Do you sleep well? I love talking about sleep and it's been a few months since I last read a book about one of my favourite non fiction topics. It was great timing then when a copy of Nodding Off - The Science of Sleep by Professor Alice Gregory arrived in the mailbox, and I decided to pick it up for the Non Fiction November reading challenge.

The author approaches sleep by breaking it down by age, beginning with babies, children and teenagers, moving on to adults and new parents and finishing up with older adults together with some hints and tips.

In this manner, the author touches on a number of interesting topics along the way like sleepwalking, restless leg syndrome, teeth grinding and night terrors etc. however they weren't covered in any great detail.

Where Splitting by Amanda Ellison went into considerable medical detail to the point of being too scientific for this reader, Nodding Off was the opposite. It touched on fascinating topics like sleep paralysis and exploding head syndrome, but didn't provide enough information, leading me to put the book down and search elsewhere in order to satisfy my curiosity.

Regular Carpe Librum readers will know one of my favourite sleep topics is the fact that human beings used to sleep twice in one night, experiencing a period of wakefulness between the first and the second sleep. I was surprised - and pleased - to see Alice Gregory quoting from one of my favourite books At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime by A. Roger Ekirch when discussing this topic. But given she's an expert in the field of sleep and has been researching sleep for almost twenty years, I was disappointed she didn't have anything further to add on the phenomenon.

Nodding Off - The Science of Sleep by Alice Gregory is recommended for readers new to the topic of sleep and those seeking a general overview about that which is crucial to our health and well-being, sleep. Do you sleep well?

* Copy courtesy of Bloomsbury * ( )

Nodding Off covers the Science of Sleep over the whole gamut of sleep situations. It talks about different disorders, why babies sleep terribly, why teenagers need so much sleep, and how your sleep evolves over the years. Sleep is important, but we still don’t quite know the reason why. All we have are hypotheses and theories that a lot of researchers agree upon. The author Alice Gregory is very British. As an American, I don't know how I feel about terms like 'nappy.' Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other British slang she uses in the book. I enjoyed it quite a bit and found it to be very relatable. ( )