Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris

The demon of acedia--also called the noonday demon--is the one that causes the most trouble of all...he strikes during the heat of the day, you are hungry and fatigued, and open to the suggestion that commitment to work, your dream, your passion, your meditation is not worth the effort. Nothing is worth the effort and the demon laughs and mocks you for ever thinking anything ever was. You lay down and struggle to get back up. This demon certainly lives in my head, but I think it is a universal element of the human brain. Kathleen is in the end way too "religious" for me, that she suffers from acedia (and depression) rolls off of every page. I really hopes she finds her peace. 

I consider this book a starting point for a major research project as I need more secular scientific answers and thanks to Ms. Norris I have plenty of places to look. For the record this book is way more about her writing life than it is about her reading life. 

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

A classic book and Ms. Woolf's most well known work. The book details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares to serve as hostess at a party in London after the first World War. This novel will also find itself in another category as one of my projects is to add a few classical titles to my reading repertoire- I am starting with the "W's"as authors such Woolf, Waugh, and Wharton have always intrigued my reading self. 

I picked up a used copy that was quite marked up. I was intrigued because this reader seemed to be pulling occult references out of Woolf's writing but alas she/he quickly lost steam and apparently interest in the book. Mrs. Woolf's novel actually turns out to be less about the party preparations than it is a "stream of thought" perspective from different POV of various characters as the narrative shifts from Clarissa to the minds of others both known and unknown to Mrs. Dalloway. The novel looks into the stream of consciousness of various men and women across many classes at a particularly challenging moment in British society as the nation struggled to recover from the first World War. 

2023

Hi! I'm Debbie. Here at Categorically Well-Read I give an extra layer to the reading life. Learn more about me, check out my current category of books, submit your own suggestion, or check out my latest post.