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Tell Us What You Think About Bed Books
Submit the Most Oddball Inventions
And Positions For Reading in Bed
Before Bed Books
Reading Positions From the Gallery of Pain
Solutions and Inventions
What People Are Saying About Bed Books
The Joys of Reading In Bed
Medical Warnings About Reading in Bed --
Before Bed Books
The Luxury of Reading in Bed from "Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac" by Eugene Field
"All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed. Indeed, I fully believe with Judge Methuen that no book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over."
Reading in bed
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
FOR a long time I've felt guilty about reading in bed. I thought I was the only one. Then, to my astonishment, I learnt that most book lovers — even young ones — do their best reading in bed. While I enjoy the sight of a book lover reading stooped over a desk, I myself have never been tempted. I was warned of bad posture, squandering time and spoiling my sight. But the chair still did not beckon. School was the last place I used the desk to read; forced these days to read a book that way in a public library, I find myself, almost unknown to me, slowly sliding down my chair till I have slumped to the point of lying in it. Summer, monsoon, or unwintery winter, the inveterate Indian reader must cuddle up and read. The cozy reader isn't just a cherished image but a true story. Our favorite place to read is the bed. Here we read with perfect hermetic concentration.
The Places and Spaces in Which We Read
Toby Merrill - an Editor of the Yale Review of Books.
Reading is rich in night journeys. Maurice Sendak, in his award-winning "In the Night Kitchen," -- a book crafted to send children over the lip of sleep into dreams - literalizes the experience of reading as a series of magically changing locations. This mental travel can happen in a thousand ways within a book itself: in the physical or imagined journeys of a narrator, the catharsis of a plot turn, or a moral revelation can all create the revolutions that reading affects. Equally forceful are those differences that result from a reader's own environment. War and Peace in the heat of summer will leave a different imprint than War and Peace in front of a fire.
One place many of us bring into the books we read is our own bed. My bed has snuck into the background of much of my reading. There are books that live next to my bed that could not possibly exist anywhere else. My dad's copies of the entire Winnie the Pooh series hold court next to Mark Strand's Reasons for Moving and a few old journals. On Thanksgiving and spring breaks, favorite seminar reading and back issues of unread magazines keep company with unused stationery and a stash of pens. The drawers beneath hold years of letters. My bed is their safety net - it will not change their meaning against my will. This innermost chamber of reading is no place for textbooks or boring novels. Most of us are exceedingly careful about what we let into our beds (only soft sheets, clean pets, crumbless foods, loved ones). Why should books be any exception? The books I bring to bed must be all of these things: nice, clean, crumbless, and loved. They must be new enough to provide fresh pleasure and old enough to be familiar, comfortable. They must be loud enough to keep me awake and quiet enough not to wake the neighbors. They must be good companions for a bedtime journey.
Every once in a while, it is important to bring a new travel partner to bed, one that seems even a bit dangerous. During winter break, when I meet new novelists and devour their work, it is impossible to keep these new companions out of bed: they traipse home with me, up to my room, somehow ending up under the covers, demanding attention. Bed is also the perfect place to give a new poet a test drive. Dissatisfied, I can call it an early night and kick him out in the morning. Or, pleased, "I romp with joy in the bookish dark," as Mark Strand writes in "Eating Poetry." Reading something new in bed transforms that familiar space. The location adapts to the changing tastes of its inhabitant while retaining lingering memories of these reading adventures into mornings to come.
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What You Need To Know About Neck Pain
- Allied Medical and Rehabilitation
alliedmedical.org
Your head and neck region is vulnerable to many different stresses. Bad posture can cause misalignment of your neck, head, and spine. Car accidents can cause whiplash. Age and wear and tear can cause arthritis. Even activities such as gum chewing and reading in bed can cause pain. How do we avoid these potential problems? And if we can't avoid them, how can we recover as quickly as possible?
Anatomy Of The Neck Region
One of the most flexible regions of the spine is the neck (cervical) region, which consists of vertebrae, seven shock-absorbing discs, muscles, and vertebral ligaments to hold them in place. The uppermost cervical disc connects the top of the spinal column to the base of the skull. The spinal cord, which sends nerve impulses to every part of the body, runs through a canal in the the cervical vertebrae and continues all the way down the spine. The cervical nerves spread down into the arms; because of this, arm pain is sometimes traceable to a problem in the neck.
Possible Causes Of Neck Pain And Headaches
One of the most common causes of neck pain, and sometimes headaches, is poor posture. It's easy to get into bad posture habits without even realizing it-even an activity as "innocent" as reading in bed can ultimately lead to pain, headaches, and more serious problems.
The basic rule is simple: keep your neck in a "neutral" position whenever possible. In other words, don't bend or hunch your neck forward for long periods. Also, try not to sit in one position for a long time. If you must sit for an extended period, make sure your posture is good: Keep your head in a neutral position, make sure your back is supported, keep your knees slightly lower than your hips, and rest your arms if possible.
Reading in bed can cause neck strain - especially if you're propped up on several pillows, bending your neck forward, and trying to hold your arms out in order to support the book. If you do read in bed, make it easy on your neck: Consider purchasing one of the products specifically designed for this purpose, such as a wedge pillow to prop up the book or a portable "mini desk." Finally, remember not to stay in any single position too long- our bodies are designed to move.
Tension Headaches -- A More Effective Approach
Jeffrey K. Pearson, D.O.
Medicine-In-Motion.com
Family, Sports, & Industrial Medicine
As a physician with an extremely busy occupational practice, I see an average of five "tension headaches" a day. I would like to suggest a simpler and more effective approach to this condition.
These headaches are usually the result of a chronic awkward static posture, although they may also develop acutely (e.g. a plumber working under a sink with his neck bent to one side). One common example is the individual who constantly secures a telephone receiver tucked under their chin while working, rather than using a headset device. This non-neutral posture of the head tilted on the neck can induce the OA joint on one side to lock (which is why these usually are unilateral), resulting in headache symptoms a few hours later. Patients whose computer monitors sit either too high or too low may also develop restrictions in the OA regions leading to chronic problems (often bilaterally). As neither of these acts are likely to cause discomforts at the time of the activity, most patients are not likely to attribute them as the source of their problems. The offending postures may be as benign as a habit of reading in bed at night with the head maintained in an awkward position by a pillow. These patients may awaken in the mornings with these headaches.
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