Brief Book Thoughts: Sleep, Captivity, Passage

Sleep Groove, by Olivia Walch

h/t friend-of-the-blog and ultimate thing-knower Walt

This is probably the best that a non-fiction book can plausibly be: accurate, engaging, great metaphors, the jokes are actually funny. It's even short – or rather, it's unpadded, it says what it means without pointless repetition or digression – which is unheard of.

I'm still not sure that books are the right format for this kind of habit-formation information. What I need is (like the author) to be part of a 2 month sleep study where somebody forces me to go to bed at a consistent time, and then experience the benefits, and then (miraculously) keep doing it for the rest of my life, instead of slowly forgetting about it. That or join a monastery/cult/institution where we all go to bed at 8pm and they turn off the wifi and tell me God will be sad if I don't go to bed on time.

But failing those things, maybe a (very repetitive) podcast or something would be better than a book? I basically need the author to keep repeating these same ideas at me in mildly-varied form until they become part of my identity, and a book doesn't seem like the best way to do that. (I still do recommend the book, obviously, given the actually-available options).

The core argument of this book is that you should focus not only about how many hours you sleep on average but about your sleep rhythm, your sleep groove. To be rested and happy you wanna get in a good groove like a water-fountain on a swingset. (That metaphor will make sense to you after you read the book)

Raised In Captivity, by Chuck Klosterman

Branded as fictional nonfiction, which seems right: the author is basically using the pretense of fiction to explore ideas 1) without committing to a point of view, and/or 2) that he doesn't think he can talk about in public.

Passage, by Connie Willis

h/t KL, blog-friend extraordinaire

So look: this is one of the most impressive novels I've ever read. I genuinely couldn't stop reading it, I was lucky I started over Christmas because I probably did 30 hours of reading in about 5 days, at the cost of many other activities.

At the same time, I found it ~50% longer than (I thought) it needed to be, so for much of that time I was simultaneously grippingly compelled to read and not-enjoying the reading.

I think you could make the argument that the length is thematically meaningful – this is one of those rare books where the structure of the book exemplifies the argument it makes, and you wouldn't fully get that experience if the book were shorter – but man I wish there were a significantly abridged version of this book so that I could wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

Also! This novel incidentally contains the best explanation of scientific research methods, the difficulties of recruiting good research participants, and the hazards of interview-based research that I've ever read – this isn't a huge part of the book so if you're reading just for that you'll be disappointed, but if you're into such things then you'll incidentally enjoy it and be like "oh wow yeah this author totally gets it, if more scientists were like her we could have avoided part of the replication crisis."

p.s. other examples of writing that exemplifies itself: Three Uses Of The Knife by David Mamet, A Simple Way To Create Suspense by Lee Childs, what else?