This Book Will Put You to Sleep

by K. McCoy, Dr. Hardwick

It is sadly true that it is not always easy to fall asleep. This gently amusing, highly effective anthology of soporific dullness has been carefully curated to put readers to sleep as quickly as possible. With a pillowy case wrap, stultifying illustrations, and pages of sheep to count, this giftable godsend for the under-rested features dozens of snoozy short texts, including "The Motion of Sand Dunes," "The Administrative Bureaucracy of the Byzantine Empire," "White Noise: A Technical Explanation," and many dozens more— though good luck reading very far on any one evening. Insomniacs will also appreciate "A Staring Contest with Fifty Cats," "Some Interesting Mathematical Theorems," "The Dullest Entries from Interesting Diaries," and other zzzzzzzz.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor

192 pages, Hardcover

Published October 2, 2018

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author on Goodreads with this name.

K.^^McCoy

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I found the intentionally boring articles to be quite interesting. No sleep for me.

[CrystalIsReading on StoryGraph · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this case, the title does accurately reflect the contents. I picked up this book to read to an adult who was having difficulty falling asleep. The only hazard was that I started falling asleep before he did! Reading some exhaustive lists and/ or some of the drier academic/ scientific sections is mildly interesting and incredibly soporific. I'd suggest reading the book to one's self, however, instead of trying to read it to someone else, especially as there are many visual sections that can't be translated to reading aloud (mazes, spot the differences puzzles, word spirals, etc.). I think this could be part of a terrific nighttime ritual (cool darkened room, lavender essential oil, soothing nature sounds, etc.) with this book by the bedside for restless night. I think this is even one of those books that would be more effective with repeated reading. While initially one might be interested in why rain drops come in different sizes, or the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, or how to play Chopsticks, repeated reading would remove even the interest of novelty, and instead lull the reader even faster to sleep.
Meanwhile, since I don't have a problem falling asleep myself, I'm going to pass this on to others who do. If you need help sleeping, pick this up and give it a try. I'd love to hear if it works for others.

[hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

everything is so incredibly boring

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was, without any doubt, a book that could put a lot of people to sleep. Some of the chapters were definitely belong to the most boring pieces of literature I've ever read category. There was even a chapter about types of bricks used in Great Britain! And two chapters about postal codes in various countries! Truly the most bizarre kind of trivia.

I did, however, find some parts of this book truly interesting or even funny. So I'd say that whether anyone enjoys reading "This Book Will Put You to Sleep" or not depends only on what a person likes learning about.

Besides, boring was precisely what this book was supposed to be so it'd be unfair to complain and give it one star.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impulse buy from a random section of books on a stairwell at Powell’s Books in Portland. Worth every cent of the $8 I spent. I enjoyed it way more than I should have, given what it is. Here’s a real story that happened, which will illustrate the point: a friend was at my house and saw it on my bedside table. He asked what it was, so I explained it’s a series of short essays about the most boring topics imaginable, designed specifically to put you to sleep. He picked it up, then gave me a look. “But you’ve folded down quite a few pages.” Yes, yes I have.

(An aside—yes, I dog-ear pages in my books. Frequently, and for many reasons, most of which I don’t remember later. I also purposely break book spines if I feel it is necessary to make the reading experience more enjoyable. You should keep this is mind if you plan to loan me a book. I try not to do these things to borrowed books, but I can’t promise anything. And save your indignation because I do not want to hear it.)

Back to this book. I will probably keep it next to my bed for a while, dipping back in now and then as insomnia strikes. Some of the essays are legitimately the most boring things of all time. But some are surprisingly funny. None are interesting, but that’s literally the whole point. It is officially a life goal of mine to write a version of this book at some point. It seems like so much fun. The most boring kind of fun. But still fun.

[AdamWho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have probably listened to this book 50 times in my attempts to fall asleep.

My only complaint is that narrator is just a little too interested and the material and his voice is not flat enough.

Because of this I have to listen to it extremely low volumes.

[Lauren Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars. Definitely put me to sleep every time I read it lol

[Replicant Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good helped a little..was witty actually

[Adam Nordmark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book was zzzzzzzzzzzz

[effazin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It lives up to it's claim to be boring. Unfortunately I found the format to be frequently irritating, rather than soothingly sophoric, as the articles went out of their way to be dull and uninformative. Putting lists--that fill more than an entire page--of people's names or place names that meet a specific criteria into paragraph format, is just a waste of reading material. I didn't think I'd be reading the telephone directory when I picked this book! The pity of it is that some of the articles could have been somewhat interesting if they had been presented better. It is quite possible to fall asleep reading dry, but well-written articles.

[Plipplopp · Rating 4 out of 5]

The jokes on me because I find random information about random shit absolutely fascinating and had trouble falling asleep ;)
And it also made me laugh a lot because I found the dryness, and the absolute peak of boringness of the language the articles were written in, funny. It sometimes made me giggle to think that someone had to reaaaally try to write as dully as possible and it just flipped over to amusing for me. The subjects of the articles were wideranging and I applaud the writers for their deepdives into them. I have no idea of the veracity of the facts in the articles but that is not the point of this book.

[Etienne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Obviously intent as a joke that book didn't please me at all. The article are made more than necessary boring, with very few actual content. I would have like it, if it has been dull but at least informative, but it was more like a teenagers essays who have nothing to say on any subject but try to stretch it so far to reach the minimum words requirement. Not good, not informative, not funny and I sleep just fine so nothing worth it for me! I wouldn't recommend it!

[Priscilla Arinze · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an okay book, there's some interesting topics discussed here, but I don't think it's a great book to fall asleep to. I wish there was less emphasis on the lengthy articles and more on the graphics/visuals that was periodically presented between a couple of topics; the graphics/visuals were nice to look at before bed. I preferred to read the articles anytime other than bedtime, which defeated the entire purpose of the book.

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the fact that this book works. I challenge anyone to read it at bedtime and see how far you get. Chapters like "The Political Crisis in Belgium, 2007-2011", "The Administrative Bureaucracy of the Byzantine Empire", "Recent Developments in the Taxonomy of Molluscs", "Railway Gauges, An Overview" "A Brief History of the Eyechart" will have you snoozing in no time. It makes for a long read, but falling off to a good sleep is worth it!

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found some of the random facts too interesting and ended up finishing the whole thing before I finally drifted off to sleep. Or I would find myself investing brain power in looking up words or fact checking… so for the purpose of making me sleep, it wasn’t great. But it still had some interesting knowledge!

[Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn’t put me to sleep. Unfortunately for the authors every time I just started to be bored the next article was about quantum physics or maths, which I’m interested in. I didn’t like the constant changing of topics too — the writers abandoned us readers in the tile store without explaining to us how to get back to our house afterwards.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly I'm easy to interest, so this book hasn't really put me to sleep. But I will say, this is some of the most pointless, most boring information I've ever seen, and I love it. It's the funniest thing to pull out to make people groan.

[Angela Romainger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to lull you to sleep. Will be buying hard copy as I feel that would enhance the experience.

[Angelina Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the content was actually quite interesting.

[Syamalan · Rating 4 out of 5]

not a single boring chapter which was unfortunate considering i really wanted to fall asleep on my road trip

[AJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure if it put me to sleep but it def made me avoid picking it up since the content felt so useless.

[Sean Jamison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually loved alot of the content, some ks specifically written to put you to sleep through repetitious writing but alot of the topics are actually fascinating

[Samantha Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humorous and boring. It does the job perfectly!

[Julianne Parent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kept falling alseep within 15 minutes. Really useful.

[Dennis Ferri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does exactly what it claims to do. The topics are so mind-numbingly boring (and yet occasionally unintentionally interesting) that you can't help but feel sleepy after reading just a page or two.

[Laura Merrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a bunch of short excerpts that are all very boring, with the intent of boring you until you fall asleep. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.