What do you think?
Rate this book
Beds: With Many Noteworthy Instances of Lying On, Under, or About Them
310 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1951
3 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 20, 2021
The imaginary ending to the (entirely hallucinated by myself) trilogy of Reynoldsian serendipetition that is Bogs, Beards and Beds. I have already hungrily consumed (one might say wolfed down) the first two volumes on these most secondary of second-literary topics, and so this collection of edifying rambling makes for an appropriate resting-place for my stringing-together of dead Quakers' works into fantastical serials.
What to say? I am avowedly a fanatic for Reynolds' output, which by some alchemy of style fuses irrelevance with irreverence while still taunting you sometimes with a glimmer of a point. His information density and variety is delightful, switching on the same page from personal recollections to citations from medieval manuscripts, from cuttings of Newsweek to determined critical anthropology to Groucho Marx. There is, it must be admitted, surprisingly little about beds themselves in this volume, but you will learn much more than you expected about a host of topics: men taking to their beds after the labour of childbirth, the giant Og, bedbugs, bedaboos, bundling and bedpans.
The best test is simply quotation. Selection would be too much effort, so my method is simply to open the book at random and quote the first lines I find that do not require much context. From page 94:
Cubicular teratology, an expression first used by Reynolds,² has been defined as the science, philosophy, study, hobby or pursuit of large, monstrous, horrible or sinister beds.³ Though scientific study of this subject is still in its infancy, it is hoped that a bed will soon be endowed at one of the older universities to further what may prove to be a very fruitful line of research.
² Beds (London, 1952)
³ op. cit., p. 94.
From page 162:
Sleep, says the author [of The Gull's Hornbook], till you hear your belly grumble. Never rise till you hear it ring noon at least. This custom he found venerable and princely, though the physicians damned it lest it brought too much health to mankind and an end to the trade of medicine.
From page 63:
I can even feel sympathy with that Spanish physician---said to have lived in Galicia during the latter half of the nineteenth century---who became so weary of visiting the bed-sides of his patients that (out of envy or malice) he retired between the sheets himself and there remained. In 1891 El Imparcial reported that he had kept snug for sixteen years and that his patients, no longer able to summon him to their beds, had perforce to reverse the normal procedure. His practice and his reputation had, in fact, profited equally from his behaviour, which conserved his energy and absolved him from any necessity of affecting a bed-side manner by placing the onus on the other party.
April 10, 2023
*finally* finished this one…… it definitely isn’t a quick read and i haven’t had a ton of down time lately.
overall, i did enjoy reading this, though i’m not sure i’d necessarily say that anyone else has to/should unless they have particular interest in the subject or really love this style of writing. i found this book in a $5 and under bin. the cover is such a beautiful shade of green and the inside is lined with delicate illustrations of various styles of beds, so i had to have it. me personally (though i have no problem with anyone else doing this), there’s something wrong with owning a book you haven’t read or will never read, so here we are.
reynolds has quite the ability to squeeze so much information into a single thought or sentence. some chapters were more interesting than others; some chapters stayed for long stretches on certain historical or biblical references where i had no idea what he was talking about. granted, it was written some 70(?) years ago, so i didn’t expect it to be super relatable. plus, it was kind of nice at times to read something and truly absorb none of it.
reynolds adds a lot of commentary which helps wash it all down. he can be quite sassy at times, which he attributes largely to having written this book mostly while laying in bed. fitting that i started working this up in bed, too.
there were a few quotes that, whether directly or indirectly related to beds, i loved reading, but i didn’t take good notes of them. one i did flag and one i just read:
on the topic of birth control (23) - “I mention them merely because no chapter on the art of being born would be complete without some instructions as to how this misfortune maybe be avoided altogether. We shall also find here specifics to ensure legitimacy.”
on the topic of bundling, which i’ve understood to essentially be various degrees of pre-marital bed-sharing (288-289) - “Having all but denied that it existed in New England, Neal then said that, though bad enough, it was not a twentieth part as bad as things that went on in other countries. The defence is rather like that which one often meets in an English suit for slander: (a) the words were never said; (b) if they were they did not mean what they were supposed to mean, and were not defamatory; (c) if they were defamatory, the occasion was privileged and (d) in any case they were true, and should have been said if they were not.”
overall, i did enjoy reading this, though i’m not sure i’d necessarily say that anyone else has to/should unless they have particular interest in the subject or really love this style of writing. i found this book in a $5 and under bin. the cover is such a beautiful shade of green and the inside is lined with delicate illustrations of various styles of beds, so i had to have it. me personally (though i have no problem with anyone else doing this), there’s something wrong with owning a book you haven’t read or will never read, so here we are.
reynolds has quite the ability to squeeze so much information into a single thought or sentence. some chapters were more interesting than others; some chapters stayed for long stretches on certain historical or biblical references where i had no idea what he was talking about. granted, it was written some 70(?) years ago, so i didn’t expect it to be super relatable. plus, it was kind of nice at times to read something and truly absorb none of it.
reynolds adds a lot of commentary which helps wash it all down. he can be quite sassy at times, which he attributes largely to having written this book mostly while laying in bed. fitting that i started working this up in bed, too.
there were a few quotes that, whether directly or indirectly related to beds, i loved reading, but i didn’t take good notes of them. one i did flag and one i just read:
on the topic of birth control (23) - “I mention them merely because no chapter on the art of being born would be complete without some instructions as to how this misfortune maybe be avoided altogether. We shall also find here specifics to ensure legitimacy.”
on the topic of bundling, which i’ve understood to essentially be various degrees of pre-marital bed-sharing (288-289) - “Having all but denied that it existed in New England, Neal then said that, though bad enough, it was not a twentieth part as bad as things that went on in other countries. The defence is rather like that which one often meets in an English suit for slander: (a) the words were never said; (b) if they were they did not mean what they were supposed to mean, and were not defamatory; (c) if they were defamatory, the occasion was privileged and (d) in any case they were true, and should have been said if they were not.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews