Textbook Sleep

Jim Nolan
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Health & Fitness

Fall asleep to the world's dullest textbooks, read aloud. jimnolan1.substack.com

  1. 17h ago

    Textbook Sleep #54: Jane Austen, Teenage Historian

    Jane Austen, teenage historian? Yup. Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. This episode finds us listening to Austen’s History of England, From the Reign of Henry the 4th to the Death of Charles the First, By A Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian. Okay, it’s not meant to be a typical history. Wikipedia explains, “Austen mockingly imitates the style of textbook histories of English monarchs, while ridiculing historians' pretensions to objectivity.” Anything Austen writes is filled with her humor and whimsy. That said, I hope my reading of it will nudge you into unconsciousness. It was written in 1791, when Austen was just 15, but not published until 1922. It was dedicated to her older sister Cassandra, who provided 13 illustrations for it. My gratitude to Project Gutenberg for the text. Let us ring the official Textbook Sleep bell three times, to celebrate this timeless sisterly collaboration. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 1

    Textbook Sleep #53: Psychology of the Stock Market

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. In this episode we’ll read aloud selections from Psychology of the Stock Market by G. C. Selden, published by Ticker Publishing Company in 1912. Subjects may include “The Speculative Cycle,” “The Panic and the Boom,” and a chapter mysteriously titled, “They”—“They” being put in quotation marks. As human nature has not changed terribly much since 1912, some or even most of Selden’s opinions may still be valid. But more than that, they will be boring. Really, really boring. Which is what Textbook Sleep is all about: Rediscovering yesterday’s dullest writing to make modern listeners fall fast asleep. My gratitude to Project Gutenberg for the text. Let’s ring the Textbook Sleep bells three times, in a salute to the opening and closing bell of New York Stock Exchange. May our investment in a sound night’s sleep ever appreciate over time. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Sep 24

    Textbook Sleep #52: French Painting

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. In this episode we again explore A Text-Book of the History of Painting by John C. Van Dyke, first published in 1894. This time, we’ll be reading about painting in 19th-century France. I don’t need to tell you that this is one of the most glorious centuries of painting ever and many of the big names—Manet, Degas, Cassatt, Monet—were working in France. So this should be an interesting listen, no? No. It is going to be deadly boring. Struggle to stay awake as much as you like—perhaps you hope to hear why Professor Van Dyke thinks every painter is an impressionist—but my aging, dulcet tones will eventually lull you to unconsciousness. My gratitude to Project Gutenberg for the text. Now we ring the Textbook Sleep bells three times, no more, no less, to clear our minds of any and all local concerns. And then we travel to France, first class. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Sep 17

    Textbook Sleep #51: The History of Painting

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. In this episode we’ll explore A Text-Book of the History of Painting by John C. Van Dyke, first published in 1894 by Longmans, Green, and Company. How can the history of painting be boring, you may wonder. In the right writer’s hands, anything is possible. In fairness to Van Dyke, he purposely keeps his opinions short. He is covering a lot of ground and has no time for much more than the facts. We begin with Egyptian painting and then skip ahead to the Italian Renaissance, which may turn into something interesting—but don’t worry, you’ll be asleep by the time we leave the nineteenth dynasty. My gratitude to Project Gutenberg for the text. Let’s ring the official Textbook Sleep bells and take a trip along the Nile. It’s nighttime, and we drift slowly towards Thebes upon a royal pleasure barge, cooled by a gentle desert breeze. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 10

    Textbook Sleep #50: Whole Lotta Hegel

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past 49 episodes, it’s that Hegel is the touchstone, the sine qua non, the alpha and the omega of aural sleep inducement. His writing is so powerful a soporific, it should be regulated by the FDA. It wouldn’t surprise me if ultimately it does come under the FDA’s purview: To listen to Hegel, you will need a prescription from your doctor. For now, we remain “over the counter,” so to speak. To mark our 50th Textbook Sleep, we’re going to try something a little different: Combining past Hegel episodes into one longer-than-usual snooze fest, a cornucopia of Hegel that overflows with dullness of the highest order. Yet, while it releases you into sweet slumber, it’s a punishment to read it. But this is the path I have chosen, as if wearing a hair shirt is something somehow valuable, a service to those who long for the sleep that only listening to Hegel can provide. My gratitude to Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive for the texts. Let’s ring the bells to announce a long sleep filled with only blissful dreams. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Sep 3

    Textbook Sleep #49: Night of the Hegel

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. Tonight, we return to the thorny thickets of Hegel—this time, The Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807. For all I can tell, the entire book is one big put-on, a practical joke on philosophy students that makes no sense at all, a jumble of random words and sentences thrown together after a few too many brandies on cold Berlin evenings. Is “phenomenology” even a word? According to the dictionary, it is: “how things appear to our minds and how we perceive the world, rather than trying to explain the objective physical causes behind those things.” Already, I’m lost. Fortunately, it is not a book on a class syllabus. Not a book I need to underline, to write a 12-page paper on, to feign interest in during class discussions, to stay up late at night reading with angry tears, regretting the path I have chosen in life that requires me to study the “untenable dualisms common in modern philosophy.” No, tonight it is as it should be: a book to fall asleep to. Thank you Internet Archive for the text. Now let’s ring the bells, to prepare our minds not for “forms of consciousness,” but unconsciousness. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Aug 27

    Textbook Sleep #48: The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. Tonight it’s The Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau. Don’t get excited by the word “confessions.” If like me you were expecting a big tell-all about 18th-century shenanigans, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Rousseau did, however, break some teeth off a comb as a child, and then lied about it. This “confession” ought to give you some idea of how stultifying this book is to hear aloud. Not to mention, to read aloud. I will do my heroic best to stay awake. But I fully expect to fail this time. I’ve come perilously close before—Hegel was touch and go. You, however, may be asleep after the first syllable I read, that’s the powerful sedative effect of Rousseau. Your gastroenterologist could read you a sentence or two immediately before your colonoscopy and avoid all those drugs: “Count backwards from 10.” “T…” Thank you Project Gutenberg for the text. Now it’s time for the bells, whose gently radiating sound waves will clear your mind of any and all impediments to sleep. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Aug 20

    Textbook Sleep #47: Sleepy Spinoza

    Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep. Fortunately for sleep lovers, it’s Ethics by Baruch Spinoza, Part III, on the origin and nature of emotions. Oh, it’s dull. Wonderfully dull. Intensely dull. We will hear the word “postulates” bandied about. I admit that I am not entirely sure what they are, but I may have had a case of infected postulates as a teenager. In Joy in the Morning, a Jeeves and Wooster book, Jeeves asks Bertie to pick up “a new and authoritatively annotated edition of the works of the philosopher Spinoza.” Jeeves is often found reading Spinoza. But here’s the thing: Jeeves has a giant brain. My brain, however, is sized like Bertie’s. That said, Spinoza serves us well for our purpose here, which is not enlightenment but sleep. Thank you to Project Gutenberg for the text. And thank you to Eric Barker for the blog post on Spinoza, “How to Stay Happy: 4 Tips from History’s Happiest Philosopher,” which is not boring at all. Now, the bells. What a world of sleepiness their harmony foretells!, to misquote Poe. This recording will end quietly. Get full access to Pieces of Jim at jimnolan1.substack.com/subscribe

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Fall asleep to the world's dullest textbooks, read aloud. jimnolan1.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Jim Nolan
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    54
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jim Nolan
  • Show Website
    Textbook Sleep