I don't know, I've never rowled.

On Friday afternoon I took the G train, though it be by far the least efficient way to get to work, because I wanted to read The Number System and eat a vietnamese sandwich. The NYC subway system is in all the world my favorite space in which to read and think, with its aggressive admixture of public and private noise and silence. I managed to prove the laws of arithmetic from my underground seat, but by the time I walked the short mile from the station to the store (it was very hot) I was feeling rather ill and sorry for myself. I've been suffering from a respiratory infection ever since.

Although I promised myself to wait until I had finished another book before starting HP#2, by late in the evening I was unable to take in anything but take-out and Rowling. One has an awkward tendency to read these books as a substitute for sleeping, as a faint simulacrum of one's own dreams. I woke up (too) early on Saturday to visit the terrible belly of the BEA, stumbling again underground with a copy of Herodotus-- a classic with which to steel my mind against the flash and bang of the horrid new books at the tradeshow. I collected so many freebies and catalogs that I had to take a taxi back to brooklyn.