I very nearly woke up in my twin bed from childhood on my 30th birthday. But this January, when I finally crossed over into my thirties, I had one of my first nights of sleep in my new queen bed, books spilled beside me. Well, new / old queen bed, originally belonging to my parents before they leveled up and got a king sized bed last fall. I didn’t care that it was second hand and a little lumpy. I had more than enough room for me and my sleeping buddy cats, and I had plenty of space to read in bed. My old twin bed was too narrow to accommodate me, especially when my cat, Jon Snow, would sleep with me, and eventually I developed bad back pain and restless slumber. I couldn’t even really turn over, much less read a book. The concepts of “reading in bed” and even having enough room to stay in bed all day and rest and read if I were sick were unknown to me. So it’s with great pleasure that I’ve unlocked a love of reading between the covers (pun intended!). If you enjoy reading books before you go to sleep, you know there are some books to read before bed that are just better suited to that magical moment before you put the day away, slip into the land of nod, and process your day, your fears, your anxieties. You don’t want be reading a horror novel, or a thriller you can’t put down. You want to use those final minutes or hour to learn something new, cleanse the palate, and fit the dreamlike mood. A great book to read before you call it a night should ideally fit a few qualities to help you relax. Though I’m still a rookie, I’m sharing my list of 10 awesome books to read before bed. What’s on your bedside table? Leave a comment below!
(1) Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
(folklore, mythology)
I’ve been fascinated by Norse mythology since high school, but I never really went through and learned about all the gods, goddesses, legends, and magical lore of the Norsemen before I started reading Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, a collection of his versions of this stunning world. Gaiman’s narrative flows well, from the creation of the mythological world to the end, emphasizing recurring themes that unite these timeless stories, reaching across time over thousands of years, bringing a new urgency and relevancy to some of our oldest and most influential myths.
The chapters are a digestible size, perfect to savor a few in the dying light of the evening, and you don’t really want to binge read this one anyway. Gaiman’s etherial, enchanting prose is measured and steady, a calming style that blunts the harsher realities of Norse myths, which are, understandably, coming from the North, a bit frostier and bleaker than the sunny Mediterranean lifestyle that inspired the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman myths. Let Gaiman spin some magic into your dreams with this collection of Norse myths.
Add Norse Mythology on Goodreads / buy on Amazon.
(2) The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg
(fairy tales, folklore, mythology)
Keeping with the mythology and canonical-works theme, Mallory Ortberg’s The Merry Spinster is a twisted, smart take on fairy tales and canonical works like The Wind in the Willows. The Merry Spinster puts the familiar plots and characters into a blender and shreds them up, pushing them in a darker place. I know I’m not the only one who grew up listening to their parents read fairy tales before bed. I forget a lot of things, but my memory of the fairy tale book we read each night is stamped in my brain, and I can recall it perfectly. We know now that the Grimm stories and others were actually very dark, but so much of those stories are neutered by the time they wind up in a children’s anthology. Reading The Merry Spinster before bed should correct that right away.
As a co-founder of the feminist site The Toast, Ortberg, a trans writer, has an interesting vantage point to explore issues of shifting gender and identity in these stories which have been so much a foundation of how children learn how a woman should act and how a man should act. Rather than reinforce gender conventions, Ortberg blurs them into a provocative remix.
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(3) Sisters by Lily Tuck
(literary fiction)
Sometimes you just want to read a book in one sitting, and Sisters, a short and tiny book at 156 small pages. Once you start this book, you’re not going to want to put it down. I read it in maybe an hour, drawn in by the narrator’s morose and confessional reflections on life as a second wife. I also think this is such a nice self-contained story, one that you’ll think about after you finish it, but it won’t throw your life off track for days. Like an episode of a long TV drama, (or more accurately, a reality show), this story is just long enough. If you need to quickly add another book to your Read list, this is an excellent pick.
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(4) Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
(memoir, essays)
I read Ex Libris shortly after New Year’s in 2016. This tiny book (162 pages) erased thousands of pages of the underwhelming books I read during The Great 2015 Year-Long Reading Slump. If you’ve been feeling lately like you’ve fallen out of love with reading, Anne Fadiman’s bite-sized essays about the bookish life will restore your soul. The topics she picks are timeless, like deciding how to organize your books when two readers move in together. Fadiman gives us poignant glimpses of her childhood growing up in a family of readers. Her memories triggered my own, and I rediscovered the joy I get from reading.
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(5) Hot Dog Taste Test by Lisa Hanawalt
(comics, graphic novel)
I’m a BoJack Horseman fan like whoa. What I especially love is the absurd humor, both as the show is written and drawn. I like how the show balances twee and whimsy with bitterness and disillusionment. You see that in the world, populated by animals and humans alike. How happy was I, then, to find a graphic novel by Lisa Hanawalt, the producer and production designer of BoJack‘s unique, trippy cosmos. Hot Dog Taste Test is not exactly a graphic novel. There isn’t a sprawling narrative of novel-esque scope. Instead, Hot Dog Taste Test collects Hanawalt’s sketches, one-offs, doodles, and longer segments, such as essays she wrote for various newspapers and periodicals and online publications.
I read Hot Dog Taste Test in December 2017 when I was trying like hell to meet my reading challenge goal. I was really sick at the time with a head cold, and I was all alone in the house that weekend, trapped in a cocoon of misery. Naturally, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to read Moby Dick! But Hot Dog Taste Test, borrowed from the library in a fit of “check out tons of graphic novels so you have plenty of things to speed read by December 31 at 11:59 pm!” was the perfect solution for fever brain. It matched my absurd, surreal experience at the time, was funny, and didn’t really require too much of an attention span or concentration. Similarly, Hot Dog Taste Test is a great choice to read before bed. It’s a quick read, funny, weird, and guaranteed to make you smile. Think of it as a twisted picture book for adults who have a sardonic sense of humor!
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(6) A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
(fantasy)
I often read A Game of Thrones, the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, right before bed. If you’re not familiar with Martin’s writing style, he alternates chapters from the perspectives of many characters, some major, some minor. Each chapter is about 10-30 pages long, and Martin is quite a master of the short story, building suspense, balancing exposition, and usuallly ending with a punch or a twist. Say what you will about Martin… though he seems to be unable to cobble together a full-length novel over several years (cough cough, The Winds of Winter!!!!), but man can he write a knockout scene. That’s why A Game of Thrones and the books that follow are nice books to read in bed. You can fnish one or two chapters out in half an hour, forty five minutes, etc. (Disclaimer: I did find this series to be pretty un-put-downable, so maybe not the best book to read if you want to go to sleep in a few. You’ve been warned!) And if you can’t get enough, check out my blog post with “Book Recommendations for ‘Game of Thrones’ Fans.”
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(7) The Assassin’s Cloak edited by Alan and Irene Taylor
(memoir, nonfiction)
Some time ago, I posted in a librarian Facebook group to ask people for their favorite underrated or overlooked books. A crowd of librarians (or is that a “shush” of librarians?), with varied interests and known super readers, will give some interesting answers to this type of question, and I actually turned it into a Goodreads list. One of the books recommended by a librarian was The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists, edited by Alan and Irene Taylor. This interesting anthology goes through an entire year—January 1 to December 31—and includes excerpts from approximately 170 diarists across history, from notable figures (Andy Warhol, Virginia Woolf, Queen Victoria) to those who are more obscure (Housewife 49, Alma Mahler (wife of composer Gustav Mahler), and a New York mayor from the 19th century). Certain themes run throughout the book, in particular the Second World War, as well as jokes, observations, and completely forgettable ephemera. Each day includes about 4 to 10 entries, just a few pages, so it makes it a nice treat to wind down the day in bed, though it’s up to you if you want to read the entries for that day or, perhaps more intriguing, for tomorrow. (I also recommend checking out the Washington Post‘s review of the book.)
Add The Assassin’s Cloak on Goodreads / buy on Amazon (note: it’s likely cheaper to buy this one used)
(8) Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard
(nonfiction, essays)
Another one of those knock-em-out-in-one-night books, Mary Beard’s Women & Power: A Manifesto is a slim masterpiece. Based on two lectures Beard, author of the acclaimed bestseller SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, gave for the British Museum (in 2014) and the London: Review of Books (in 2017), these books send you all the way back in time to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. A Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, Beard traces connections between how we in western civilization have mistreated women for thousands of years. It’s an eye-opening look at how misogyny echoes back to ancient times, that its foundation is so deeply rooted into our collective conscious.
Think of all the bad habits we’ve shaken off since antiquity: human sacrifice, sentencing people to death by “sitting in the tub” and decaying themselves alive, outlawing purple fashion… not to mention two languages! Yet still we silence, degrade, and humiliate women in ways that are just as sadistic and public as the gladiator spectacles. Come on, humanity! Why can’t we fix this? Women & Power has some thoughts on that.
One major radical political change reinforced Beard’s observations: the 2016 United States Presidential Election—and Beard incorporates some deft analysis tying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s loss and Trump’s win together with her manifesto. This is a stirring, short book (128 pages) that makes a compelling argument with great economy. If you’ve lived through (yet another) day of sexism and are feeling dispirited about making progress, read Mary Beard’s Women & Power. I promise your spirit will be restored and you’ll feel ready to fight the patriarchy tomorrow—but first, some sleep.
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(9) SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki
(comics, graphic novel)
As a librarian and book blogger, there are certain book recommendations you know have wide appeal and are a kind of ace to have in your back pocket. SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki (prolific writer / illustrator / collaborator of, among other things, Skim and This One Summer) is definitely one of those books. This graphic novel builds on a series of Tamaki’s web comics about teens attending a magic school for mutants. It’s so much more than a parody of Harry Potter.
Tamaki has a gift for capturing the minutiae of high school, when everything seems like Such A Big Deal, and satirizing it so it feels nostalgic, authentic, and totally relatable. This is a good book to read while you’re getting ready to go to sleep because there’s something of a larger plot and structure to the anthology, which is hefty at 276 thick pages, but you can dip in and out of it without feeling like you have to concentrate on a plot. The segments are episodic in that way, and it’s better in bits and pieces. You likely won’t want to binge read this one. Savor it in whimsical, darkly comic chunks before bed, and have some magic dreams.
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(10) Very Good, Jeeves! by P. G. Wodehouse
(short stories, humor)
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the great British humorist P. G. Wodehouse saved my life. One fateful day the summer between graduating high school and starting college at Barnard in New York City, I was profoundly depressed, as usual. Stalking the stacks of Marple Public Library, all the way back in the W – X – Y – Z section, I came across an unpretentious, silly book called Life with Jeeves. I had heard of “Jeeves” before, namesake to the short-lived search engine Ask Jeeves, but like everyone else, I didn’t know anything about who Jeeves really was. I think, in the end, I decided to check it out because of the cheery, vintage-y sherbet orange spine and retro feel. Oh, what the hell, I thought. And so brought on my lifelong appreciation for P. G. Wodehouse.
I’ve explained in group therapy before the feeling I get when I emerge from a depression, either momentarily or for a longer stretch above the surface, I often cry when I’m laughing, like bawling in a comedy I see at the movie theater. It’s the joy of rediscovering that you can feel something again, that your muscles remember how to stretch into a smile, that there’s still a catch in the back of your throat that knows how to chuckle. It’s bliss. And that’s exactly what I found in that collection of the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves the Butler stories. I had a pretty boring summer job that year that let me read during the dead stretches. The Jeeves book (and Franzen’s The Corrections, actually) were my books of choice, and, like any word nerd, I compulsively looked up and acquired and used many antiquated British sayings, slang, and factoids from Wodehouse. I implore you to go find the nearest Wodehouse book you can and read it, especially if you’re an Acorn TV-subscribing, Downton Abbey box set owning, UK imported tea drinking anglophile.
Tonight.
Get it tonight.
These amusing tales, gliding along in prose so smooth and conversational you’ll inhale it, are the perfect tonic to a hard day. Read one in bed and clear out the cobwebs. I can think of no better way to end the day than with watching that laughable, hopeless, endearingly privileged cad Bertie Wooster live another day none the wiser. And if you’re a fan, you’ll never be lonely. Your whole life you’ll find other people who love Wodehouse as much as you do, like being part of a secret club. People I never would have guessed would love these stories (including myself) will always help another poor fish out.
There’s a ton of debate on what book to give to a new Wodehouse reader. I talk about Jeeves and Wooster here, but Wodehouse was an extremely prolific writer who also had loads of novels and stories for other recurring characters and locations. I think, though, that starting with a fine set of Jeeves stories should get you right up to speed. I think Very Good, Jeeves, one of the collections anthologized in the first book I picked up, is a fine place to start.
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Other bookish ideas for reading in bed
Some other places to find reading material include old magazines you have piling up. Stack them up next to you, pick an article, and read it before bed. Be open to trying new topics, too. (Plus let’s not forget that classic, nerdy romantic fantasy of reading the Sunday New York Times in bed.) You can also read a poem each night. And although most of of the recommendations here are for shorter, self-contained reading options, I also suggest picking a long book that’s been on your TBR for years (mine would be Moby-Dick) and chipping away at it a chapter a night.
Another option is listening to a chapter in an audiobook before bed. You can program your audiobook to fade out after a set timeframe, and you don’t need a big bed for that at all. Over the years, I’ve fallen asleep to many great audiobooks. Children’s books are especially fun. Drifting off to Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland might hearken back to your earliest memories as a reader, absorbing words and stories in those twilight moments before sleep.
No matter what you choose, you can’t go wrong when you pair reading and bed. There’s nothing better than waking up next to a book.
