Get Sleepy: Sleep meditation and stories

As you pass by on the way to your seat, you notice there is a little branded book of matches at every place.

Shakespeare's Puck is the epitome of the hobgoblin, with the by-name of Robin Goodfellow.

In folk tradition, emphasis is perhaps most laid on Puck as a misleader.

She also noted that Robin was the best known and most often referred to of all the hobgoblins in England in the 16th and 17th centuries.

providing the perfect eerie backdrops for masterpieces such as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights or the hound of the baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Last night I saw Saint Elmo's stars with their glimmering lanterns all at play on the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars and I knew we should have foul weather today

at night the belated wanderer sees the fairy host dancing their rounds on many a green mead allured by the strange enchantment of the scene he draws near he enters the round if he ever reappears months years or even centuries have passed seeming but minutes to him but oftener he never returns and is known to be living on in fairy in the land of bliss

You trace your fingertips across the first books and papers you find an exploration of the anatomy of man, the mechanics of a static electric charge, understanding the mind, life and death, the possibility.

You trace your fingertips across the first books and papers you find an exploration of the anatomy of man, the mechanics of a static electric charge, understanding the mind, life and death, the possibility.

There's a guide to local flora and fauna, a page of recommended nature walks, and a tattered almanac that lists the sunrise and sunset times for the year, along with the moon phases every month.

Scanning the shelves you soon find that your intuition was right there's a volume dedicated to local plant lore.

These well-loved classics were first published in a book called Children's and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm.

Some people have even suggested that the explosion could be behind stories in the Book of Exodus, from the Old Testament of the Bible.

Today, Beaton is best known for her influential guide, Mrs. Beaton's Book of Household Management.

Mrs. Beaton's book of household management only came out a fortnight ago.

Bella doesn't know it yet, but the book will sell 60,000 copies in its very first year.

It's a heavy hardback, more than a thousand pages thick. To Bella, each page smells like hope and possibility.

Today, the book has sold in the millions.

I'm starting a brand new season on The Sleepy Bookshelf right now. This time I'll be reading Jill by E.A. Dilwin. This one is perfect for Pride Month and heralds a strong female adventurer as the protagonist.

My new audiobook, Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth, is an immersive journey through the mind of one of the most visionary thinkers of our time.

Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.

He was also responsible for the Athena Parthenos, the jewel of the Parthenon in ancient Athens.

Phidias, in fact, used the same techniques to build the goddess Athena and her father, Zeus.

Do you have the book? Do you have the book? Clementine asked. Do you have the book? Despite knowing the answer. Always. Michael nodded.

Book. Book.

Remember, he said to Michael. The book will help.

A small line of printed text spread across the top of one of its empty pages. It read, so you've made it. There is such a lot to explore. Take care of each other. And be sure to listen to Timothy. I'll be as helpful as I can.

And in the familiar storybook font, words appeared. Clementine read them out. Between shelf numbers 9 and 10, you will find a very helpful machine. It calls itself Thinkatron 2000. Have fun.

There is a stack of books here. You open one and begin to read a chapter about local wildlife while you sip your drink ever so slowly.

Turning the pages of your book, you become absorbed by the illustrations of the birds you saw on the beach today. Your mind is filled with descriptions, sandpipers, gulls and terns.

Closing the book, you run your fingers along the irregular edge of its heavy, green-coloured pages.

Each one was a how-to manual. How to make an English garden.

Some red books are still in existence, like the one made for the owners of Sundridge House in Kent.

In 1571, Elizabethan scholar Edmund Campion wrote two books of the histories of Ireland.

In those works, he made bold to suggest that the people he called the Wild Irish were known to eat something he termed shamroots.

He said that shamrocks were a food eaten as a last resort during times of famine in Ireland.

Anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts, crying out of their graves. They did eat of the carrions, and if they found a plot of watercress or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time. Yet not able long to continue therewithal.