This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. When your senses feel numb, you’re likely to seek direct experiences: You might bite into a crisp slice of watermelon to taste the brightness of summer, or spend an evening enveloped in layers of rich sound at the symphony, or stick your nose in a bouquet of perfumed, blooming flowers. A book can deliver these satisfactions only secondhand—but the ones that do it well tap into one of literature’s great pleasures: A skilled writer, through words alone, can draw up scenes that awaken your perception and, in turn, your emotions. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section: This week, Celine Nguyen offers a list of six titles that might help us “cultivate a more open and receptive state of mind” in our fast-moving, screen-dominated world; they show how life can be enhanced by “sensory richness.” I loved the way Nguyen wrote about Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, a novel in …