I have been reading on my phone before falling asleep for many years now. I use an app with amoled black background and yellowish peach font colour. I haven’t felt any eye strain or difficulty with sleep.
Yeah, I’m with you on this. My phone has been my primary reading device for years now. It’s the major driver when I make decisions on what phone to buy. I love reading on it and I’ve never had any problems falling asleep.
Since your Kindle doesn’t have a backlight (and especially the warm light), any difference really depends on the other lighting you are using. A dim, warm house lamp is probably better for sleep hygiene than the phone even with it changing its color temperature. If you have no problem falling asleep with either one then I don’t think it matters much.
I listen to audiobooks while falling asleep. Best of both worlds. You’re not “wasting time” waiting to fall asleep, and you’re reading. And if you fall asleep while reading, all the better! Just jump back to what you last remember tomorrow.
I’ll say that this works best with books I’ve already read.
Sometimes I deliberately put on a book I didn’t enjoy if the book I’m reading is keeping me up from being too engaging.
I prefer text-to-speech to narration, though. I find human speech too hard to understand at high playback speeds with various vocal inconsistencies, like different character voices. And low playback speeds don’t keep my ADHD attention, so my mind wanders and I get frustrated when I tune back in and have no idea what’s happening.
I like Moon+ Reader Pro the best, just using the default old Google voice.
FBReader is also pretty good, and the free version allows plugins, which allows you to add the free TTS plugin. (Integrated TTS is in the paid version of FBReader.)
I also use Android’s TalkBack mode with Kindle. It works well, since it auto turns pages for you. It needs to read whole pages at a time, so it’s a bit of a pain re-reading things if you get interrupted. (Reduce the number of words per page to mitigate this.) It also puts a beep in each time the page turns (so don’t reduce the words per page too low.) And it only keeps taking while you’re screen is on, so it uses a lot more battery and will mess up your playback if the screen is touched. (Increase your screen on time in display settings so it reads for up to half an hour without touching the screen, or use Google Maps navigation overlay or some other method to force the screen to stay on indefinitely, if desired.)
I prefer a more monotone/robotic sounding voice for maximum consistency and to allow me to interpret tone, but there are lots of other TTS Engine options that can easily be added to Android if you prefer more natural sounding voices. That said, most have a much reduced maximum speed compared to Google’s TTS option, so you might find other engines limiting once you get used to TTS if are looking to speed things up.
If anyone knows of a TTS with a faster maximum speed than Google’s TTS, I would love to hear about it. I haven’t found any faster ones in my searching, but there shouldn’t be any technical reason why faster isn’t possible.
I read every single night on my phone with a black screen and white letters. It helps me to fall asleep every single night. I usually only get about halfway through a chapter before I pass out with my phone in my hand. Really It’s just up to how it affects you.
I think it depends on if you feel it’s keeping you up or causing eye strain. I find a backlit Kindle has a decent amount of brightness and is easy on the eyes.
Using an iPhone I’d be more worried about distractions than anything else
I’ve been reading on an iPad mini for years, dark mode, and I have no complaints, never had any sleeping issues. For me the e-ink reader really shines at the beach, irreplaceable there.
I hadn’t thought about it, but it sounds like a fun idea, so I’ve checked out The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, a horror classic that’s been on my to-read list for a while: “a collection of spine-tingling horror stories that are woven together by a fictional play called The King in Yellow.”
It’s kinda spooky-adjacent, but I really want to reread The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter before the month is up. I really love her interpretations of old fairy tales, plus the title story is a riff on Bluebeard and it’s just chef’s kiss.
Shelley Jackson is also so so good. Her other big one, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is really well paced and full of surprises. It’s also really weirdly sweet!
100 per cent agree with this! The book is so knotty and interesting, there’s all these ways you can read into it that the popular understanding, and all the media, just do not engage with.
I never really read horror. I did enjoy A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay when I read it. If you want very quick reads, the Level 26 trilogy, while far from being amazing, is a nice distraction.
Some of my friends are doing the Dracula Daily newsletter this year, where it emails you the chapters as they happen in real time. Pretty cool idea and they’ve really enjoyed it!
I liked Dr. Sleep more than I thought I was going to! I thought it worked as a follow up to The Shining, but still had a lot of original stuff going on, too.
Literature
Newest