Until All the People Should Awake

"... but here in the darkness an owl flitted from tree to tree, and when the breeze lifted the branches the moon flashed as if it were a torch. Until all the people should awake again the houseless animals were abroad, the tigers and the stags, and the elephants coming down in the darkness to drink at pools." Nice! That's Virginia Woolf in THE VOYAGE OUT, a good book to read while you're lying in bed. I've just quoted, for example, something nearing the end of a long passage, several pages in length, that describes people going to sleep. Some of it reminds me of a passage by James Joyce, though, as I recall, Virginia Woolf had some awfully mean things to say about him. He must have touched a nerve! Anyway! I switched THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES (not before it presented me with a second owl sighting! "He opened his eyes again and stared briefly like an owl across the room, without really looking at anything") for THE VOYAGE OUT. I'm reading the former in the bright sunshiny daylight now, when and if there is any. THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES contains a lot of thick, chewy philosophy, hard to manage as one toddles off to dreamland.