I love a book with a premise or story that I haven't seen done before. One that leaves me thinking about it months or years later.

I also love a book that's goofy fun, that doesn't break ground but brings you a smile.

I like really interesting characters, but also books where the characters barely matter at all.

I like compelling human characters, but also interesting alien species, but then again enjoyed books from the perspective of animals, and a book where most of the characters were simply inanimate objects that did nothing.

I can enjoy a descriptive book that lets me perfectly picture every building, landscape, and person. I also enjoy books that eschew all that to focus on actions.

I enjoy long series, stories that complete in a single book, books that are open-ended, and books that don't finish but wrap around to the beginning and keep going.

It would be pretty limiting if I only wanted to read a book with one of those attributes. I'd miss out on so many great stories that had a different style of telling them. I can't pick anything I need in a book without eliminating some of the best books I've read.

Reading takes some mental effort. If you're already sleepy, then it's going to be more tiring on top of it. Like running a marathon then climbing a hill after.

Sometimes I read before bed, sometimes during the day. Sometimes I can barely keep my eyes open, sometimes I can stay up all night eager to finish a book.

It doesn't really change my sleep when it happens. I just don't try to force reading when tired, no matter the time of day.

I imagine that if I wasn't tired yet and was reading, eventually I'd get tired in the same way that if I wasn't tired yet, and kept laying in bed with my eyes closed, eventually I'd get tired.

List of things this will accomplish:

After reading The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, I didn't pick up another book for years. Other books felt so simple, straightforward, and shallow by comparison. Reading became a hollow experience. I thought that I wouldn't ever again find another book on that level, that my reading hobby had peaked and it was all downhill from there.

And that's been true. I've since read many books and enjoyed them, but nothing comes close to that experience, and I doubt anything will. I'd love nothing more to be wrong here though!

XX instilled a new fear in me of my brain being hijacked/used as a reproduction organ for ideas that then spread to other people and continue to reproduce.

It makes it deeply uncomfortable to recommend that amazing book, because you have a fear that you're doing exactly what it wants you to do so it can propagate.

The book itself is meta enough that it already breaches the wall between story and the real world. So it feels like a more real phenomenon than it otherwise would if it was strictly self-contained.