WebliminalBlog

Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body

Ackerman takes you through a day starting with a detailed description of waking in the morning and finishing with just as detailed a description of going to sleep in the evening. Throughout she mixes observations, quips, and the reports of scientific studies to keep the reader interested and entertained. Here’s an example: “It’s true the brain is good at processing sound while we sleep; that’s why we buy audible alarm clocks. We don’t buy odor alarms for equally good reason. Though some people swear they are aroused from deep sleep by the putrid stink of skunk or the heady aroma of percolating coffee, a new study suggests otherwise: Scientists at Brown University documented a complete failure of response during all but the earliest phase of sleep to powerful odors such as peppermint and the distinctly noxious pyridine, a component of coal tar often used as a herbicide for firewood. Don’t count on the nose as a sentinel system, say the researchers: “Human olfaction is not reliably capable of alerting a sleeper.”

Death with Interruptions

Jose Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. As you read Death With Interruptions you get to know why he was given the prize, and you feel ready to nominate him for another.

The story is of a time in a country where no one dies, because death (with a small ‘d’) has decided that be the case. Animals, plants, whatever die, but people do not. That can’t go on for too long because of the problems mentioned regarding keeping people around who should be dead. We all expect it to happen to others, eventually. The story ends with a romantic twist – we see it coming, but perhaps not with the force that it hits us.

Of course, its the telling through writing that sets this story apart from others, and puts us in the company of literature.