Monday

what aweekend.Very bad cold so didn't blog but mostly because the wound on my back really hurt and I couldn't sit at my desk. I think it was the cold. Although beautiful yet freezing.I said in a previous blog I didn't know who Michael Hadyn was, I do now. He was Franz- Josef's brother and wrote a beautiful Requiem for FJ's funeral. It is curious how one sibling can be well known and the other hardly at all like Mendelesohn and his sister fanny, Yet she composed some lovely pieces.last week's composer was a modern one Herbert Howells.I didn't mind his work but wasn't 'begeistert' as they say.
Meanwhile been reading for the Russian Challenge.Jay Parini's 'The Last Station' is about the last year of Tolstoy's life and was fascinating for it's revelations about the great man and his wife and family. Now I need to find the biography and see how true Parini was. Tolstoy was so scared of his wife he ran away and she was worried someone else would have copyright. Not nice at all.
Also read 'The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I loved this book. It begins in the present with a conservitor working on the sarajevo Haggadah, a book used at Pesach to tell the passover story.We then go back furthet and further in time to the creation of the book. each episode in the past comes after one in the present. Brooks has written 3 novels and not one is the same.I think this is her best yet but Have seen no other reviews to know what the 'pundits' think.
Also read 'Shoot the damn Dog', which Hilary Mantel reviewed and slated. I learned things from it but did find it quite repetitious and muddled. Also not sure how much someone who has no aquaintance with depression would enjoy it.
Now going to get myself some lunch.after which I shall write some snail mail.