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Some Bookish Thoughts
May. 31st, 2020 02:36 pmEarlier this year I wanted to do a deep dive into yoga, upping my practice sessions and studying both asanas and the philosophy behind it more. To that end, a book I picked up was the heckin' big chonker, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, translated and commented upon by Edwin Bryant. It took me about five months to get through it, though it was actually quite interesting. I would have admitted before reading it that I knew very little about Hindu or Vedic thought, and while I'm sure I still don't know a lot, I know more than I did! The sutras actually give very little space to asana practice, which in the West we tend to think of as being the vast majority of yoga. So it was enlightening to read about the moral and ethical codes yogis were expected to adopt, and the religious and philosophical underpinnings of yoga.
I also finished off Ursula LeGuin's collection of novellas, The Found and the Lost. She apparently was directly involved in the collection before she died. It ends with a couple of stories from Earthsea, so highly recommended there, and a series of "Werelian" tales - I think I am spelling the name correctly. They're fascinating meditations of both race and gender. There is another volume similar to this one, but of her short stories, which I'd like to pick up soon.
I'm close to finishing Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I'm late to the party on this one, but it's still interesting to me as someone who is constantly fiddling with their sleep conditions and sleep hygiene in search of better quality sleep. One thing I learned so far is that I am actually giving myself ample "sleep opportunity" each night. That is to say, my time in bed is more than adequate. But I tend to sleep restlessly and move around a lot, so I'm not getting as much actual sleep as I may need. Typically I get around seven hours each night and while that seems to be all right, I can't help but wonder how I could more consistently get eight. Last night I did, but I was also exhausted from having had a much shorter night's sleep on Friday - less than six hours, which is bad for me. Six and a half is okay, but seven to seven and a half seems to be the sweet spot. But I don't think I've consistently slept eight hours a night in my life.
I also learned that, contrary to what I was always told, that yes, children and young adults can and do have insomnia. Often caused by ... (wait for it) ... anxiety! It annoys me that I was always told as a kid, "You can sleep just fine, you just don't want to go to bed when you're told," or "kids don't have trouble sleeping." Okay but I hear the clock in the living room chime all through the night. But anyway, aside from being extremely interesting, I have not so far picked up any extra tricks for sleeping better. I may want to try cooling my room more, but I already try to avoid screens within an hour of bedtime, have a set and consistent sleep/wake time each day, don't keep electronics in the bedroom, and even stopped bothering with melatonin when I realized it wasn't actually helping me any. I may try to take some to Japan next time we go to deal with the jet lag, but heaven help me if they catch me with it.
Last, and as yet not cracked open, is The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan. It's another heftychonker, but this is a fantasy novel that came highly recommended from a book Reddit I follow. There's actually a sub-reddit dedicated to discussing it. The English translation came out in 2017 apparently but the original Russian novel was published in 2009. It features disabled kids and teenagers in a large house/group home in Russia, multiple unreliable narrators, multiple story lines, and a hefty dose of that Russian surrealism I love so much. Sorry but I have a major hearthtrob for weird-ass Russian writers. And the thicker the book the better - I like big books and I cannot lie.
I also finished off Ursula LeGuin's collection of novellas, The Found and the Lost. She apparently was directly involved in the collection before she died. It ends with a couple of stories from Earthsea, so highly recommended there, and a series of "Werelian" tales - I think I am spelling the name correctly. They're fascinating meditations of both race and gender. There is another volume similar to this one, but of her short stories, which I'd like to pick up soon.
I'm close to finishing Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I'm late to the party on this one, but it's still interesting to me as someone who is constantly fiddling with their sleep conditions and sleep hygiene in search of better quality sleep. One thing I learned so far is that I am actually giving myself ample "sleep opportunity" each night. That is to say, my time in bed is more than adequate. But I tend to sleep restlessly and move around a lot, so I'm not getting as much actual sleep as I may need. Typically I get around seven hours each night and while that seems to be all right, I can't help but wonder how I could more consistently get eight. Last night I did, but I was also exhausted from having had a much shorter night's sleep on Friday - less than six hours, which is bad for me. Six and a half is okay, but seven to seven and a half seems to be the sweet spot. But I don't think I've consistently slept eight hours a night in my life.
I also learned that, contrary to what I was always told, that yes, children and young adults can and do have insomnia. Often caused by ... (wait for it) ... anxiety! It annoys me that I was always told as a kid, "You can sleep just fine, you just don't want to go to bed when you're told," or "kids don't have trouble sleeping." Okay but I hear the clock in the living room chime all through the night. But anyway, aside from being extremely interesting, I have not so far picked up any extra tricks for sleeping better. I may want to try cooling my room more, but I already try to avoid screens within an hour of bedtime, have a set and consistent sleep/wake time each day, don't keep electronics in the bedroom, and even stopped bothering with melatonin when I realized it wasn't actually helping me any. I may try to take some to Japan next time we go to deal with the jet lag, but heaven help me if they catch me with it.
Last, and as yet not cracked open, is The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan. It's another heftychonker, but this is a fantasy novel that came highly recommended from a book Reddit I follow. There's actually a sub-reddit dedicated to discussing it. The English translation came out in 2017 apparently but the original Russian novel was published in 2009. It features disabled kids and teenagers in a large house/group home in Russia, multiple unreliable narrators, multiple story lines, and a hefty dose of that Russian surrealism I love so much. Sorry but I have a major hearthtrob for weird-ass Russian writers. And the thicker the book the better - I like big books and I cannot lie.
