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I love to read. Always have. It started with the Hardy Boys in the fourth grade and it worked up from there.

I'm not a casual reader though. I have my standards. The bad books I close and drop to the floor if they reach my dullness marker. If nothing's grabbed me by page 30, nothing's going to. My rule, and I stick by it. My floor deals with the consequences.

I always have a pile of partly read books dusting the floor under my bed. I routinely pick them up every July 1, wrap them in leftover paper that says Happy Birthday and give them to my relatives as Christmas presents. Usually with a handshake and a glass of rum-spiked eggnog. Traditions are important.

The good books, these are different. These I keep. I read them cover-to-cover and love the idea of falling into an uninterrupted hour of reading, usually at night when I'm lying in bed.

But I'm ashamed to admit this isn't what happens.

Within 10 minutes of picking up from the bookmark of a good book, I'm asleep. A really good book? Five minutes. A Nobel Prize winner? After the caption on the back flap, under the author's picture.

I thought it was just me, but it's not. The more people I have talked to about this problem, the more people have quietly confessed that they too suffer this same affliction. It's quite scary. Adult attention-deficit disorder is what the first entry I looked up on the Web called it. I could take an online test, which I didn't, already convinced I had adult ADD and was doomed to a life of falling asleep reading.

Seems there are many of us bedders (so named because that seems to be the reading place of choice for us) who can't get past page 1 without dropping off and counting sheep. It's embarrassing — I've fallen asleep to some of the greatest books ever written.

It took me nearly a year to read Anna Karenina with Oprah's Book Club. Not because it's dull. I loved the book. I loved the idea of belonging to a group that never saw me. Couldn't wait to pick up Tolstoy each night, and be out cold within 10 minutes, the light still on, my finger pointing at page 151. Six nights went by before I got past that page.

The thing is, when I think about it, I owe many rested nights to Tolstoy. That was when I recognized the true blessing of my hardship.

Forget Sealy. Save your money on Serta, on Simmons and on Tempur-Pedic. Want a good night's sleep? Start with Tolstoy. Then on to Camus — great writer. The Stranger — couldn't find a better book. Bet you don't get past the third sentence. Don't ask me about Don Quixote. I'm getting sleepy just typing the name.

Got kids? Start them reading early. This is the beautiful side effect of reading to your children: It makes them sleepy.

My 10-year-old daughter, Ally, loves to be read to at night. Nothing calms a day quicker than reading on the bed with dad. I'm not alone in this thought either. Many kid-lit authors help in the crusade. They have kids too. They know the issue. Just look at the titles of popular children's books: Goodnight Moon, The Goodnight Train, How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?, Goodnight Lulu, Goodnight, Me.

Why do you think they wrote these in the first place? It's not a conspiracy, more a quiet revolution. Reading to your child in bed helps put them to sleep.

First-time parents don't get this. They read the studies and search the blogs and settle on the developmental importance of reading to their child. And they love to explain this to you, proudly, with great conviction, charts, statistics and laser pointers. Then they get frustrated when junior conks out by page 2.

My goodness, they say. Whatever will we do? Junior hates reading!

Distraught, they rush to the bookstore and charge the 10 best children's books ever written. And then the horror as junior still turns to Jell-O after page 3.

Baby Einstein? Give me a break. Ever read about Einstein's dreams? Bet you the man hid cases of pulp fiction in his bookshelves. My youngest son, I read him a pop can until he was 2. He's 16 now and hasn't come up with any revolutionary theories, but he can tell you exactly how many grams of sugar are in a can of root beer. We celebrate all achievements in my home, regardless of size.

One recent weekend, Ally asked me if we could go to the library. She picked three books, all of them about horses. I watched her stretch out on her bed, knees bent, feet in the air, reading away a Sunday afternoon. Within minutes her eyes were closed, the book still in her hands. Tradition carries on. So do genetics.

And the book? Black Beauty. That one's a keeper.

Ken Dafoe lives in Cambridge, Ont.