Alison Lurie’s new book is a wonderful incentive to doze off, preferably in a softly lit room with comfortable but not out-of-proportion furniture.

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Lurie sets out to examine what a variety of architectural styles, across time and across types of buildings, say about those buildings and the people who built them. But The Language of Houses is not a history of architecture, nor is it truly cultural criticism. Just the well-organized but often banal thoughts of Lurie and the experts she has read and quotes liberally.

“It is possible to lie in the language of buildings, though not as easily as in speech or writing,” she writes. “There are many reasons for a verbal lie, including most of the seven deadly sins, as well as common unpleasant emotions like fear and embarrassment. Architectural falsity, however, usually has one of two motives: ambition or greed.”

She points to 19th century office and apartment buildings faced in stone on the first floor in an attempt to look more important and to today’s suburban three-bedrooms with two-story entrance halls and great rooms with cathedral ceilings.

“The result, depending on your taste, will be either impressive or pretentious,” she writes — and then she reveals where she stands: “Because the high ceilings of the foyer and great room have preempted much of the second-floor area, these houses tend to be short on closet space and have only one decent-sized bedroom.”

The book is peppered with such generalizations, some mildly cutting, others simply mild.

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On big buildings in general we get: “A very large building, like a loud voice or hefty physique, is the architectural equivalent of a shout. It takes up space, and has obviously been expensive and time-consuming to erect. Next to it other buildings look small, and so do we.”

On marble, there is: “Polished white marble is the equivalent of, and somewhat resembles, a shiny gift box; it announces to the world that what is inside is expensive and valuable.” Then Lurie notes the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University is sometimes known on campus as “the Wedding Present.”

And then there are the truly mysterious passages, like this one about the potential psychiatric problems of people who have bedrooms decorated in colors that are neutral or considered masculine: “This may be because someone else, possibly a professional interior decorator, has imposed his or her own taste. In a few cases it may suggest that the inhabitant has more than one personality, and we should do well to prepare for this.”

Someone might want to tell West Elm and Pottery Barn that they are marketing bedroom sets that suggest the “inhabitant” suffers from a severe, and controversial, neurological disorder.

The Language of Houses is worth picking up, if only to put it down as the reader drifts off into sleep undisturbed by ideas worth contemplating.