Here's a little taste...
Phil Brenner envied his wife’s relationship with
books. Like everyone in his position, he read non-fiction for research. But he
could not equal the way she gave herself to a book. She could reread one
immediately after finishing it, and each time it was new to her, she found
hidden aspects that emerged after the second or third reading, and revisited
the characters with pleasure. Uncharitably, sometimes Phil wondered if she had
really paid attention to it the first time or whether, as she did with Netflix,
she was using the author to carry her into the sleep she so deeply prized.
He
was jealous of the authors she slept with. He did not feel the same way about
Netflix. She took her books into her bed. Netflix remained inside a box, on a
screen. This evening, when she reached the end of a chapter in her book about a
woman whose life was transformed by her discovery of the beauty of birds, she
turned to look in his direction. He was sitting stiffly, propped up by pillows,
bookless. He did not like to read in bed.
“I’m
in a slump,” he said.
—Charles Foran, author of Mordecai and Planet Lolita
