Bedtime Stories

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No matter how tired I am, I have to read before I go to sleep. This is a wonderful and lifelong habit, and I embrace it dearly. 

This is Melissa Jones Ragsdale's nightstand 

(I had thought we'd post photos of our own nightstands for this blog--with our piles of books. But then I got curious. Wonder what YOUR nightstands look like? So I asked my dear pals on Facebook to send me photos and Wow! Wait til you see them all.)

Anyway, back to reading at night.  Although it is wonderful for me, I am not sure it is wonderful for the book. I’m so excited to read when I start. Then, a few, well, I was going to say pages, but actually, often it’s paragraphs later, I feel my eyes fluttering and my attention evaporating.

I am, I have to say, able to persevere longer than Jonathan, who has just taken three months (exaggerating, but not much) to read Greg Iles fabulous Natchez Burning. He loved the book, loved it, but read about two pages a night before he fell asleep. I’d look over, and there he’d be, this huge book propped on his chest, eyes totally closed.

Wake up honey, I say. You’re sleeping. (Only wives can say this, even as I type it, I hear how absurd it sounds.)

I wasn’t sleeping, he insists. I’m reading.

Sure you were, I say. How’s the book?

And then I’d get the ‘look’. I don’t exactly remember, he admits. But I know it’s good. (He adored it, in the end. And one day spent hours reading it. “Wow, he said, “I can read so much more when I’m awake. And the book makes so much more sense.”

The best reading-at-nights for me are the ones where the book is SO GOOD it propels you through, far longer than is prudent. The Stand, I remember almost staying up all night to read. (I called in sick the next day, I guess I can admit all these years (32?) later. I did the same with Lisa Unger’s In the Blood. And Joe Finder’s Suspicion. And now, The Demonologist. (It’s very scary.)

Do you read before you go to sleep? Successfully?

This is Eleanor Cawood Jones' nightstand

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm with Jonathan. If I try to read in bed, it's a few pages and I'm out. Middle of the day, though, I LOVE to read as a break from writing. In the winter I make myself a hot cup of tea, in summer ice water, and lie down on the couch for a nice, if brief, vacation in someone else's book. I also love to read on airplanes. Now that's the test of an author's storytelling, if the book can make the trip "fly" by.

I used to listen to lots of 'books on tape' while driving but sadly I drive so little it would take me about a year to finish a book these days. And I haven't gotten the hang of putting a book on my iPhone and listening on the run. Why won't earbuds stay in my ears? Worse, having all that noise in my head makes me accident prone and forgetful... and dangerous.

This is Karin Carlson's nightstand 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I can't read at bedtime; not because I'll fall asleep with a book on my nose, but because I'll stay up until 2am. If the book is really good, I'll keep going on chapter after chapter, and if it's bad, I'll put it down and try another book until I hit something I like! So at bedtime, I do the Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle. Not only is it engaging but still put-down-able, it also makes an auto gift for the kids: every year on Mother's Day or Christmas, someone gives me one of the Sunday Crossword Collections books. And yes, I do them in ink. Without looking at the solutions.

My favorite reading times? Early evening, after dinner. Holidays and vacations. Traveling in the car, either by audiobook or with a print book if I'm not driving. And am I the only person who relishes flying because it gives me a stretch of uninterrupted reading time? When my kids were small, my best (only!) reading place was the bathroom. I went through a lot of short story collections.

This is Vicki Berger Erwin's nightstand

 DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am a life long dedicated read-in-bed-er. No matter how late it is, how tired I am, hotel or flat or home, I read something. I'm trying to think of some occasion when I HAVEN'T read. Even the night my mother died last year, I read. If that sounds callous, it wasn't at all. I had just spent six days with Nigerian hospice nurses, and I pulled up an Alexander McCall Smith book on my Kindle. I wanted to keep the rhythm of those African voices in my brain a little longer, because they had been such a comfort. And I needed something to take me out of myself, even for just a few minutes.

I don't allow myself to read often during the day, because I'd never get anything else done. And every day I look forward to the end of the day when I can get in bed and pick up that book--whatever that book happens to be. Some nights it's just a few pages and I have to reread them the next night, but I don't mind. Other nights I manage to get to bed early enough to read for an hour--or even two. Bliss! I'm not sending a photo of my to-read pile, because I'd have to decide which one:-) But as soon as I finish this fabulous non-fiction book on British undercover cops, I'm reading the galley of Rhys's new Georgie (can't wait!) and then the galley of Tammy Kaehler's new Kate Reilly, and then Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace... and so it goes on. And I firmly believe it's better to have too much to read than too little.

This is Alyssa Renae White's nightstand

LUCY BURDETTE: I just finished Rhys's fabulous upcoming book--

(HANK: And more on that here tomorrow!)

LUCY: As well as MRS. HEMINGWAY and almost done with THE STORIED LIFE OF AJ FIKRY (so charming!) I read in bed every night. Who cares if I have to read a page or two over again because I was nodding off--makes a great pleasure last a little longer.

I have trouble giving myself permission to read during the day because it feels like such a guilty pleasure. But I read eight books on vacation--oh the heaven!

HANK: I guess we all read in bed right? Love that!

  

Here are a few more nightstands courtesy of the friends of Jungle Red!

Marianne Bowes

Kathi Gorecki Voskull

Michelle Tucker Reed

DFOJRW Mary Garrett! (very subtle, xo.....)

Fascinating, huh? And I'll post more all his week!

And our own dear Reine--also subtle!

Tomorrow we'll hear all about Rhys's new book, and Wednesday S.J. Rozan, and Thursday, Nancy Martin...and Friday, well--he's just amazing, so you'll have to come visit. And Saturday And Sunday--more surprises!

SO--do you read in bed? Let us know--and you'll be entered for an ARC of my new TRUTH BE TOLD!
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And talk about great contests: check this out! http://hankphillippiryan.com/newsletters/newsletter-7-14.html