Stay up until 4am reading that new release? Dread your early alarm after a night spent with a book? Maybe you’re just on Flaubert‘s schedule. Or, if you find it easy to fall asleep before midnight and enjoy early mornings, perhaps you’re running on Victor Hugo time. New York Magazine has compiled an infographic of the sleeping habits of geniuses, and the good news is that no matter when you fall asleep and wake up, someone brilliant has more or less kept your same schedule. So take heart, late-night readers and early risers. We’re all in good company.
Sleeping Like a Genius
Slave Driver
Recommended Reading: Katherine Sunderland on Michael Bundock's The Fortunes of Francis Barber.
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Sleeping in the Stacks
It's not surprising when a graduate student claims to "live in the library," but an NYU student really does live in the university's Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. For only $225 a semester, the student rents library cubbies instead of an apartment. The idea isn't as crazy as it sounds, though, but is a response to the skyrocketing rent in the neighborhood.
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Dangerous Novels
"The idea that novels could be dangerous seems largely have fallen by the wayside, which does raise the question of how today’s newer sources of entertainment and information will look to the critics of the future. In 50 years, maybe we’ll be lamenting our failure to read enough Internet." Anna North writes about the distant time "When Novels Were Bad For You" for The New York Times.
Place Your Bets
This year's Nobel in literature will be announced in early October, so there's still plenty of time to get in on the gambling! Currently leading in all the over/unders? Haruki Murakami, whose book covers we considered here.
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Junot Diaz on What is a Writer
Junot Díaz writes in O. Magazine about the harrowing, doubt-and-terror-filled decade-plus he spent writing his Pulitzer-prize winning first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
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Burn Outs and Genre Blindness
Where does the “panic attack when you think you’re not reading enough” fit in to all of this? Here are a few professional readers on how they keep from mixing business with pleasure. This essay on Lewis Lapham and reading just for pleasure might also tickle your fancy.
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