Column by David in The Times.

By the time you read this, I shall be in India, filming a documentary. I’m worried, of course, about the standard things – Delhi belly, mosquitos, smog, how a modern PC man is supposed to react when the people there do that head-shaking thing that they actually do in real life and not just in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (does it mean yes? No? Maybe?). But I’m also concerned about which book to take. The problem is, I’m reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s astonishing – a slacker Ulysses, genuinely – but it is a housebrick of a book. Trying to fit it into my hand luggage is out of the question – I’ll kill a steward if my man-bag swings round too quickly – and even in my main suitcases it’ll probably incur excess baggage.

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Column by David in The Times.

I’ve been in Los Angeles for most of the past two weeks, and, now, as I write, am flying back, feeling slightly resentful about not being upgraded. On the way there, I took the very fine Mr Philips, the second novel by John Lanchester. But even though I had really been enjoying the book prior to getting on the aircraft, I didn’t pick it up until near the end of the ten-hour journey. This is because planes are the second-hardest mode of transport to read on. The easiest, obviously, is the train, although in Britain you may be put off by the realisation that by the time you’ve got to chapter 2, your journey will already have cost approximately the worth of your house.

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