Comfort Reading
My insomnia, like my hayfever, is characterised by being just annoying enough to affect me, but not bad enough for me to want to do much about it. It’s a bit like when you’re in a taxi, and the taxi driver has the radio on and you have to strain to hear it and the slightest noise will prevent you from hearing it. Better I suppose than having it on a ear-splittingly loud volume, but irritating none the less.
Anyway, I often wake up in the middle of the night and find it difficult to get back to sleep. Not impossible, mind, but it is difficult and therefore annoying.
The best way to get back to sleep, for me at least, is to read. This does occassionally result in my waking up with the bedside lamp on, which is annoying as well as a waste of electricity but it is better than lying awake, become convinced the ceiling is going to fall in or something.
I used to try listening to music as a way to get to sleep but it isn’t as good. It is perfect when you’re trying to get to sleep the first time, and you may have had a little bit to drink and it helps you fall asleep naturally. Even then you have to be careful as you don’t want something that is too intense and you’ll try and listen to. That is bad.
Books on the other hand are much better, despite the disadvantage of needing the light on. I don’t read under the covers with a torch, that is for people who are different from the other kids in school and who are slightly awkward, that kind of thing.
When I visit my parents, I often use the books I read as a child. This goes against my normal technique, which is never to revisit childhood things in case they don’t live up expectations. But I was at home, there wasn’t anything else to read without venturing downstairs for some CLR James, and so I re-read a lot of childhood books.
(Edited conclusion: Charlotte’s Web is nothing short of amazing, although I still don’t get why the pig is so lauded by everyone when it’s all about the spider. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is okay, although, bloody hell, it’s right preachy isn’t it? Roald Dahl: obviously good.)
But when I’m here I don’t have children’s books handy. So the ideal book is something straightforward, that I am very familiar with. Then the sleep will come.
I don’t have enough shelf-space for all my books, so books that will fit that description will be by my bed.
Looking now however, Thomas Pynchon seems to be there.
How did that happen?
My technique is to read the books I can’t get through in the daytime. Vernon God Little took me a year to finish because I kept falling asleep within a few pages.
I didn’t read books as a child.
I’d have to get old copies of Whizzer and Chips.
Anti-histamines help me sleep. In fact, I’m addicted to them.
Chatterbox – Maybe that’s what I was trying to do with Pynchon.
Geoff – You should try re-reading Whizzer and Chips.
It is also very confusing when I wake up and find your books in bed between us, presenting an obstacle to physical intimacy (and testament to my ability to sleep through your insomniac fumbling with lamps and pages). Waking up next to Walt Whitman is somewhat disconcerting!