“Waking Up” by Sam Harris

I can’t sleep. This is not a frequent occurrence for me, but after lying in bed in the dark for a while, trying to be still and quiet and wishing for sleep to return, I finally decided I might as well get up and use my wide-awake mind for reading. And in this situation, what better book to choose than one called Waking Up?

Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, is known as one of the “Four Horsemen of New Atheism.”  He spent several years of his early adulthood in India and Nepal, studying meditation with Buddhist and Hindu masters, but his approach to spiritual insight is independent of religious beliefs. Sam (my Sam, rather than Sam Harris) read this book first; he has become interested in meditation, and Harris’s areligious approach appealed to him. He thought I would find this book interesting as well. 

He was kind of wrong. I struggled my way through most of this book, forcing myself to read five minutes at a time. The ideas that self is an illusion and that we can experience “having no head” remain foreign to me. In fact, the aptness of the title wasn’t what really caused me to reach for this book in the middle of the night: it was the expectation that it would lull me back to sleep. 

But I was wrong too. I found the final quarter of this book to be the most interesting part of it. The bulk of the last 50 pages is a chapter on gurus (none are perfect, or perfectly enlightened), death (near-death experiences don’t tell us anything about what we can expect to experience in actual death), and drugs (where Harris recommends a good trip on psilocybin or LSD, while acknowledging that a bad one can be an “extremely unpleasant and destabilizing experience”).

My favorite part of this book doesn’t have much to do with meditation. It was a single line in the paragraph that initiated the discussion of drugs (“The Spiritual Uses of Pharmacology”) and when I read it I paused, then re-read it several times, savoring this perspective I’d never really considered before:

“We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts.”

“Books Make a Home: Elegant Ideas for Storing & Displaying Books” by Damian Thompson

This is the book that the Internet presented to me when I searched for the non-existent Designing With Books. I expected a book full of drool-worthy shelving that was brimming with books and all kinds of other eye-catching elements. For someone who already has a good number of shelves and cubbies, what I really wanted was ideas for how to make those shelves and cubbies look great. Instead, this book provides ideas for where to put all your books when you don't own enough bookshelves and you don't want to solve that problem by buying plain-Jane options. It showcases the libraries and studies of the creative, the rich, and the rich creatives. This apparently translates to lots of quirkiness.

I love books, and I love having them all over my house, but I don't really love the higgledy-piggledy style depicted in this book. The majority of these interiors just look messy to me. Like a junk shop, which is often intriguing to browse in but which doesn't feel calm and tranquil to live in. Generally, I take issue with the characterization of these bookshelves as “elegant.” And the few photos of interiors that are neat and calm are also the ones that are the least realistic (like where everything is white, or where all the book spines match each other). 

While I enjoyed reading through this book and poring over the photos, I am disappointed that I did not come away with more ideas. I need a system--I've organized all of our books, but I don't have a place for us to put new ones, or a place for keepers after I've read them. Also, I need options and ideas for bookshelf decor. (Obviously this book shows bookshelf decor galore, but so much of it is a one-man's-trash-is-another-man's-treasure scenario.) Most importantly, I need to know how I can easily display a paperback so that it is upright (not leaning back on a bookrest or stand) with the cover facing outwards, rather than oriented the usual way (spine out). At least the book gave me one idea: curate the selection in the guest bedroom! And it made me think that maybe the relative messiness of my bookshelves is unavoidable.

I saved this photo years ago (I have no memory of where I even came across it) because I loved the vibe and all of the books everywhere. Plus the girl in the chair reminded me of Bookworm Child with her blonde hair. This photo would have been right at home in Books Make a Home.

"Heart the Lover" by Lily King

Just got out my List of Favorite Authors and realized Lily King did not appear on it. So, she does now! Squeezed in at #6 between Rachel Cusk and Sarah Moss. (Yep, it's ranked.)

Is Heart the Lover the best Lily King book ever? I don't know. I remember really liking Writers & Lovers and Euphoria, and her book of short stories (Five Tuesdays in Winter) was solid too. But what I do know is that HTL is really really good and it made me want to buy and read all of King's other books (of which, so far, there are three).

Heart the Lover is the story of a college girl who befriends a pair of highly intelligent and intriguing guys, Sam and Yash. It doesn't take long before she's in an weirdly hot-and-cold relationship with Sam. This goes the way of most college relationships (or was it just mine?), and a few months after graduation everything comes crashing down. Then suddenly, disorientingly,  it's Part II---maybe two decades later--and it takes me a minute to get my bearings. And a formerly great story becomes great and terrible. It's not all doom and gloom and sadness, but there's definitely a bunch of all of that. In fact, King imbues the entire book with intense emotion, somehow doing it without overdoing it.

I did not realize until LITERALLY the LAST PARAGRAPH OF THE BOOK that the main character in this one is also the main character in Writers & Lovers. (Is that a spoiler? Should I not have mentioned that? Or is this something that everyone other than a literary amnesiac would have realized far sooner? Anyway, it made me want to re-read W&L so I could solidify that link. Although, knowing me, by the time I get around to re-reading W&L I'll have forgotten everything I learned in HTL . . . ) This last-minute realization bumped it up a notch, from a book I really liked to a book that blew my mind. 

“Elements of Timeless Style: Creating a Forever Home” by Erin Gates

Here's one of the two books I mentioned in my last post. It didn't quite turn out to be what I expected. I guess I would have known this if I'd looked more closely or thought harder about the title prior to purchasing, but this book is not what you should buy if you're hankering for a non-existent book entitled Designing with Books. It's more like what you should get if you're hankering for a book simply entitled Designing.

Or, more realistically, maybe Designing with Money. Because these people have way more money than I’ll ever have, and it's evident in every butler's pantry and baby grand piano and mohair sofa. But that's OK! It was still fun to look at, in a let's-see-how-the-other-half-lives kind of way. Or do I mean the other one percent? 

This book--very photo-heavy--was kind of what I imagine you would get if you bound several issues of Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, and Traditional Home magazines into a small-ish coffee-table-style book, with the difference being all of the decor was selected by one person. If this is the type of thing you enjoy looking at (and I do), you will enjoy this book. But while the interiors are certainly beautiful and striking, this stuff is not my style. Not only can I not imagine my home ever looking like this; the thought of making a transition from what I've got to magazine-worthy seems insurmountable. Even if I wanted to make that leap, I don't have the vision to do so. I look around my house and can't fathom where I would even begin. Ultimately, what I look for in this type of book is how to take what I have and elevate it. I didn't get that from Elements of Timeless Style. Instead, I got, "if you want a house that looks like this, hire a designer (AND get ready for LOTS of wallpaper)."

But! In reading this book I was inspired to reorganize our downstairs coat closet. I think it started when reading the Project Takeaways at the end of chapter 3 ("Lincoln"): "think about spaces in all dimensions . . . consider built-ins with mixed use . . . take awkward areas and utilize them . . . " following which I just happened to notice that there's about three feet of unused space overhead in our closet (which is under the stairs, thus has a slanted ceiling). So I am suddenly off and running on a new project!