as always, i had a difficult time deciding what books to bring on the plane, but it shall be john banville's the untouchable, which i just pulled out of nlb, book i of the neal stephenson trilogy, which has been sitting on my shelf since the last expo book fair*, and the david foster wallace of which i have about 50 pages to go.


*su-lin knows this story. i found the system of the world and the confusion among the various piles of fiction, but, in exactly the same way that they never have book i of soseki's i am a cat on the library shelves, quicksilver was nowhere to be found. i eventually got it half off at this weird place i don't even remember the name of, and - here's the part where su-lin laughs at me- i got it in the wrong size. they have big and small versions of the paperbacks, and now i have a mismatched set which sits most awkwardly on my shelf mocking me every time i look at it. curses.