A little sleep

The siesta is an imperative, says Thierry Paquot, a Professor of Architecture at Paris-la-Deense in his waking hours. In this little book, he presents a thoroughly, froggily intellectualised case for one of the greatest and most harmless of all human pleasures.

He doesn't mention the statistics that prove that passing out in the afternoon does more for your life-expectancy than almost anything else. He even shies away from the suggestion that a rest is time-efficient, returning the sleeper to work with more concentration.

His case is purely voluptuous. The siesta, he says, is "truly free time, belonging to no one but the person who takes it. It is a moment, no matter how long or how short, where one is 'placed in the presence of oneself' through a momentary absence from the world." He admits that "urbanisation, together with the new geography it creates, often renders the siesta impossible," but he won't admit defeat. We can still "adapt our temporality", he says, slow down, if we can't stop.

"Don't put off until tomorrow the siesta you can take today," he urges. This is a charming volume - though hardly necessary to those of us already convinced that no time is better spent than time asleep; those of us to whom the loss of consciousness was never any great loss.