Book completed

[eve_prime]

Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, by Katherine May. This is a truly lovely book that I should make a point of reading a second time, soon. I confess that when the first chapter started explaining how the author had been feeling burnt out, stopped reading books, and was spending too much time doom-scrolling that my thought was, “Oh, yet another one of THOSE books,” because yes, I’ve read multiple books about the problems people have with putting their attention where they want it to be, and in this case I assumed that she was then going to tell us how reigniting her sense of wonder helped her become happy again. Well, she did, in a sense, but her writing was so much deeper, richer, and fresher than I was expecting. Even though the core message about the importance of wonder is one I’d internalized a great many years ago, I really enjoyed this author’s voice. She had very interesting things to say about swimming in the ocean (the English Channel really, I suppose), handling bees, trying to encourage her young son to value nature, and so on, and she also wrote about very interesting things that I hadn’t known before, like the Brocken Spectre phenomenon. I recommend this book, and I’m now looking forward to reading her other two too.

Comments

[kaishin108]

That does sound like a very special book.

[eve_prime]

<3

[heleninwales]

That sounds like an interesting book. I've been feeling more contented and less angry about everything since I managed to start reading fiction again. I used to wake up, check the time and if it wasn't worth going back to sleep because the alarm would be due to go off soon, I would open the newspaper app on the tablet. Now I open the novel I'm reading and don't read the news until I'm up, dressed and downstairs eating breakfast.

I mean, the anger and frustration about the state of the world is still there, but I can mentally step away from it.

Re Brocken Spectre, I've never seen one but a friend photographed the phenomenon at the top of our local mountain a few years ago.

[eve_prime]

I think one of the best things we can all do for our well-being is to decide how and when to engage with what's going on in the public sphere, rather than letting it just pour in on us whenever.