Reading at two in the morning without waking the house

A surprising number of the people who write to me read at night. Night shift, new baby, a partner who sleeps light, or the plain old kind of awake that will not take no for an answer. The Cold City is a two-in-the-morning series, so it seems fair to say something useful about two in the morning.

There are three problems. Light, sound, and tomorrow.

Light

A phone is the worst thing to read on in a dark room and the one most of us reach for. It is a backlight shining straight at your eyes, blue-heavy, and even on its dimmest setting it lights up the wall behind you. A bedside lamp is better for your eyes and worse for whoever is next to you.

The thing that solves it is a front-lit e-reader turned down low with the warm light up. Front-lit means the light shines across the page, not out of it, so almost nothing spills into the room. The Kindle Paperwhite has an adjustable warm light and a dark mode, white text on a black page, which at the lowest brightness is close to invisible from the other side of the bed. Set the font a size larger than you think you need. Tired eyes want big type.

If you read paper, a clip-on light with a warm setting, clipped to the cover and aimed at the page rather than the room, does most of the same work. They are cheap, and the warm setting matters more than the brand.

Sound

If your eyes are done but you are not, listen instead. One earbud, low volume, and a sleep timer if your app has one, so the narrator stops when you do and you are not hunting for your place the next night. Books One and Two of The Cold City are in audio on ElevenReader; the links are here.

Tomorrow

The real cost of night reading is paid the next day, so stop at a place that lets you stop. The Cold City chapters alternate between the two leads, and every chapter ends at a turn, which was a choice: a chapter break is a door you can close. Decide before you open the book how many doors you will go through, and then, when you reach the last one, actually close it. I say this as someone who has failed at it many times.

What I would not bother with

Blue-light glasses over a bright screen, which treat the symptom. Reading apps that promise to speed you up, which are the opposite of what the hour is for. Anything that needs a charger beside the bed and a cable you will trip on at three.

The quiet version: a front-lit reader turned low and warm, one earbud when your eyes give out, and a chapter count you agreed with yourself in advance. That is the whole kit.