Super-Infinite, by Katherine Rundell
A meditation on John Donne.
Ah this book was so good, and I can't describe it, and I can't even describe what it is. It's a biography of Donne, I suppose, but it isn't – more of a meditation, a reflection, a hymn (?), a Bach fugue (???) – I really don't know what a Bach fugue is like, but I suspect it's like this.
I was going to say I don't know any books anything like this but then I realised I do remember one book, the Stefan Zweig biography of Montaigne, that has a similar feeling – where the text itself is kind of hypnotic, where you are learning about the subject but more so you're.... dancing in the stream of the author's appreciation for the subject?, I don't know.
I must have had Rundell confused with some other Katherine because I just looked her up and discovered she 1) primarily writes children's books, 2) is my age (!!!!). Her hobbies include tightrope walking and rooftop climbing. I hate it, I hate it, other people shouldn't be more talented and more diligent than I am.