After what feels like several years it seems like I have rekindled my passion for reading Though I have read a few books over the years it was nothing like my days from school when books were my most preferred form of entertainment and an average sized novel was consumed within a day or two. These days books have to compete with several other forms of entertainment like movies, TV series, video games and even plain old internet. I began to realize in the past few years it has taken on an average at least a month to finish a novel.
After very recently completing Kane & Abel by Jeffrey Archer
I went about scanning my bookshelf for my next read. While I usually buy books new from Landmark or Crossword and in the past few months the online bookstore Flipkart I have on occasion bought some second hand from places I don’t care to remember. The book I settled on was an old hardbound with no cover art called “The Last Magic” by N. Richard Nash. I remember now where I had come into possession of this one. It was at one of those grand fairs that are organised on one of the large grounds in the city. These fairs for me personally hold little interest but it was my duty as always to take Mom to them. After an agonising round of all the stalls just outside the exit sat this guy with a cart full of books and cardboard banner advertising that he was selling something like 5 books for Rs 50. I selected 5 books blindly and came home happily not knowing when I would find the time to read them but only thinking that one really couldn’t get anything substantial these days for Rs 10. This book was among them.
Now I haven’t begun reading this book yet and searching on the internet for more info about didn’t really yield much. It seems it wasn’t that popular a book. Opening the book however yielded just one little surprise. Inside the back cover was a little card jacket with a library card. it reminded me of a decade ago when I used to borrow books from my school library. This book which was published in 1978 was apparently checked out 6 times over the next 4 years.
I was curious about which library this book was a part of but the only other information I found was this
. I thought searching for FIRST NORTHERN SAVINGS & LOAN would show me something right away. The only real result that did show was the archived 1987 earnings report for this institution on the New York Times website.
I am the kind of person who always believes there is a story behind even every inanimate object of the past. I began to wonder about a few things.
- Firstly the book is in remarkable condition for something created 30 years ago and having travelled through several hands and miles on it’s journey here.
- Also FIRST NORTHERN SAVINGS & LOAN seems like a purely financial institution and I wonder why and how they were into this whole scheme of loaning books to their customers
- Also the Lousiana written on the first page is the name of a person or the US state of Louisiana is misspelled.
- The chain of events the that brought the book from a library in the US into the hands of an Indian vendor with a handcart
Ofcourse I will probably never know the answers to any of these questions but sometimes there is a greater joy in the unknown. Now onto reading the book.
