When I have time, I like to run, and I like to read. The former, what with changing in and out of running gear, cleaning up, and so on, requires larger stretches of time, which tend to be most available on weekends. Reading I can fit into bus rides or comparably short periods, but again, the time for serious reading is more available on weekends.
Running leaves me for a while a bit tired for reading. This was the case forty years ago, when the distances and speeds were greater, it is the case now. A slumped posture, as on a couch, brings sleep on quickly. Reading at a table, with better posture, may or may not defer it. The matter read makes little difference: history, philosophy, poetry can all make me drowse.
Robert Lowell wrote the poem Falling Asleep over the Aeneid, not as of an experience of his own, but in the voice of an old man in Concord, Massachusetts. My copy of The Mills of the Kavanaughs is misplaced, probably lost, but the Poetry Foundation kindly makes the poem available. Probably I have fallen asleep over the Aeneid, but certainly my dreams would not have been so colorful or learned.
I am very jealous. My husband also can fall asleep on the sofa over a book. I chase sleep but usually it eludes me
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