily Telegraph newspaper as 'The most beautiful bookshop in London designed for travelers who like reading.' Browsing the shelves and tables laden heavy with bestsellers, classics and dreamy coffee-table books that entice one in a sensual manner, an hour or two of heavenly pursuit just breezes by. However, only new titles are to be found here.
It was the search for Daunt Bookshop that per chance landed me at the window of Oxfam second hand bookshop a throw away from Daunt Bookshop. A literary pilgrimage destination, it is now one of my early ports of calls in London. Oxfam, the traditional United Kingdom-based charity outlets dealing principally in second hand women's clothing, shoes and accessories has zeroed in on another commodity as much in demand as wearable items. Hand me-down books, dvds, posters, recorded music albums are all in search of a new owner and a new home.
Here is the ultimate venue for bargain finds and the heady sense of satisfaction that accompanies it. A best-seller in hard cover The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah by Tim Mackintosh-Smith (2005) priced at 20 pounds sterling was bought by me for 8 pounds sterling only two years later. In a mesmerizing travel trail tale, we accompany Mackintosh-Smith who lives in Yemen in re-tracing the 'Prince of Traveller,' the Moroccan fourteenth century global nomad's journey across the Indian Ocean, to Surat, Delhi and down the Malabar coast Goa, Cochin, Calicut…
Always on the lookout for reading material relevant for the research and writing I was doing on a travel literary book on India, my eyes fell on Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1995) by Patrick French. The paper back issue cost me 2.75 pounds sterling at the Oxfam bookshop. The riveting account of the Great Game power play acted out between England and Russia in the northwest frontier, Central Asia, Himalayan regions Bhutan and Tibet and northeast India is an historical eye-opener. Francis Younghusband born in Murree (hill station in today's Pakistan) was an English rogue adventurer along the lines of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and initiated the British invasion of Tibet in 1903.
My single, most prized purchase remains The West in the East: from an American Point of View by Price Collier. It is the Oxfam bookshop that has topped my source of bargain buy. I am the proud possessor of a red cloth-bound, hard cover book with title and author's name embossed in gold colouring that was published by Duckworth & Co. in London in 1911. This archival book bought close to a century later, I purchased for the ludicrous sum of 5 pounds sterling in 2009. In impeccable condition, the binding remains firm with no yellow markings that stain paper of far more recent provenance. The gold-rimmed stack of pages remains untarnished despite its antique age. For every one of these reasons and more The West in the East: from an American Point of View remains the jewel in my collection of second-hand books.
Bringing to mind the often quoted line by Rudyard Kipling 'East is East and West is West and never shall the twain meet' as well as the recent ideological duel 'Clash of Civilisations' coined by Samuel Huntington; Collier analyses the global mantle that America could play early into the twentieth century. In his words (highly prophetic): "Should Great Britain lose India, lose the Suez Canal, lose the supremacy of the sea, become another Venice, Spain, Holland or Denmark, the one hundred millions inhabitants of the United States would find themselves with new and far heavier burdens…" Was Collier in a time-machine, when in 1911 he declared: "The attitude of our great democracies that everything which is different is therefore inferior, and fair game for ridicule, is the attitude of the small boy in a village street, who laughs and jeers at a new figure or a strange costume. It is sheer intellectual hooliganism. It is the business of those better informed, and therefore more sympathetic, to persuade our great unwieldy mass of ignorant voters that the wave of mastery and influence from West to East is now on the wane. The East is rapidly becoming strong enough to be an independent, and to make terms, instead of having terms dictated, as from a superior to an inferior." Collier foresaw a New World Order- with American paramount in its influence. Much traveled in India, China and Japan, Collier recognizes in particular Japan's imperial reach in the region in the early years of the twentieth century.
The epitome of every book lover's idea of a second-hand bookshop is Tea and Tattered Pages on the Left Bank in Paris. A miniscule literary hideout, the tiny cavern has yielded many a treasure. Not to be dismissed is the resident wolf-whistling parrot that delights in disturbing one's equilibrium. Refocusing my search, one of my literary treasures is Mission to Civilize: The French Way by Mort Rosenblum (1988). In his own words: "This is a reporter's book on a passionate subject." Who can blame him? One of his memorable one-liner reads: "The Gaullist view looks at history, not headlines." The book is entirely engaging, replete with humour of oh-so French ego and eccentricities. Finding out what makes the French tick is Rosenblum's mission. Few foreigners are less qualified. Rosenblum lives in France, has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, served as Associated Press Bureau Chief in Paris and Editor in Chief of the International Herald Tribune.
The hard cover Paris in August by the Englishman Adrian George at 40 francs was a steal. Any alternative cash down would have involved 30 pounds sterling. This purchase was made at Brentano's, the American bookshop which opened in Paris in 1895 and remains to this day, a fine repository of any and every book on France. Combining a languorous text and charcoal drawings to portray the city that acts as his muse, George leisurely strolls us though his account of Paris in the late summer of 1993. Everyone has their own version of the City of Light. Here is George's vision: "Sunday, 1 August. Silence. From my window, the rue Dauphine tapers like memory. The sun falls softly, baking walls, drying tearful grey to cream. Fine cracks in paintwork, floury like the dusty crust of bread. Paris, with its filigreed lace iron balconies, is once again the most southerly of northern cities. August is a kind month. Paris is emptied, Parisians pack their cars with their wives, children, grandparents, dogs and cosmetics and drive to the sea or the mountains or the great rich countryside…."
Literary treats on Paris, the French and France have turned up everywhere. Cairo in the mid-1990s yielded a sepia-toned copy of a book in French Paris by Jacques Carton that was published in 1960. Iconic black and white photographs of the most beautiful city in the world accompany the brief historical text. In London, for 60 pence, I have bought The French on Life and Love (1969), a selection of aphorisms ranging from cynical to philosophical to witty are all to be tasted and savoured as in the art of fine French living... 'Frankness consists in always telling the truth, but not always all the truth' (Mme. De Stael). 'If the husband provides the strength, Nature requires the wife to provide the style' (Montaigne). There are successful marriages, but no blissful ones' (La Rochefoucauld).
For the grand sum of 150 rupees, I am the owner of the 17th edition of All-Asia Travel Guide (1995) published by Far Eastern Economic Review Publications in Hong Kong. It was originally priced at a hefty16.95 pounds sterling. This selection was made at the bookworm burrow that is Das Gupta & Co. at College Street, Calcutta. Since 1888 have book lovers been flocking to this old-world outlet in the search of an elusive book or like me - the luck of the find. Every salesman looks like a Writer's Building babu clerk. The appearance is deceptive. Each man is a walking literary encyclopedia giving credence to the dictum - that a bookshop is as good as the man on the shop floor.
Covering 32 countries of the region, the book covers not only South Asia and Southeast Asia but also a unique category of countries and some of their regions labeled 'Northeast Asia.' This includes the Central Asian Republics, China, Hong Kong, Japan, North and South Koreas, Macau, Mongolia, Russian Far East (ie. Siberia) and Taiwan. Targeting business travelers in the region, the overview still retains every caption heading (a-z) accommodation to shopping to trekking in the Himalayas. This is my first read for any new destination in Asia. And should I ever travel light, this is to be my handy accompaniment.
My eyes zeroed in on the bold black caption section heading 'Travel Books' at the second-hand book sale in 2008 at the American School Dhaka. A bold sweep of the arm and the following books were mine: Lonely Planet's Hong Kong, Macau & Canton (1992) and Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei (1994), Thailand, Indochina & Burma Handbook (1993), The Rough Guide's Vietnam (1996) and Thailand (1998). With every brief now available for future forays into these Far Eastern lands, my considerable investment stood at the grand sum of Tks. 500.
Only last year did I fall upon a page marker that accompanied my purchase at Crossword bookstore on Elgin Street, Calcutta of the English translation of Sankar's Chowringhee (2007), an obligatory read for any Calcutta city aficionado. In a wonderfully reassuring manner, the marker read: 'Wear the old coat and buy the new book.'

Raana Haider is a literary travel writer.

The first part of this two-part article appeared on 17 April.