Essays in Idleness

Here is a writer who believed that wasting time wisely was its own form of wisdom. Agnes Repplier, among the most celebrated essayists of her era, turns her gimlet eye and immaculate prose to the small pleasures and peculiar preoccupations that make life worth living: the tyranny of a beloved cat, the strange consolations of boredom, the art of doing nothing excellently. These eight essays range from playful meditations on words themselves to sharp, surprising defenses of leisure in an age that worshipped productivity. Repplier writes with the kind of ease that only comes from absolute mastery, her wit never cruel, her learning never heavy. She is, in essence, the ideal conversation partner for a quiet afternoon: literate, opinionated, and utterly incapable of boring you. For readers who believe that the best reading is less about plot than about companionship, about finding a mind whose rhythms match your own, these essays offer exactly that: the pleasure of idleness, elegantly defended.