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These Books Will Help You Fall Asleep Fast
We've got picks for insomniacs and middle-of-the-night worriers.
Temi Oyeyola
The TV is off. Your phone is stashed in a drawer and away from temptation. The heat has been turned way down to 66, the recommended temperature for an ideal sleep environment. Still, it’s hours until dawn, and you’re wide awake. While you’re most decidedly decades past a simpler time when a parent read to you until you drifted off, a good book can still offer the lullaby your brain needs, especially if you pick from one of these genres.
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Short Stories
A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories 1968-1994 by Alice Munro
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Short Stories
A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories 1968-1994 by Alice Munro
Setting aside the fact that some of the very best writers are masters of this form, let’s state the obvious: Short stories are short, and thus can be consumed in the time it will hopefully take to fall back to sleep. Alice Munro’s Selected Stories are to be sampled and savored.
While some poets are rabble-rousers who set the senses aflame, at 3:30 a.m. we prefer bards whose verse soothes the soul, allowing the mind to shift to images of snowy woods, majestic birds, a lover’s solace. Quietly marvel at the wonders of the natural world with New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver.
Allow an enlightened one to help you clear your thoughts, deepen your breathing, and move into the meditative state after which sleep may soon follow. Or, in the words of Eckhart Tolle: “Surrender.” Tolle’s The Power of Now is an antidote to the restless mind.
Nibble at these pages as you would popcorn at a movie. Skim, jump to the photos, dip in and out, and delight in a glimpse of a well-known life that won’t keep you up wondering what will happen next. We prescribe Home Work by Julie Andrews.
There’s something life-affirming and palliative about knowing we’re not alone in parsing the existential, as great essayists do. For one of the most satisfying, try C.S. Lewis’s The Reading Life.
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Tea Cozy Mystery
No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
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Tea Cozy Mystery
No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers are among those whose sleuths make the murder-solving process feel as homey and snug as your grandfather's cardigan. Investigate the pages of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for further clues.
The bigger and more abstruse the better—sometimes there’s no quicker path to slumber than a Moby Dick of a novel. For one, try Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Here’s hoping sleep is not as elusive as the white whale.