I've begun to agonize over what books I should take with me on Tuesday when I work at the precinct. The polls are open 13 hours—minus meals, snacks, chit chat, trips to the bathroom and the occasional actual voter, that's a lot of time for reading.

I'm reading The Brief History of the Dead at the moment, but I ought to have it finished well before Tuesday, so scratch that one.

It turns out that the new minister at our old church is a good buddy of Bart Ehrman's. My mother-in-law read Misquoting Jesus for her Sunday school class and passed her copy on to us last weekend. I could take that, as well as Tony Hendra's The Messiah of Morris Avenue, the story of what happens when a man claiming to be Jesus makes his appearance in a fundamentalist-controlled United States of the near future.

Black Swan Green? Ovid? Will in the World? The People's Act of Love? Magazines? Macbeth? I'm picking up Karen Fisher's Sudden Country at the public library tomorrow; maybe that will turn out to be the best choice.

Maybe I ought to take Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel and read about lots of different novels instead of any one in particular.

Maybe I should just go make lunch and plan on grabbing something on my way out the door Tuesday morning.