D is coming to visit, my first sight of him since August. (Next anticipated sighting? December.) He leaves Honolulu at 9:30 tonight, and, traveling without cease, he will arrive in Halifax tomorrow at 10 p.m. Twenty-four hours of travel apart? I don't care for that. I feel like we are one internet and cell phone collapse away from carrying on a Victorian epistolary romance.

So... the next twenty-four hours are stretching out ominously, tediously, and busily (there is a lot of cleaning that needs to get done before this house is livable for anyone but me and the mouse colony that has taken up residence under my sofa). But I am going to while away at least part of that time in reading, so I thought I would share my two favorite bibliophile discoveries of the week with you in honor of this passe-temps.

First, I give you this marvelous Penguin Books campaign. I mean, who hasn't fantasized that they could just open up their hands and read whatever book they wanted in their palms? Best mutant power ever.

And then there is the infinitely entertaining Bookshelf Porn, site of endless bibliophile giddiness. What is there not to love about the shelves that spell out a giant injunction to literacy? (D's roommate tells me she is totally onboard with our putting these up in their LA apartment.) And I think we all know that if the cautious Canadian banking system (that's why our economy isn't a state of total collapse, RBC bankers routinely say to me, turning a gimlet eye on my profligate American self) refuses me a mortgage, it will quickly come to this. Or this, depending on how assailed by worldly troubles I feel.