J.L. Borges used to heft a volume of Dante's Inferno in his coat pocket as he rode the trams of Buenos Aires, perhaps to accelerate the travel time between his home, and the various labyrinths he lived his days in.

This afternoon, when deciding what books to pick in order to fill the slivers of time that I may find to read in Toronto, where I will be living and working in for the next few weeks, I decided to follow Borges's example, and packed John Ciardi's English version of "The Inferno", to re-read again. Apart from the timeless appeal of Dante's epic, the palm size nature of the volume made its virtues doubly appealing.

Just before takeoff, on Continental 571 to Toronto.