May cause drowsiness
July 29th, 2003
Instead of concentrating on reading during my train journey today, I (rather self referentially) found myself thinking about how hard it is to concentrate on non-fiction when I’m tired. Text-books and New Scientist magazine are both train journey staples for me, but when I’m tired I find that by the end of a paragraph I’ve often completely failed to retain any of it.
Under similar circumstances if I wasn’t concentrating whilst, say, Lara was talking to me (as often seems to happen) the phrase "in one ear and out the other" would be totally appropriate.
It occurred to me that the equivalent for text read off the page would be "in one eye and out the other", and although the phrase isn’t in popular use I rather like the sound of it.
As a side question, does anyone know why fiction is less of a soporific than non-fiction?