We Are Not Ourselves Was My Night Book
Maybe this is odd to many of you, but I generally don’t read in bed before falling asleep. I think this may be atypical for “readers” – after all, during my Covid isolation in May, I started re-watching Little House on the Prairie (hey, it was what I was in the mood for!), and I noticed that even Pa read in bed before reaching peak shut-eye mode. While Ma munched on popcorn. Btw, my family will tell you that I enthusiastically embrace both reading and nightly popcorn, ergo I am clearly an Ingalls at heart…aaaaand now my childhood dream has come true.
Anyway, in yet another attempt at a good night’s sleep several weeks ago, I decided to search my Kindle for something to read. Because even though my kids gave me an awesome reading light, I thought the Kindle would be more “respectful” to my bedmate. (Moot point once Covid hit, but this was before that.) At some point many years ago, I must have had a full-on Kindle bonanza and swooped up a bunch of books that were on massive sale. So I stumbled across We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas’ widely praised debut novel, published in 2014 — which I had apparently downloaded at some point.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed from my adventures in Kindle bedtime reading:
🌙I guess I was lucky because We Are Not Ourselves hit this perfect note of being engaging (family saga, which is usually an easy “yes” for me), very readable (no esoteric plot points or complex structure), but I was ok putting it down (not a crazy page-turner that keeps you awake);
🌙Despite the percentage at the bottom of my screen, I had no clue this book was nearly 700 pages long. I wonder if I would have felt differently about utilizing a book of this length as my sleep aid if it weren’t digital;
🌙I literally had no idea what this book was about when I started. No front cover illustration to keep flipping to, no back blurbs to read. It was like a surprise each time I “opened” it because it’s not like the hard copy of the book was perched on a table and staring me in the face;
🌙Because of the last point, I kept forgetting the title of what I was reading. So I just called it my “Night Book.”
Do you have a Night Book? #GoodnightBook 🛌
originally published on instagram