“During various periods of my life I have succumbed to the siren call of sleeping pills. It is hard to resist their promise: one tablet, and your night will be purged. Your brain may be in overdrive, its receptors working away, hungrily awaiting more images and information, but like a computer it is forced into another mode. Yet the little white disks with a dent down the middle are no panacea; whenever I take one of these thought guillotines I feel trapped in a grey zone, seesawing between mid and shallow slumber, mind and body dulled but not of their own accord.” A lifelong insomniac recounts her long struggle with the illness.
Hey Dr. Sandman
Anything for Money
On Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading Tumblr, check out National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender’s short story “Anything for Money.”
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Biblio-klepto-mania
“Symptoms included a frenzy for culling and hunting down first editions, rare copies, books of certain sizes or printed on specific paper.” Lauren Young writes in Atlas Obscura about the phenomenon of bibliomania, “a dark pseudo-psychological illness” that afflicted upper-class victims in Europe and England during the 1800s. And for a first-hand account of more contemporary book theft, read John Brandon on his high school pastime: “The first time was nerve-racking, a rush, but by the third book I was already settling in.”
Summer Reading, happened so fast.
Now that it’s officially summer, you might find yourself thinking about all of the books you might like to read in the sun. New Directions has a great list (summer of Lispector!), and of course there’s the LARB‘s #OccupyGaddis summer book club.
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The Millions, Interviewed
The Millions Editor Max is interviewed at the National Book Critics Circle today. Among the topics discussed, “the motivation for launching The Millions seven years ago” and what we look for in book reviews.
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