This is a dense book full of medieval history and quotes from the Desert Fathers and Mothers but it is also an interesting and compelling examination of how monks (male and female) tried to improve their focus among the many distractions in their life. The book has many, many pages of notes and references but they are separate at the end and can be skipped if necessary. I intend to follow up on some of the names I hadn’t come across before.

There are also lessons for modern people about how to be sure we can spend our time wisely rather than the endless danger of social media videos and twitter feeds.

There are some great quotes here to make you think:-

"there are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thought."

It was the ‘cell of the heart’ that mattered most. This is profound to an introvert like me.

The idea isn’t that we never have distracting thoughts but that we don’t allow them to ‘sink in’. The monks spent a lot of time thinking about thinking and about how they could corral their flitting thoughts like little sheep. Christian monks faulted demons, deficiencies in the will, and splitting off from the divine. It’s also clear that given the time spent by our ancestors on trying to control their minds, they maybe weren’t much better at it than we are.

There is much to learn in this lovely, intelligent book.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley

This book was about how medieval monks struggled with distractions centuries ago just as we do today. The differences in distraction were quite different. The things viewed as distractions were quite extreme.

I don't know if I found this to be too dry, or if the subject was just off the mark for my interest. If nothing else, I did learn a few things, just not quite my cup of tea.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The perfect cozy nonfiction.

While not overly concerned with religion itself, The Wandering Mind traces the beliefs and attitudes toward attention, distraction, and the process of thinking itself in monasteries and other intellectual spaces in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Kreiner does a fantastic job of breathing life into the many individuals and, even more impressively, the ancient cultures themselves.

The section on meditation and memory techniques was especially fascinating.

Highly recommended for history nerds, culture mavens, anyone who just wants to read an interesting story well told, and even fiction writers who want to ground their worldbuilding.

This book seemed interesting at the outset with the premise that distractions are nothing new to us and even in isolation we still find distractions. However a whole book about the monks was too intense and it lost its interest for me.

A fascinating and well researched book about monks in history and their way of living. I found it easy to folllow and learned something more about non Christian monks.
It's a good way to learn about a different way of living so removed from us.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Positives are that the ideas behind this book are original and timely as humanity lives in a perpetual zombie state, thanks to over reliance on cheap hand held smart phones. As Society is ready to embrace the Metaverse, The Wandering Mind could be just the thing to help pull us back to some kind of normality.
Negatives are that there is alot of monk name-dropping - which I am unable to follow - as medieval monks are not household names - yet. Monks are extensively written about- it would have been great to have more excerpts of historical autobiographical writings.
The Wandering Mind does have an extensive Bibliography and detailed chapter notes. This publication is highly specialised and assumes alot of historical references to the lives of monks.
It was difficult to rate this book as the writer has laboured to produce a highly researched publication. and is a good writer and historian. However, sadly the content of the book is not what this reader was expecting to read.

This was a challenging book, but it would be a good reference for university students for a variety of subjects, history, psychology, theology, etc.

I requested this book thinking it would lean more on using the medieval monks' methods to help current distracted people to center themselves. The book actually focused more on monks' habits and a deep dive into their study culture. In other words, you'll be reading a medieval history book rather than a psychology-focused book.
I think there is some interesting material here, especially on how monks were able to train themselves to focus so much and memorize massive amounts of material. Not an easy task to do. We often find ourselves thinking about how much distraction is present in our own lives, and that it couldn't have possibly been so in eras gone by. Not true, Kreiner effectively argues. While technology and concerns were different, they were just as much distracted as we were. All this to say, too, that reading is quite an unnatural act (and cognitive challenge at that). If anything, this book does a great job of helping us understand that we may have more in common with the monastery than we might think

The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner talks about how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge—and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later. This will probably be the last book I read from this author:)

🪬 The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner 🪬

Is it possible to die with happiness? Because when I got approved to read this ARC, I almost did.

I LOVE monks and every aspect of monasticism. If there is a historical fantasy novel that merely has a hint of a monastery in it, I am all over that book.

So to find a book, that features monasticism - that only talks about monasticism for 250+ pages - wow….I am truly in heaven.

In this incredibly researched novel, we learn about all the different kinds of monasticism - not just Christian monks - and how their habits and ideologies differed over the centuries. I love reading about how the hermit monks - who feels like any sort of human interaction was a distraction - and those who thought that the only way to serve God (by serving others) was to live in a community. .

What I especially loved, was the inclusion of female monks (something I had previously known very little about).

So not only was this a novel about the history of monasticism, it is also how monasticism relates to our modern world. How - when we choose to “unplug” from society, by turning off our mobiles, or going on long hikes - we are not so different from the wandering monks, living in an isolated cave miles away from any civilisation.

5 stars. My new favourite non fiction book.