What Do You Read Before Bed?

That was the question posed recently for writers at the New Yorker.

From the piece...


I have discovered that whatever you read before you go to bed (or whatever you watch) stays in your head. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still hear the smart, rat-a-tat voice of Rachel Maddow, or the laugh track from Seinfeld. Luckily, my friend Rudy, a lifelong dharma student (is there is another kind?) recently sent me Shunryu Suzuki’s “Not Always So.” Even if you don’t get very deep into the text, the title makes a perfect meditation, reminding you that no meditation is perfect, and that one should strive to transcend all striving. Suzuki, as Zen masters go, is a badass—in the noblest sense. I am also slowly digesting the no less noble, but less flinty, book of advice by the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, “When Things Fall Apart.” My friend Joan felt I could use it, and she was right.

I often, perversely, put off reading the book that I most want to dig into (why, I’m not sure, but the answer is probably somewhere in Musil, Montaigne, Calvino, or Suzuki).