“I like to read myself awake.”

“I like to read myself awake” is Harry S. Truman’s brief, wry answer to a question about whether he read himself to sleep. Its reversal of the expected phrase captures not merely a reading habit but the way books remained an active part of his daily life in old age.

The Remark and Its Occasion

The line was spoken when Ken McCormick of Doubleday visited Truman early one morning at his hotel. Truman was sitting in a bedroom chair, with several new books stacked on a nearby table. Asked whether he liked to read himself to sleep at night, he answered, “No, young man, I like to read myself awake.” The wording preserves the exchange’s light turn: reading is not a prelude to sleep but a way into wakefulness.

A Practice That Continued at Home

The remark accords with the account of Truman’s later life in Independence. His books increasingly occupied his days, and passersby on Truman Road could see him in the window, reading beneath a lamp. The hotel stack of new books and the familiar chair at home give the phrase two complementary settings: a moment of conversation and a settled daily practice.

Meaning and Limits

The line is memorable because its compact reversal makes a familiar habit sound newly exact. It presents reading as something that sustains alertness, while the surrounding account grounds the wit in concrete details: books close at hand, a chair, and a reading lamp. It does not explain what Truman read on that particular morning or claim that books alone defined him; its force lies in the precise, lightly humorous description of a habit that endured.