Booksellers and the lonely

This resonates with me. I think I need to write a book. (From Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy, on Montaigne and the Consolation for Inadequacy).

Authorship was prompted by disappointment with those in the vicinity, and yet it was infused with the hope that someone elsewhere would understand; his book an address to everyone and no one in particular. He was aware of the paradox of expressing his deepest self to strangers in bookshops:

Many things that I would not care to tell any individual man I tell to the public, and for knowledge of my most secret thoughts, I refer my most loyal friends to a bookseller's stall.

And yet we should be grateful for the paradox. Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Montaigne might have begun writing to alleviate a personal sense of loneliness, but his book may serve in a small way to alleviate our own ...