To Read to Sleep

I’ve always read in bed. Always. For as long as I can remember, really—since before the age when memories begin to settle into things you could recount. It’s never felt like a habit. More like an instinct. A deeply ingrained, highly enjoyable ritual, as natural as brushing your teeth, only infinitely more rewarding. In the little back bedroom of my parents’ house—next to their shops in the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire—my first lamp stood on a marble-topped wash-hand stand. The only other furniture was my bed and a chest of drawers that looked like it had given up trying. The lamp itself was a silver lady, balancing on one leg, arm raised to the heavens, in the manner of the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, only this one had a perforated purple lampshade and an air of resignation. It was by her light that I discovered my first loves: Enid Blyton, the Fife-Finder Outers, the Seven Seeker Uppers, and Alfred Hitchcock Investigates—anything in a series. I was mad for a series. My mother would shout up the stairs, “Lights out! No more reading!” which, of course, I obeyed by immediately reading one more chapter. Secretly she was pleased. It’s hard to scold a child for enjoying books, unless they’re holding one instead of a hoover. Eventually I graduated to the front bedroom, which overlooked the street and had a bed from Freeman’s Catalogue—a bow-ended double that creaked like a conscience. There was a dimmer switch on the lamp and heavy velvet curtains that blocked out the summer. I pretended it was winter, my favourite reading season. It was here I discovered Roald Dahl’s darker stories—Someone Like You, Over to You—and realised fiction didn’t always have to end with ginger beer and a map to the smugglers’ cove. Years later, reading took on a practical role. Holidays meant books. And books meant weight. Half a suitcase would be given over to hardbacks: Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid, any woman likely to bump off her husband with a decorative object. So when the Kindle arrived, it was nothing short of a revelation. Like switching from coal to central heating. I resisted, of course. I missed the smell. But on one holiday to Turkey, I read the whole Stieg Larsson trilogy without pulling a single shoulder muscle. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Portable. Glowing. Discreet. Especially useful, as it turned out, with my partner who keeps very early mornings. Two days a week, he’s up at 5:30, slipping out of bed like a cat with a train to catch. I, meanwhile, ease into bed later, Kindle in hand. No reading lamp needed. No risk of waking him. Just me and the screen, lighting up the double bedroom of our boat like a small private cinema.

And yet lately, something’s changed. I call it the Kindle tumble. It started during The Marble Hall Murders—the third in Antony Horowitz’s series of cleverly constructed, two-tiered whodunnits. Books that wink at you, confident that you’ll never quite catch up. Every night, I’d look forward to diving in. But increasingly, I wouldn’t make it to the end of the chapter. At some point—mid-sentence, mid-thought—I’d vanish into sleep. I’d wake hours later, spectacles still on, Kindle glowing faintly. Sometimes on my chest, sometimes under me. Once it ended up between my partner and me like a failed peace offering. Another time, in a German hotel room (two single beds pushed together and optimistically called a double), I lost it entirely. Not on the floor. Not under the duvet. Not even in the suitcase. Just…gone. Only after shifting one of the beds did I hear the faintest clunk—and there it was, wedged down the diplomatic crack between the mattresses. Still on Chapter 45. Kindle, I thought, you faithful little liar. I used to be able to read for hours in bed. Now, I read for ten minutes and disappear like an old BBC ident. It doesn’t happen on planes, oddly. Give me a flat bed in business class and I’ll stay awake for six hours straight. But on my actual mattress, with my Kindle, I’m out like a light. I’ve tried to understand it. The Kindle, I’ve realised, has become my most effective sleep aid. Better than melatonin, white noise, or that meditation app with the man who sounds like he’s hiding something. Just a couple of pages and my brain folds itself up like laundry. And still, I wouldn’t be without it. It now joins the pantheon of bedtime essentials: eye serum, water glass, earplugs… and my Kindle, curled next to me like a glowworm of literary intent. I read, I drift, I dream. And if I wake at 3 a.m., confused and crusty-eyed, at least I know I was doing something worthwhile before sleep took me hostage. So here’s to bedtime reading. Here’s to the Kindle. And if it occasionally vanishes under the covers or ends up behind the radiator, that’s a small price to pay for such a loyal companion. To read to sleep. There are far worse ways to go.