228 hours.

Approximately 228 hours until I step off the plane in Tokyo. Then approximately 504 hours until I step off the plane again in back in Newark. I have at least 14 books to finish some of which include these:

for further study of economics:

Liars' Poker by Michael Lewis

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance by Andrei Shleifer

Managing Financial Risk by Charles W. Smithson

For shear fun and just because I feel like it and actually have time to read without being bogged down with undergraduate coursework:

Pale Blue Dot; The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark; Cosmos by Carl Sagan (favorite author so far. I wish I was born a quarter century earlier to be able to experience "Uncle Carl" in the flesh.)

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe - I have to read this!

For further study of geography:

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Longitude by Dava Sobel

For breaking the 4 year long abstinence of mathematics unless you count a failed attempt at statistics.....and and intro comp sci course that doesn't really count which I did not fail. And for feeling like an idiot and perhaps having poor arithmetic skills which is actually a disability but nobody but psychologists seem to understand that:

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife


For feeling like a child again and actually having a colorful imagination:

Black and White by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge (a superhero fantasy)


There are a few more that I'm halfway through but right now I just am not interested enough to take them with me to Japan.

How many hours will I spend actually reading instead of sleeping, or driving to Chiba to go surfing on the volcanic sand beaches of the Pacific I don't know. I've winged it before and I'll wing it again.

For now, FML, FTW and F everyone else...