wow... i may be "a day late (or 3) & a dollar short" buti have throw in my personal experience.
i DID read under the covers... but rarely, b/c i was NOT supposed to. i can say that b/c i vividly remember reading Gone With The Wind for the 1st time when i was 10 & i got so wrapped up in it i could not lay that big honkin' book down for long. and since i did (& still do) hate, w/ a passion, stopping in the middle of a paragraph... plus i was never sleepy @ bedtime (normal?) & so i snuck (sneaked?) a tiny light into bed w/ me. i even put it under the covers & got out of the bed to determine if you still see the the light. i mistakenly thought i was being slick here. well over an hour later my mother whipped the covers back simultainously scaring me half to death & she glared the glare that only a mother can glare. i thought i was in for it so i snapped off the lite, closed the book, gathered my covers and flopped back on the pillow. she stormed out w/o a word. leaving me to lay there w/ a heart beating like a jack-rabbit in my throat... waiting for her to return, which she didn't. she told me years later that when she saw the panniced, remorseful look on my face she didn't have the heart to punnish me. then when i was just a tad older she modified the reading-in-bed rules to my have a set bed-time, but not a "lights-out" time if i was reading... which i adored and still seem to hold to over 20 yrs later.
oh - p.s. i love your writing.

I haven't officially tabulated the votes, but I think I lose. The flashlights outnumber the no-flashlights.

Ha! Agreed. The only people I knew who read with a flashlight under the covers were people in books -- i.e., fictional people.

No flashlight user here--I think I may have tried it on car trips (I remember coming home from my grandparents one Christmas with the complete Chronicles of Narnia and doing the "read by passing headlights" trick), but I have always liked a good light when I read.

I did read by flashlight, but I have to admit I didn't do it for long. My mother caught me and put an old floor lamp by my bed (one of those black metal-rod lamps with a white shade with black squiggles on it, from the fifties, which was when this was!) She told me if I couldn't sleep, I should turn on the light and read, and not just lie there.

Great mom!!!

I'm afraid I didn't read with the flashlight either, but I did try to talk on the phone and watch Star Trek after bed time. That's not nearly as romantic sounding though!

I read by flashlight, not under the covers, but against the wall. I lay on my side and pointed the light to the wall. LUCKILY, my sister was afraid of the dark, so sometimes I just sat in the closet and read for hours. My mom knew, but she did not mind. She remembers me reading for hours.

It's true it's true! I read under the covers with a flashlight, for years it seemed. My bedtime came earlier than my desire to put the book down. I also remember in the summertime, my bedtime was before dark so I didn't need the flashlight. Instead I'd turn around in bed (the foot of the bed was right by a window) and lift the blind so I'd have enough fading light to read a little longer.