Time slows down for a deeper intimacy with nature, and through Chris’s writing we hear every rustle of a leaf, every call of a bird. He widens the power of our imagination, heightening our senses and revealing beauty in the smallest details.

If you’re interested in taking this one, you can find the detailed route, map, photos, and video on my blog post about a Spitalfields walking tour. There was also Thomas De Quincey, whose “opium-tinctured nightwalks” helped to produce his characteristically digressive prose style, with its “drifting, shifting metaphors and its unpredictable accretion of clauses”, which “mimics the city’s labyrinthine logic, its unnerving transitions from one social identity to another, its dead ends and its sudden openings”.This ended up being rather surprising. First, I really struggled to get going with this book. I wasn’t sure that I was going to enjoy it. It also took me a week to read, which for me is rather a long time given the size of the book. However I think that in the end, reading this book slowly is what made me enjoy it more. It let me think, it let me soak it all up. Another of my favorite London night walks is in Covent Garden. One of the most colorful central London areas, this part of the city is famous for its covered piazza, markets, shops, and restaurants.

I found the multitude of themes running through Night Waking really interesting - motherhood, dysfunctional families, post-natal depression, the division of work and home - but I didn't really feel like Moss really ran with any one of these topics. There would be moments of brilliance dotted throughout, but then she wouldn't really take those strains of interest anywhere, and I just felt the story crumpling around me. I still don't really see the point of the story overall. Another of my favorite London night walks is one in the area around London Bridge. This part of the city is for you if you enjoy history, food, and riverside scenery in equal measure. Book number 4 in my ongoing 'Moss-athon' of all of her books, and like all the previous ones, a 4.5 rating from me. - although it DID take me a rather unconscionably long time (10 days!) to read it; but that was rather the fault of family holiday guests, rather than any deficiencies in the book itself. The narrator here is delightful company, and this is the first of the Moss books I've read to contain a great deal of humour.

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If you’re up for doing this, you can find the route, map, phoots, and video on my London Bridge walk blog post. Moving to a global scale, what would I pawn for sleep? Would I, given the choice, have peace for Palestine or twelve hours in bed? Clean water for the children of Africa or a week off motherhood? The advent of carbon-neutral industrial processes or a month's unbroken nights? It's a good thing Satan doesn't come and chat to the mothers of sleepless toddlers in the middle of the night."