Bibliosomnia

A few days ago I decided to throw caution to the wind and drink a fully-caffeinated vente after 6 p.m. The immediate effect was electrifying in the best sense of the word. The latent effect six hours later was less than pleasant. As I tossed, turned, and periodically checked my bedside clock in a masochistic attempt to confirm the full extent of my self-induced misery, I began to think (always a mistake in the middle of the night) about the many books I have shelved over the years, and gradually the titles of those books began to coalesce into lists and categories. Before I knew it, I was engaged in compulsive list-making, one of the most diabolical agents of insomnia ever devised.

1:20 a.m.: Some book titles can put you off from the get-go, depending on your personal taste and inclinations of the moment. Throughout my teenage years, I avoided books with sobering titles like "The Way of All Flesh," "Of Human Bondage," "The Sound and the Fury," "Of Time and the River," etc. To my young mind, these titles implied a painfully premature inquiry into "the big questions" and radiated a sort of holy heavy-handedness that would suck me down into a state of terminal gravitas. (True confession: I haven't read any of those books in their entirety to this day, although I have since read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" with great pleasure).

1:40 a.m. Other books have tempted me with titles that were so undecipherable that I was compelled to pick the books up and poke around for clues. "The Quincunx" had me totally stymied, as did "Cryptonomicon." While on the topic, is "Tristram Shandy" the name of (a) a village in County Cork (b) a Gaelic wedding jig, (c) a character in "The Rake's Progress," (d) an Irish aperitif, or (e) none of the above. Good luck, unless you've read the book.

2:00 a.m. Some books tempt you to read them by sporting gorgeous titles that roll off the tongue like honey: "The Sheltering Sky," "The Wind in the Willows," "The Wide Sargasso Sea," "Finnegan's Wake," -- the list goes on and on. Other books have overly precious titles that make you dislike the (presumptively precious) author before you have even met him/her: "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," etc. -- You get the drift. (Note -- some of these books can be quite good.)

2:30 There seems to be a trend toward one-word titles, particularly for nonfiction books: "Boom!," "Blink," and "Stiff" come to mind. Mary Roach, the author of the last-mentioned book, appears to have appropriated this particular shtick. She has already written "Stiff" (a nonfiction book about human cadavers), "Spook" (a nonfiction book about the afterlife), and most recently,"Bonk," a book that explores "the curious coupling of science and sex" (presumably this book will be more lively than her previous two volumes, heh).

3:00 a.m. Some books bear a title that contains an eccentric name: "The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit," "The Wapshot Chronicles," "The Puttermesser Papers, "Tristram Shandy" (our friend from 1:40 a.m. above), and so on. (It bears mentioning here that Tristram Shandy engages in a romantic entanglement with the Widow Wadman -- it just gets better and better.)

3:20 a.m. Finally, there are books with names that are so intriguing that you can't help but fantasize about having lunch with the author; "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots," "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," and my favorite title of all time, "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept," fit this category.

3:45 a.m I have to get some sleep. Sleep . . . sleep . . .sleep?? "The Big Sleep," "Some Call It Sleep," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (Don't, do not, think of this post just before you doze off tonight.)