The Many Reasons We Bookworms Don’t get Enough Sleep

I think every bookworm has forfeited sleep to books at some point or another. However, there’s plenty of other ways books keep us awake too. I frequently don’t get to sleep until sometime after midnight and usually I’m completely at fault. it’s completely the fault of books.

Today I’m going to tell you about all the ways books like to do this to us. And pretend as if we’re totally not at all to blame.

1 – That time when you stay up waaayyyyy too late reading.

This is the obvious reason. The one that every bookworm has run into at some point or another.

That time when you’re reading a good book, and you just don’t want to put it down. You need to know what happens. So you stay up ’til two in the morning, finishing it.

I don’t think there is a single bookworm in the whole world who hasn’t done this before. If you haven’t, you obviously have some sort of magic.

Also, HELP! TEACH ME YOUR MAGICAL WAYS!!

2 – When you make the mistake of reading a creepy book right before bed.

Personally, I scare easily. I can do dark books no problem, but I can’t do ghosts, or… spiders.*

I know what things creep me out, and I normally have a pretty good idea which books are going to stop me from getting to sleep. But I read them anyway. And I read them late at night anyway.

I tried to give myself a rule about not reading anything that’s going to scare me past eight or so. It failed. It failed really, really badly.

I think I’ve finally just given up.

*I cannot read anything about spiders, or it’ll give me nightmares. Far more than anything else I might read tbh. Gruesome murders? No problem. Spiders? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Nope. Not happening.

3 – When you finish a heartbreaking book right before bed.

You know those books I’m talking about. Those wonderful, evil, amazing books that crush your feels, and leave you in a state of shock.

I’ve noticed they also have a tendency to leave you unable to think about anything else.

And if you finish one right before bed? Sleep is NOT happening. Because THAT BOOK is all you can think about, and THAT BOOK left you far too emotionally destroyed to do something so mundane as sleep.

4 – When you don’t finish a book before going to bed.

When your common sense actually kicks in,* and you put down your book at a reasonable(ish) time.

But, of course, wherever you put it down, isn’t a very good place to stop. And so you spend the next three hours trying to figure out what’s going to happen. Trying to figure out if there is any possible way all your favourite characters are going to survive this. Trying to figure out what on earth something meant. Freaking out because you’ve decided your favourite characters can’t all make it out alive.

And NOT sleeping.

*Or, more precisely, my parent’s common sense.

5 – When you can’t remember some little detail, and it’s driving you CRAZY!

It’s very possible I’m the only one with this problem, but… It’s a very large one for me.

I’ll be thinking, and some quote, or character, or something, will pop into my head. And then I’ll realize I can no longer remember the exact wording of the quote, or the characters last name.

I think I’m to much of a perfectionist. Last night, I was thinking about Quidditch. And I was thinking about the players on the Gryffindor team. And I was running through their names in my head. All of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t remember Alicia Spinnet’s last name. I must have spent an hour trying to remember, before I realized I could go check.

It was such a tiny detail, but once it occurred to me that I didn’t know it, there was NO WAY I was getting to sleep until I figured it out.

Things like that keep me awake all the time… Yeah, I’m definitely waaayyyyyy too much of a perfectionist.

6 – Random daydreaming about books.*

When you’re trying to sleep, but your mind keeps wandering to books. To that great character, or that hilarious quote, or your OTP, or dragons, or ANYTHING BOOKISH!

My train of thought when I’m trying to sleep often ends up being something like this…

• I want to reread Harry Potter.
• And The Mortal Instruments.
• I guess I should really finish The Infernal Devices, and read The Dark Artifices, before I go rereading The Mortal Instruments.
• I can reread The Lunar Chronicles instead.
• Iris, you just read those. Like two weeks ago.
• But Cress and Thorne. And Cinder and Kai. And Scarlet and Wolf.
• Okay fine. Maybe I should finish the book I’m reading right now.
• Oh wait. That’s not one book. That’s twelve.
• I feel bad for Sirius. Twelve years is a long time to spend in Azkaban.

You get the idea. A LOT of randomness.

*Does it count as daydreaming if it’s nighttime? Because it’s not really day… technically it’s night. So shouldn’t it be called nightdreaming? Okay, I’ll shut up now.

Basically, if you want sleep, you shouldn’t be a bookworm. Only, you know, you should, because being a bookworm is the best.

But it does seem to come at the cost of sleeping.
Oh well! Who cares about sleep anyways? We all learned early on in our time as bookworms that books are the most important things. Stuff like sleep comes second.

Still… it’s nice to be awake enough to process what’s happening in your book, at least.

Do you have any of these problems? What other bookish things cut into your sleeping time? Are you a perfectionist? Does it drive you insane when you can’t remember some tiny detail?