tea_and_reading's review

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hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

I grew up with insomnia and used to have a huge amount of trouble falling asleep. I would dread going to sleep and it always felt like a battle. Eventually, I just stopped worrying about not being able to fall asleep and simply accepted that I was going to get the amount of sleep that I would get. I started to feel much better after sleeping but I always suspected I was still actually getting the same amount of sleep, and just was less stressed out. This book confirmed my experience and reassured me that what I unknowingly did was change my mentality in a way that is supported by CBT-I. This book also had a lot of useful tips that I am working on implementing to continue to improve my sleep health. 

souce's review

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5.0

best book I’ve ever read for sleep and insomnia! bought it to reference forever

nicolenhart's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

3.0

ritchelle's review

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informative

3.5

bgg0823's review

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hopeful informative

4.0

elisebrancheau's review against another edition

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Audiobook had to be returned to library

jtrain1342's review

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hopeful informative inspiring relaxing fast-paced

5.0

This book is basically a primer and instruction manual on CBT-I and the sorts of techniques you can use yourself if you don't have a sleep therapist available to you (apparently this is a real thing but there are very few!). I actually don't have insomnia at all, but in the past I have been prone to insomnia and also sleep deprivation (apparently these are different things!) so I thought I would read this book to see if it had good advice for sleeping better. To be honest, since I haven't applied them, I'm not sure if it actually works, but it made a lot of sense to me and was fascinating to learn about.

To me it was so interesting how most of the advice in the book went contrary to the popular beliefs about improving sleep. Which of course, I have tried, and in general find pretty unhelpful. Wu talks about how fixing insomnia is actually not at all about getting more sleep, but changing one's attitude towards sleep, misattributing tiredness to lack of sleep, correcting misunderstandings of common sleep hygiene advice, these sorts of things. It's fascinating, and even if you don't generally have problems with sleep, I recommend this book to understand sleep a little better.

The one thing I didn't like about this book, and which REALLY irritated me and pulled me out of the book every time it came up was the footnotes style. Instead of using numbers, which is the convention as far as my understanding goes, they used a sequence of symbols starting with * that would reset its order each page. This is a petty thing, and I know it isn't a very big deal, but it was so bizarre to me, and also a little confusing to be honest. Maybe this is a convention in some formatting style, but it is not one I have ever, EVER, seen. This is probably more on the publisher than it is the writer, though. And I think most people would not have as much of a problem with this as I did.

Overall, this was a really interesting book about how we sleep and how to sleep better. I highly recommend it, even if you don't have sleep problems!

taylor515's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

4.0

katrinadalythompson's review

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hopeful informative fast-paced

4.0

sunshineandstacks's review against another edition

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medium-paced

5.0