It's a new day, but still counts as Friday because I posted so late last night. I say we take Julie's suggestion and make the blogging day roll over at 4AM. Looking down at the last post, I guess that still wouldn't have remedied the situation.

I thought of Julie again today at work, when I passed the Tales of Genji on the bookshelf. The reason I was looking at books is that Borders is having Employee Appreciation Weekend through Monday the 18th, so we get forty percent off books and music, and twenty percent off movies. I didn't take full advantage, but I'll most likely do some Christmas shopping this weekend on account of it. I did end up buy Haruki Murakami's original acclaimed work The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle marked down from fifteen to nine dollars. All of his stuff I read in the past was good, and this looks like a nice thick book that should last me for a while. Not that I need more reading material: today in the mail I got my order of Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy and Principles of Global Security from Amazon. I can't praise their used-book search enough, it's got every book I've ever looked for, and cheap. I also special ordered from Borders a cheap paperback of El Maestro de Esgrima by Arturo Perez-Reverte (I'm not sure if there should really be an apostrophe in his last name, Spanish people just have two surnames by convention). When I was in China last year, Julie brought me his The Flanders Panel in English, which I enjoyed a lot. With my Spanish flagging, it's about time I read something modern and entertaining in my second language.

Books I didn't buy, but considered:

• Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui; big hit in China but too sleazy, and got bad reviews.
• Tokyo: A Certain Style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki; fun to look at, but not to buy.
• The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection, Volume 1 read by Feynman himself; at 14 volumes and $40 a piece, buying the whole set would bankrupt me.
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 compiled by Dave Eggers; only because I can't decide which anthology of modern American Lit to buy. Probably this one.
• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser; ignorance is bliss.

Some of those are bound to end up on my bookshelf someday anyways.