I had some nasty surgery last summer and ever since I have been slightly obsessed with infrared sauna therapy. It has much to recommend it: it improves circulation, encourages a phenomenon called "resonance" that aids in cellular regeneration, acts as an artificial fever (very pleasantly) revving the immune system, and, significantly, provides captive reading time.
Sitting in the wooden box my nephews like to refer to as "the spaceship," I have forty-five minutes where I must allow the technology that is beyond me to do its good slow cooking work. I have been caught out in other parts of my life for my renegade reading. As I was dropping my son off at his piano lesson the other day, he arched one eyebrow and said, "I know you take so long to come back because you are sneak-reading in the car." Busted! But the sauna feels like an appropriate place--I always bring in a stack of books, because forty-five minutes can be a long time with a bad book. Recently, I started The Dinner by Herman Koch and found it read like a thriller, but had to leave it behind once my forty-five minutes were up. It was since stolen by my stepfather, who read the entire thing and hated it--"It was terrible, just terrible."
My book list for today's session is Good Kids by Benjamin Nugent, Living Beautifully by Pema Chodron and Object Lessons by the Paris Review.
Locked in. Blissed out.