SOME VERY GOOD TITLES

As with wine, life is too short for bad literature. Here are some very good reads:

Spy Thrillers:

Alan Furst, Dark Star

Martin Cruz Smith, Havana Bay, Gorky Park, Polar Star

Philip Kerr, March Violets, Pale Criminal, German Requiem

John Le Carre', A Call for the Dead, Absolute Friends

Edward Wilson, The Envoy

John Lawton, Then We Take Berlin

Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios

Chris Pavone, The Expats

David Downing, Zoo Station

Joseph Kanon, Istanbul Passage

Jason Matthews' Red Sparrow, Palace of Treason, The Kremlin's Candidate

Olen Steinhauer, Bridge of Sighs

Robert Harris, Archangel, the Cicero trilogy: Imperium, Conspirata, Dictator

Charles Cumming, A Spy by Nature, The Spanish Game

Keith Thompson, Once a Spy, Twice a Spy

Martin Booth, A Very Private Gentleman

Daniel Silva, The Cellist

William Maz, The Bucharest Dossier


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ANOTHER WAY TO WISDOM

“And for the one who reads with open eyes and mind, his wisdom shall be increased a hundred-fold. Read. Believe or not, but read. And the vibration found therein will awaken a response in your soul." ~ The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean by Maurice Doreal

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READING WELL

One of life's nicest pleasures is to get lost in a good book. But it's hard to read well if you're not comfortable.

The Overhead in Bed reading experience averts the physical strain of reading. Add some earplugs [even low-decibel sound pressure invokes cortisol] to eliminate white noise, and comprehension skyrockets: the literature's full import rains down into your consciousness.

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HIGH IMPACT INNOVATION

It's been said that the greater the problem you solve, the more money you'll make. If so, we're golden. Our market is anyone anywhere with a bed and a ceiling.

In all the articles about books and reading, rarely mentioned are the enervating physics of looking at a book - holding it, holding it steady, sitting, reclining, positioning and repositioning one's body with cantilever-weighted arms [whether with Ken Follet's four-pound "Fall of Giants" or Paulo Coelho's eight-ounce "Alchemist"], the constant yet unperceived refocusing of one's eyes [called reflexive saccades] like trying to keep binoculars steady on a moving target while 'curling up with a good book' - is an energy thief, a consciousness leak, and a fun sponge.

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TWILIGHT ZONE

"All the Time in the World" was an episode of the Twilight Zone that dramatized despondency to hopefulness to the ironic agony of bank teller Henry Beemis [played by Burgess Meredith, most famous for his role as The Penguin in the Batman TV series] when he realizes he can transcend the isolation and guilt of being the sole survivor of a nuclear blast - after having his lunch inside the closed vault of the bank he works at where he'd gone with a book and a sandwich - slowly sensing the situation’s stark solipsism stumbling around what's left of his post-apocalyptic town to find the public library intact, ecstatic that he'll have all the time in the world to read anything he'd like, stacking a yearsworth of reading on each step … before he breaks his coke-bottle eyeglasses to a discordant soundtrack and the weighty words of Rod Serling [a sleepless workaholic whose manic energy was fueled by amphetamines and coffee] who reminds us that we're in the Twilight Zone….

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MAGIC CARPET RIDE

Birds have wings, humans have books.

No journey happens without its conveyance, and the best journeys, the treks fraught with peril, anticipatory with delight and desirous of deliverance, transport the reader along with their characters to meet and engage their fates.

Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home. ~ Anna Quindlen

If a good book is a way to escape, Overhead-in-Bed is your Magic Carpet.

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BED BEHAVIOR

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/reading-in-bed/527388/
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Prior to electricity, reading in bed was, "a notorious practice that was practically synonymous with death-by-fire because it required candles. … Readers were urged not to tempt God by sporting with “the most awful danger and calamity”—the flagrant vice of bringing a book to bed.
…
The link between morality and mortality was reasonable, in part. Neglected candles could set bed-curtains ablaze and in turn risk the loss of life or property. And so, to lie wantonly in bed with a book was considered depraved.

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BIBLIOTHERAPY

There's nothing like a good book to help you through a bad time.

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   from a 9jun15 New Yorker article by Ceridwen Dovey titled "Can Reading Make You Happier?"

After reading a list of books on death, spirituality, and the afterlife prescribed by a bibliotherapist at the London School of Life, the author made use of insights gleaned from this exercise to help assuage the physical pain of an injury:

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HOW READING TRANSFORMS US

     from the New York Times Sunday Review of 19dec14,

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/how-writing-transforms-us.html?action=click&contentCollection=Pro%20Football&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

… a psychological conception of artistic literature as being based not on persuasion or instruction … but on indirect communication.

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THE JOYS OF READING

Reading is by far the most successful pursuit of happiness.

Literature … is an essential form of befriending yourself for life. ~ Natascha McElhone

A book reaches you by using mind control, but only with your consent. ~ Annalee Newitz

A place where the reader and the writer meet in reciprocity to create something which has never existed before. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Why read? Because experiencing eloquence of language is one of the greatest pleasures of consciousness. … We read as a form of faith. ~ Naomi Wolf

A meditative prophet named Mohammed had a vision of the Angel Gabriel who came to him with a message: “Read.” … This was the first word of the Quran. ~ Mohammed Fairouz

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