On Our Bookshelf

FOR THE RECORD On Our Bookshelves

About Sleep

The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping By Aharon Appelfeld In this novel a young Holocaust survivor struggles with overpowering exhaustion. Only in sleep can he reckon with his past, particularly through vivid dreams of his parents. In this extremely personal account, Appelfeld, a Holocasut survivor himself, testifies to the link between the unconscious and the creative forces of life.

Why We Can’t Sleep By Ada Calhoun In her forties, happily married with children, Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis. Like many Gen X women, she was supposed to be able to have it all: career, family, romance, health, and zero credit card debt, but she was drowning under the weight of these expectations. Thinking others might feel the same, Why We Can’t Sleep is her exploration of the political and cultural forces that light the match of burnout, and how to keep them at bay.

24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep By Jonathan Crary A short, sharp polemic in defense of a good night’s rest. “Polemic,” because Crary’s target is the 24/7 marketplace of “late capitalism.” Whether you agree with the source of his dispute, Crary's findings are unsettling if not horrifying, not just in the statistics, but in the ways we’ve begun to conceive of sleep as “time lost.”

Rest Is Resistance By Tricia Hersey Written in response to the “desperate and valid” question of “How can I rest when I have to pay the bills?” this book is for the exhausted and downtrodden— so, all of us. Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, aka the Nap Minister, channels Afrofuturism and Black liberation theology to forge a new path to activism: rest.

My Year of Rest & Relaxation By Ottessa Moshfegh One critic called this “the finest existential novel not written by a French author.” About a wealthy, orphaned 24-year-old who believes that if she can find a way to sleep for a full year, she might then awaken totally refreshed and reborn. With trademark cynicism, Moshfegh wrestles with “the inner laws of spirit” (Joni Mitchell) in pursuit of something beautiful.

The Oracle of Night By Sidarta Ribeiro Long, comprehensive, and mostly accessible, this is a book about sleep written by a neuroscientist who is friendly to Freud. That dreams are just random successions of meaningless images is not what you’ll get from Ribeiro; instead, he indicates, we have much to learn from “the oracle of night.”

General

Celebrities for Jesus By Katelyn Beaty At this point most of us know, in our gut, that there is something deeply incompatible about celebrity culture and the Gospel. Beaty has done Christians—whether we engage in public/“platformed” ministry or not—a great service with this timely and incisive guide to where exactly those lines fall.

Work Pray Code By Carolyn Chen As today’s world becomes more sleep-deprived, it also becomes more work-centric, our paradigm shifting from an idealistic “eat, pray, love,” to “work, pray, code.” So argues Carolyn Chen, sociologist of religion. Our interview with Dr. Chen appears in this issue.

The End of Solitude By William Deresiewicz The former Mockingbird conference speaker and renowned culture critic returns with a panoramic, passionate, and refreshingly non-doctrinaire set of essays about the way we live now. The collection doubles as a love letter to (and, at times, a eulogy for) the liberal arts. Highly recommended.

The Holy Ghost By John Hendrix “Calvin and Hobbes meets Flannery O’Connor” is how you could describe this inspired collection of comic strips. So much heart and whimsy, so much depth, so many smiles—beautifully drawn, too. We could not be more excited to give this book as a Christmas gift.

Evangelical Anxiety By Charles Marsh What happens when a Southern religious scholar enters psychoanalysis? The answer is this book: a man’s account of his childhood in the deep American South, and his reckoning with the legalistic religious edifice shadowing his mind, body, and spirit.

What Is a Gospel? By Francis Watson A collection of outstanding essays from one of the leading New Testament scholars today, What Is a Gospel examines Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in comparison with their noncanonical counterparts. This ridiculously wide-ranging study of writings peeks under the hood of the complex (and fascinating) process in which the texts of the New Testament were chosen— or excluded.

Crying in H Mart By Michelle Zauner Crying in H Mart is a remarkable memoir about the love, loyalty, rebellion, and resistance that comes with all mother-daughter relationships. Who knew that food could heal even the deepest parts of grief?

FOR THE RECORD