At the time I first drafted this review, I was only about a quarter of the way through this book, having just finished Part 1, This Thing Called Sleep.
I was initially a tad underwhelmed. But as I read more, Walker’s enthusiasm for and deep knowledge about sleep won me round. And I really like his very readable unpretentious writing style. The understated eloquence might be part of why this is proving to be a grower.
I myself have had very varied patterns of sleep over the years. And what Walker is saying is both enlightening and salutory. And, rather sadly – a situation Walker frequently laments – our society seems very much out of kilter with our deeply ingrained needs, and evolutionarily embedded behaviours.
This doesn’t surprise me in the least. We can just add sleep to an ever-growing list of things modern life misprizes, mishandles, and indeed downright abuses. And a failure of understanding, of basic comprehension even, is fundamental to this self- or socio-inflicted harm.
Anyway, I’m now returning to and finishing this review having finished the book nigh on two weeks ago. All told it’s a superb book. And I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It has so much to tell us that we all really ought to know.
And, right at the end, it has a list of ways to improve your own sleep habits. The first and, so Walker says, the most important, is to have a regular routine: go to bed and get up at the same time everyday, even the weekends. Get eight hours sleep every night.
For those of us who suffer difficulties sleeping – my wife is the exact opposite, a champion sleeper! – Walker’s frequent recitations of the damage sleep loss causes is pretty scary. Ironically the kind of anxiety inducing stuff that might well cause further sleepless nights. And our ideas of catching up on sleep are ill-founded. More part of the problem, not the solution.
Walker has some almost evangelical aspirations, regarding how sleep and knowledge of its benefits can improve both individual lives, societies at large, and pretty much the whole world! Sometimes at these moments he comes across, to me at least, as a little out of touch with the harsh realities of modern human life. As a top flight academic, fêted by almost everyone, including academia, big corporations and sporting organisations, he sometimes seems to me to be fooled into thinking out current hyper-capitalist culture is sustainable.
Whilst I love his positivity and enthusiasm, my cynical side says we’re more likely to self-destruct than choose a wiser path, as a species. I don’t believe our current socio-cultural m.o. is sustainable. And Walker’s own mountains of evidence, regarding the global ‘pandemic’ of sleep deprivation, is part of the compelling evidence for this.
Anyway, putting my pessimism aside momentarily, if this book, or at least the information it contains, were to become part of a core-curriculum in education, perhaps modern humanity might stand something a tad better than a snowflake’s chance in hell (that phrase chimes with current zeitgeist concerns!) of recognising the value of sleep, and restoring it to its rightful place in our lives?
As the poet (?) said…