Today as I precariously carried my new Finnish thermos to work with me for the first time, I thought "I need a leather strap for this thing." Which led me on a search with no end. Where does one get a leather strap for a thermos? Or, for that matter, for one's books? Do tell.

I also need another strap, one to keep together all the here and there from everywhere...

There's a review of the assorted works of Javier Marias in this issue of the New York Review of Books (online abstract only for non-subscribers, Three Percent and Conversational Reading offer some choice paragraphs). (Remember that I'm a non-critic when I say that) Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me contains one of the scariest, most emotionally bizarre death scenes I have ever read. It ignited some serious anxiety in me - this is the power of his writing. (See also the New Yorker article from a couple years back: A Man Who Wasn't There.)

More book art. (via I forget now) Someone recently wrote about the increase in book art, and wondered if it meant the death of books as an object of reading. Was that you?

My brother convinced me join him in Greenpoint last night (I actually rode the G train!) at Word for a reading by Carl Wilson, who was recently featured in Largehearted Boy's Book Notes. Glad I went: it was an interesting discussion about an interesting book. Essentially, what is the meaning of taste? How are we defined by our revulsions? Who are the souls who find solace in that which we deem "tasteless"? And why on earth would Elliott Smith defend Celine Dion? We also learned that Obama has supposedly taken interest in the book too... (here's where the Latvian indirective esot would be much more concise than the English).

Tonight, I have "les agont du choice" (as The Husband says) - Mark Sarvas at Boxcar Lounge, Roddy Doyle & A.L. Kennedy at the 92nd Street Y, and Sasha-Frere Jones at KGB. I think by sheer outnumbering I'm going to have to see Roddy Doyle and A.L. Kennedy. How could I resist the man who brought Jimmy Rabbitte into the world?

Also bringing things into this world: Jim and Wood at Sweet Juniper. They're expecting their second, and in the build-up, Jim is sharing stories of birthing other things as well. (MILD WARNING: Includes picture of a bloody-handed smiling Irishman. Now you're interested.)

Finally, to bring it back to the the Nordic thermos, Apartment Therapy pays homage to the interior design in The Lives of Others, and references Eastern Europe in the early nineties. I still wish I could replicate the place where I lived in Riga as it was back then. The seven foot doorways and brown velvet couches. Net curtains. Pine kitchen stools, lithographs, low bookshelves, and small paintings of winter birches. Bare wood floors and white tile furnaces. A grey dishbrush sitting by the sink.

Oh wait... check.