i am surrounded by books i want to buy and have spent all of this month's stipend already, mostly on incredibly useless stuff like setting up house. i am paranoid and check the used book catalogues every hour or so to see that no one else has bought the books i have set my heart on; the rest of the time is spent wondering when the next cheque is coming for the day-to-days and trying to avoid overdrafts. this, i maintain, is su-lin's fault. if she hadn't talked about her insomnia i wouldn't have been reminded of robert aickman's story and would not therefore have started looking for his collected stories, and that would not have led in turn to first edition thurbers and nootebooms. or collected macneices and audens.