Reading late at night can either put us to sleep, or it can keep us awake past our bedtime. It’s as if the true test of a book’s grip on us is by whether it puts us to sleep or not.
If a book can hold our attention, even if we’re tired, then we will push sleep aside. We won’t put it down until we’ve finished a chapter or until we’re too tired to keep reading. There are so many surprises and twists in each page that we would rather stay awake than to have a good night’s sleep.
If a book bores us, all it does is speed up the process of our sleeping. I’ve read books like that where each sentence felt more like a chore, an uphill battle to get to the next page.
But when we read, we want to be cognizant of what we’re reading. We want to be focused, alert. Perhaps reading late at night isn’t the ideal time to read. Or if that’s the only time we can dive into a book, then setting a timer might be a good way to keep track of how long we should read. Just slip in the bookmark when the time’s up. Don’t get pulled in, or else we might not sleep until the wee hours of the night.
Fallton Havenstonne 