I came in to my office today and saw my stash of used books on the bookshelf. We are allowed to keep a stash of 25 books or less. It is an evil practice. I have some good stuff in there though. I have Junot Diaz’s Drown, Hanif Kuresihi’s The Black Album (though I hear The Buddha of Suburbia is his best book), W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction, Colette’s The Pure and the Impure, a biography of Simone de Beauvoir (loved her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) by Deirde Bair, and I have a few books by Simon Schama that I may never get around to reading because they weigh about 20 pounds each (The Embarassment of Riches and Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, though Landscape and Memory was recommended to me). Christ, this seems insurmountable. I will prevail! Though if no one sees me for more than a few days, you had better make sure I was not crushed under a giant pile of books.