A “Rare” Find?

I have to tell you something! While browsing the shelves at my local bookseller, Paddyfield (in the ‘bricks-and-mortar’ shop on Hennessy Road, not the online shop) I came across a first edition copy of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.

This novel, you may recall, was recalled by the publisher Little, Brown, because it soon emerged that the author, a young Harvard Student named Kaavya Viswanathan, had ‘borrowed heavily’ several chunks of prose from another book by well-known ‘chic-lit’ author Megan McCafferty.

Viswanathan apologized wholeheartedly, saying that she read McCafferty voraciously and, in her teens, was a fan. What must also be considered is the fact that she was assisted in the creation of the manuscript by a ‘book packager’ which specialized in teen fiction. The book, as I say, was recalled, and rightly so. But we are left to wonder if the young promising author will ever be able to — or be given the chance to — make up for this transgression, whether or not it was intentional.

As for myself, I like to think I am not riding on another person’s misfortune. But, as I say, the book was recalled and those who had bought it were even asked to bring it back to shops for a refund … in the United States. Somehow, I came across one lone copy on a bookshop shelf way over here in Hong Kong. I snapped it up. It cost HKD 180, but I have checked the Internet and see that some people are already selling their copies for over USD 50. I recently read in the South China Morning Post about the burgeoning trade here in old and rare books. Now I know that a first edition of The Hobbit, printed in 1937, recently sold for USD 65,000 and a first edition of Orwell’s 1984 went for USD 26,500.

Such books are worth much more if they are in ‘like new’ condition. I left the shop, breathless with my rare find. I couldn’t wait to get home and put my new book on the shelf. I didn’t even crack the spine. When my two young daughters are grown up and need to start university, I’ll take down the story of Opal Mehta and see how much it is worth.