I have a weakness for ridiculously bad airplane films, and this particular trip (DC to Sydney) was no disappointment. To balance out the trash, I pre-commit myself to interesting reading.

First, the New Yorker’s latest fiction issue is the best I’ve read all year. Unfortunately the two best pieces are not online. Haruki Murakami writes a mini-memoir recounting his accidental birth as a noveist (and runner). And Mary Gaitskill tells the tale of two hapless women who try to adopt an Ethiopian child outside the law. Either is worth the price of the issue.

Fortunately, from the same issue, six excellent meditations on faith and doubt, plus James Wood’s review of Bart Ehrman’s books on the same topic, are all online.

Less impressive was this month’s Atlantic, although the post-feminist article by Sandra Tsing Loh was worth reading.

The Journal of Economic Perspectives offers a symposium on economic development. The articles are gated, but you should be able to Google ungated versions of the articles that interest you most. Also check out the treatise on identity theft.

Last and best: for years, if you were to ask me my favorite novel, I’d likely reply Waiting for the Barbarians, by South African writer J.M. Coetzee. I decided to reread it and see if I agree with my past self. I do. The story of a kindly, nameless magistrate on the fringes of a insidious, nameless Empire, it’s the kind of novel that haunts you long after you put it down.