corollary

Entry #95

Listening to:

Shostakovich, violin concerto no. 1 in A minor, op. 99.

Just read:

Mary Mitford, Our village. This would be a difficult book to read quickly, but it would be well-suited to a "dipping" approach. The short vignettes of settled village life in Berkshire in the early 19th century make for pleasant and often amusing reading. There is no over-arching narrative, so this means that there is no page-turning drive to move from one vignette to the next.

Now reading:

John Byng, Rides round Britain. This is another 18th-19th century personal account from the Folio Society. It has a bit more narrative oomph to it because it is a series of descriptions of trips that the author took in the 1780s and 1790s. I like travel-writing, and Byng has quite an appealing style: blunt and to the point. He complains a lot about the state of the beds in the inns where he stays, and I realised after a little thought that they probably didn't have sprung mattresses in that day and age. March of technological progress, eh?