Do you read to go to sleep? I've never managed it, but it seems like most people do. I can't allow myself to read at bedtime any more, because I can't stop. Time vanishes. I have no willpower. It's partly that I'm a night-owl - but even when I want to go to sleep, when I'm really tired and my eyelids are heavy, my eyes are gritty, if I pick up a book, I feel compelled to stay awake and keep reading, fighting sleep all the way. I know that, if I try to put it down, my mind won't shut off - it's generally the only time I'm insomniac - so I might as well just stay awake and keep going. Eventually, I realised that I had to make a choice between reading at night and functioning at work. Sometimes I lapse (damn you, Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms), but mostly the latter is the only real option.

Okay, non-fiction sometimes makes me sleepy - revision was hell - but it does depend on how interesting I'm finding it. I'm currently reading Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens, and while I find it easier to put down, it certainly doesn't put me to sleep. I think, really, it was schoolbooks that I didn't want to read that had the soporific effect.

So, I don't get the book at bedtime thing. Am I weird? Am I the only one hardwired to have books keep me awake? Maybe it was just that I never learned discipline when it comes to bedtime - my parents weren't very strict about it, and even when they were (no presents until Christmas morning!), I'd wait until they'd gone to bed and then get up again. I liked being awake when everyone else was asleep.

It might also be the way I read, which is related to the way I watch films or TV shows (properly watching, that is - sometimes I play on my computer while I've got the TV on, and that's a different experience. I switched my computer off to watch Farscape). I get very focused, very involved, to the exclusion of everything else around me - even if the book, film or TV show is just something very shallow. It's part of what makes me write fanfic - I start to really care about the characters, I picture them as real people, and wonder about their lives outside of the pages, after the show. Apparently I become impossible to talk to. Looking back at things I've seen at the cinema, I can rarely remember who I went with or where I saw it. I remember the film, and I usually remember going to and from the cinema with people, but the two things don't occupy the same memory-space, or connect in any way. It's like my memory of a night out runs up to the opening credits, and then skips straight to the end credits, whereupon it starts up again. The film itself is stored in a separate part of my brain.

But back to bedtime reading. It's frustrating, because it would be a good time to read, just before bed - I can totally see that. It should be relaxing - a quiet, still thing to do, a way of shutting down the different levels on which the mind is operating, in preparation for closing that last one down and going to sleep. I can understand that in theory, but in practice, it simply doesn't work for me. It's a shame, because I don't find as much time in the day or evening to read, nowadays, so I'm reading a lot less than when all I had to worry about was being tired in lessons.

Falling asleep in French class, though - in front of the teacher... that was pretty bad. :)