the ask@AAR: What’s your go to sleep read?

I struggle to fall asleep. I always have. As the poet Dana Gioia writes, every night brings to me the useless insight, the unbroken dark. I am not anxious or unhappy as I lie awake–I am, simply, awake when I do not wish to be.

One of the tricks any good insomniac uses is lulling the mind into sleep. Nature sounds, very dull stories, stressless math problems that have no end–I’ve tried them all. None are as effective as rereading a comfort read. Over the years, I’ve become languorously heavy-eyed to The Best Man by Kristan Higgins, The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas, Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare, and Uncommon Passion by Anne Calhoun. These are books I can pick up, scroll to anywhere in the story, and read until my eyes begin to droop. They are, given my deep familiarity with them, soothing and unchallenging, so familiar that I barely need to pay attention to their prose. They nudge me toward dreamland, where I fall asleep with fragments of true love and great sex winnowing through my brain.

Do you do this? If so, what do you read? And if not, what works for you to sink into restful slumber?

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