How to LIve

Part of the experience of finishing a good book, one that has brought me pleasure, is looking forward to the next one. What should it be? I have so many choices--to reread a favorite novel like Middlemarch or Portrait of a Lady, a serious volume of history, a biography of an interesting or eccentric person. It's almost like deciding what I want to eat. Am I in the mood for Chinese tonight or Mexican or maybe it's Italian I'm craving. It has to be the right taste.

I've just finished a delightful and truly charming book with a very long and somewhat cheesy title, "How to Live or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer" by Sarah Bakewell. It's not surprising that I would be drawn to such a title at this stage of my life. I wake up every morning and sometimes stay up way too late at night pondering the question, "What I am going to do with the rest of my life?"

"How to live, etc., etc., etc." is definitely not some glib self-help book by the latest feel good guru. First of all, it's really well written and well researched but not in any way stuffy or pedantic. It tells an interesting story and is populated by many notable, often quirky characters. Montaigne, of course, is the main protagonist and he comes across as a thoughtful, delightful and extremely wise man. I prefer to call him a thinker not a philosopher Somehow philosopher seems too portentous and solemn a word to describe him.

I'm eager to get back to the source i.e. to read some of the original Essays but I think I need to get up from this table right now. I'm full and I have to digest.