the damage

I should know better than to amble into the Strand with a bellyful of apple cider from the Greenmarket, on an evening when I should be hurrying home to beat the threatening rainclouds.

I didn't find the book I was looking for. I did find:

• Here is Where We Meet, John Berger
• Dancer, Colum McCann
• The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, Vijay Prashad
• Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, eds. Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar.

That's actually quite a lot of book for $37.82, and I wouldn't feel guilty were it not for the fact that I also had a Strand Moment just the other week (Swords of Ice, Latife Tekin; Love Marriage, V.V. Ganeshananthan), and I am currently supposed to be making an effort to be frugal. Which should mean: library.

My present self-imposed IMF austerity policy is the result of an unexpected $350 worth of laptop repairs last month (ouch), a desire to pay off the small credit card balance I'm carrying before starting grad school in the fall, and--more cheering--the fact that I just bought a $1,200 plane ticket to Delhi and Kolkata for this coming December/January. More on that, later--I have some reading to do.