Clara’s Verdict
The premise is disarmingly simple: write the most boring audiobook ever published, sell it as a sleep aid, and trust that the listener’s brain will do the rest. Professor K. McCoy and Dr Hardwick have executed this concept with a deadpan commitment that is, paradoxically, rather brilliant. This Audiobook Will Send You to Sleep is the publishing world’s most honest product: it tells you precisely what it intends to do and then does it. That it also manages to be quietly hilarious — the chapter on railway gauges is a minor masterpiece of studied tedium — is either a flaw or a bonus, depending on your relationship with insomnia.
Published by Penguin Audio in 2018 and running to 8 hours and 40 minutes, this is one of those rare audiobooks that has found its audience almost by accident and held onto them through sheer usefulness. My only complaint is that I kept waking myself up laughing.
About the Audiobook
The conceit of This Audiobook Will Send You to Sleep is stated without equivocation in the title and the opening pages: this is not an audiobook designed to entertain, inform, or inspire. It makes, in the authors’ own words, “no claims to be fun or interesting.” What it promises instead is a carefully curated selection of topics guaranteed to produce zero mental stimulation: the political crisis in Belgium between 2007 and 2011, the growth pattern of holly, an overview of railway gauges, a summary of the administrative bureaucracy of the Byzantine Empire, and detailed instructions for constructing a collapsible music stand.
The genius of the book is that these subjects are presented with the earnest thoroughness of a very conscientious academic — no jokes, no irony, no attempt to make the material interesting. The effect, for most listeners, is profound drowsiness within minutes. A soothing soundscape is included to assist the process. The book has been endorsed by Leland Carlson, Assistant Vice President of the Dull Men’s Club, who calls it “the indispensable bedside classic” — which is either a genuine testimonial or the best piece of comic blurb-writing in recent publishing history.
The Narration
Bruce Alexander provides the narration, and his contribution to the book’s success cannot be overstated. Alexander’s voice — resonant, measured, utterly unexcited — is perfectly calibrated for the material. He delivers the most stupefying content imaginable with the gentle authority of a very kind, very tired schoolteacher, and the effect is hypnotic in the most literal sense. There is real craft in sounding this deliberately monotonous without tipping into parody. Alexander walks the line with remarkable precision, and the result is eight hours of audio that genuinely functions as advertised. The accompanying soundscape adds a further layer of soporific texture.
What Readers Say
The audiobook holds an impressive rating of 4.6 out of 5 from 40 listeners on Audible UK, which is remarkable given that the ideal outcome involves falling asleep before finishing it. Reviewer cflash awarded five stars and reported being asleep within ten minutes: “Stunningly boring — hilarious at points — but has not disappointed. Absolutely recommend for ANYONE struggling to sleep.” Emily Macdonald offered an interesting counterpoint, noting that it “turns the most mundane into hysterical” — suggesting the book works equally well as comedy. One reviewer found it more useful for relaxation than actual sleep and suggested a title change, which is perhaps the most reasonable criticism a sleep-aid audiobook has ever received.
Who Should Listen?
Anyone who has lain awake at 2am with a racing mind and found conventional meditation apps either too earnest or too demanding. Shift workers, anxious sleepers, parents of young children, insomniacs of all varieties. It will also appeal to lovers of dry British humour who enjoy the joke as much as the function — the comedy and the utility are not mutually exclusive here. Given the runtime of nearly nine hours, there is no danger of running out of material on a particularly bad night.
It is worth noting that This Audiobook Will Send You to Sleep has something interesting to say about the nature of attention and boredom that most listeners will never consciously register — precisely because they will be asleep before they can articulate it. The book’s subjects are not randomly chosen: they are selected for their total lack of narrative tension, emotional stakes or human drama. In stripping away everything that makes a book interesting, McCoy and Hardwick inadvertently illuminate what those things actually are, and why their absence is so reliably soporific. It is, in its own peculiar way, a rather elegant piece of conceptual art.
Listen to This Audiobook Will Send You to Sleep on Audible UK — quite possibly the most practically useful audiobook you will ever not finish.
