Last week I gave this talk about work-from-home furnishings and the postures of pandemic productivity. My research led me to Bernd Brunner's The Art of Lying Down. I just learned that Brunner has also written Moon: A Brief History, Bears: A Brief History, as well as books about aquariums and Christmas trees and "birdmania" and the Extreme North. I have his book about the history of orchards: Taming Fruit.
What a great list of books. What an interesting mind.
Also, I've been thinking about what kinds of books are meant to be read while lying down. Brunner asks about this, and somebody raised the issue in the Q&A last week. I was reminded that, when I was invited to review Hillel Schwartz's 900-pg Making Noise a decade ago, I started off by addressing how the physical form of the book requires particular reading postures + furnishings, and thus creates particular acoustic environments for its own resonance
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/currentmusicology/article/view/5224
Shannon Mattern
Zack Furness