When I became a dedicated reader of the 16th-century French writer Montaigne, in 2005, I was new to writing and relatively new to motherhood, with a 3-year-old and a newborn, and about to publish my first book. I had purchased copies of Montaigne's essays from secondhand bookstores before, but I decided to jump into the deep end right away with the 900-page volume of The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by Donald M. Frame. For the next 10 years or so, I would read Montaigne every day, sometimes for only 10 minutes, and later, when my children were older, for 30 minutes to an hour in the afternoon, before I picked them up from school. I might not have understood the significance of this routine at the time, other than that Montaigne's work provided a brief reprieve from a life overcrowded with the responsibilities of being a mother, a wife, a writer, and a professor. The volume of The Complete Essays was in no need to be finished in one sitting, or within a specific time...
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