Late-Night Reading?

[Extollager]

Science fiction is something I never read at these times. Most fantasy also I would not read then, although I might reread The Hobbit soon as such.

Old biographies and autobiographies seem suitable, and books about roaming around (but probably not stories of strenuous exploration!). I've been reading Thoreau's fine open-air book The Maine Woods late at night and have his Excursions essays on hand.

What do you read just before lights-out?

 

[Alex The G and T]

I do most of my fiction reading in bed.

Lights-out time can be anything.

I tend to be awake in the wee hours. I get my best thinking done, about yesterday's events and tomorrow's plans; when the house is quiet and the family is sleeping.

When I find myself "looping," the planning is done, the angst has been resolved; and I'm done thinking... that's the time to read something fun.

When I'm really having trouble getting back to sleep, it's time to read something dry.

ANALOG magazine "Fact" Articles, fascinating as they may be, tend to put the weights on the eyelids. Nothing like charts and graphs to send me to the land where the book falls on the floor; and I wake up, well rested, at a reasonable hour, with the reading glasses tangled in the sheets.

 

[Nesacat]

I do almost all my reading in bed and sleep very little. Perhaps 3 or 4 hours at the most. I tend to have several books going at the same time. One is invariably a collection of short stories. At the moment it is Horror For The Holidays edited by Scott David Aniolowski. I also read Wierd Tales magazine in bed, usually in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep.

If it's been a very bad night and sleep seems impossible then I turn to something familiar and comforting .. Lord of the Rings, Lovecraft, Bradbury. These usually manage to calm, soothe and lull me into sleep. I'll read until the book falls over on my face and then somehow manage to remove my glasses and put the book aside and sleep.

 

[Cayal]

Late-night is dangerous for me. I fall asleep very quickly, though I am not sure why. You will find me upright, eyes closed book still in hand.

 

[Vince W]

I don't read much in bed, but when I do it's usually non fiction. Currently I'm reading a book on the search for the tomb of Alexander the Great. Interesting, but I usually can't get through more than a couple of pages before dropping off.

 

[elvet]

I do a lot of my reading in bed at night. Usually starting at 8PM until I get too sleepy (around 10PM). Probably not considered 'late' for some of you, but I need at least 8 hours sleep at night.

 

[Abernovo]

I'm a chronic insomniac and I was advised to always have a book beside my bed by a doctor - the idea being that, after a while trying to force sleep is counter-productive, so reading can relax me and induce tiredness.

As to what - just about anything that I'm reading at the time. SFF and detective novels for the most part, but they're my most common reading materials anyway. If I'm desperate for sleep but just can't nod off, a beloved old classic sometimes works - the warm, safe feeling of the well-known, I suspect.

 

[nixie]

I can't sleep unless I read first, doesn't matter what. I rarely fall asleep reading in fact I go for one more chapter than that turns into about 5 or 6 and end up being over tried the next day.

 

[biodroid]

I read for anything between 30-60 minutes before i sleep. Most of the time I cant keep my eyes open so it can be less which is annoying. I also need 8 hours a night or I am a zombie at work. Normally I am lights out by 10 pm.

 

[CyBeR]

I do most of my reading in the evening, before I go to bed. I either crash in minutes, or I can read for a couple of hours easy, depends on each night.

 

[Grimbear]

Reading non-fiction late at night keeps me awake. I think this is mainly because the non-fiction I select is political, and makes me angry - hence the no sleep.

I'm reading The Price of Inequality right now, by Joseph Stiglitz. Before that I read Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class by Sean O'Hagan.

Can't read that kind of thing at night if I want to get any sleep - so for late reading I'm re-reading a tatty old Pratchett I've had for ages. Books I've read before help me relax, and finally sleep

 

[Montero]

With one or two exceptions, anything I'd read during the day I'd read in bed before I go to sleep. So SFF, autobiographies, crime, biography, travel.

The exceptions are:

Larger books such as text books or some trade paperbacks - just because I am lying on my side reading and the books are either awkward or heavy.

A particularly grim book - but I rarely read those anyway. (e.g. Wild Swans or other examples of people having a really miserable life.)

And to expand the thread a fraction, my reading when I am ill in bed is often re-reads, and towards the YA or younger end. Harry Potter, Dianna Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Diane Duane (Wizard series). So books with happy endings, where I know the plot enough not to have to think really hard to follow it and there is a degree of feel good from time to time.

 

[Extollager]

Interesting responses!

There are some books that I set aside basically just for late-night reading. For example, I began reading the complete Grimms' Fairy Tales (Pantheon edition) almost three years ago, and have read almost fifty of about 200 tales. At this rate I won't finish the collection for quite a few years; but that is okay.

I began Nathaniel Hawthorne's English Notebooks about eight years ago and am not far from the end of that. I started the engraver Thomas Bewick's Memoir just over a year ago. Dickens's Sketches by Boz is a good late-night read. I recently read Tolkien's poems, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, twice as a late-night book.

So I typically have several "late-night books" at hand. It can take a while, but one does actually end up reading quite a lot in this way -- even at the rate of just a very few pages a night.

There are books, I think, that are best read in this way, a little at a time but steadily -- but that might not be dramatic enough to work well as something you would try to read in a couple of days or a few days.

 

[littlemissattitude]

I'll read just about anything just before bed. There've only been a couple of things I've regretted doing that with. Once was a Clive Barker short story that gave me a nighmare (go figure). The other was Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum". With the Poe story, I was about eight years old and the first thing of his I'd ever read, so I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into.

EDITED TO ADD that I should also mention The Exorcist, but the problem with that wasn't so much that I was reading at night, but that I was reading at night while alone in a house that was clearly haunted. No, really. In the 4.5 years I lived there, I often heard a voice (always the same voice) call my name, sometimes I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder - both of these mostly happened when there was no one else at home - and things occasionally just disappeared, never to be seen again. Like the time I was sitting at a card table doing homework and the one blank sheet of paper on the table slipped off the back of the table and just vanished - dematerialized - between the fall and hitting the ground, which it never did. I spent at least half an hour trying to find that piece of paper, but there was not one single blank sheet of paper to be found in the entire room. I looked everywhere. Also, there were a lot of mirrors in that house, and at least once, my mother saw someone in the mirror who was not in the room to be reflected in the mirror. I'm really glad she never told me about that until after we had moved out of there.

 

[clovis-man]

I don't have any proscribed or prescribed type of book for bedtime. But short story collections seem to work well. If I fade out, I can easily recoup and press on the next day.

My wife reads her Kindle in bed. The advantage there is that when she falls unconscious, the device kindly keeps her place on the page. Even if it falls on the floor.

 

[clovis-man]

EDITED TO ADD that I should also mention The Exorcist, but the problem with that wasn't so much that I was reading at night, but that I was reading at night while alone in a house that was clearly haunted. No, really. In the 4.5 years I lived there, I often heard a voice (always the same voice) call my name, sometimes I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder - both of these mostly happened when there was no one else at home - and things occasionally just disappeared, never to be seen again. Like the time I was sitting at a card table doing homework and the one blank sheet of paper on the table slipped off the back of the table and just vanished - dematerialized - between the fall and hitting the ground, which it never did. I spent at least half an hour trying to find that piece of paper, but there was not one single blank sheet of paper to be found in the entire room. I looked everywhere. Also, there were a lot of mirrors in that house, and at least once, my mother saw someone in the mirror who was not in the room to be reflected in the mirror. I'm really glad she never told me about that until after we had moved out of there.

Dang, LMA! I think you're deliberately trying to creep me out! I remember the first time I read The Exorcist (before the movie). The last third of the book was so absorbing that I actually stayed up half the night to finish it. In bed of course. Didn't go to sleep right away.

 

[dask]

I'll read anything from Homer to Edmond Hamilton. Right now it's CALLING CAPTAIN FUTURE. Not too picky, just has to excite me.

 

[Extollager]

Finished Thoreau's Maine Woods and will probably turn tonight to George Borrow's Wild Wales or Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail.

Borrow wrote Lavengro and The Romany Rye, two "gypsy" books that were famous once. He is one of those good Victorian authors who are forgotten or neglected even by Penguin Classics. My edition of Wild Wales includes many black and white photos that remind me of Arthur Machen's love of his native country.

 

[Connavar]

Reading is like food to me. I eat early and long before sleep. I read usually long before late nights and never in bed. Im a light sleeper i sleep as soon as i hit my bed. I read late nights only in my couch and when i feel slight tired or sleepy i put down the book instantly.

I read seriously,focused in like 1-3 hour sessions. I cant quick read just before sleep.

Im a couch reader who likes his early evenings when im home from school or work and is fresh. Im a picky reader, i need to read with pleasure.

Reading in bed is like watching bad tv because you cant sleep and i respect my authors too much for that sort of thing.

 

[Extollager]

Im a couch reader who likes his early evenings when im home from school or work and is fresh. Im a picky reader, i need to read with pleasure.

Reading in bed is like watching bad tv because you cant sleep and i respect my authors too much for that sort of thing.

Connavar, I purposely didn't refer to "bedtime reading," but to "late-night reading" -- this thread isn't intended just for the former class of readers.

By the way -- thinking about the subject, I now realize that my late-night reading tends towards "time machine reading." By that, I mean primarily writing that takes me back, in imagination, to an earlier time. I expect to be reading Parkman's Oregon Trail for a while now, before lights-out, and it should be an enjoyable visit to 1846. But "time-machine reading" also suggests the rereading of old favorites (as was a recent late-night choice, Tolkien's Adventures of Tom Bombadil).