The twenty-seventh book: #27 Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding
As a book Gutenberg provides in two parts, I thought I'd wait until I had enough time to properly read it. In the end it wasn't as long as the two parts implied (it's no Arabian Nights), but it didn't hold my interest either. As a comic observation of an existing literary style, it doesn't meet Don Quixote's standards of being interesting - it never connected, partially because I don't feel as much of a fan of the morality tales it's influenced by, and partially because the target of the satire mostly passed me by.
It's of its time, and while sometimes that interesting, there's nothing much in there that feels timeless enough either. It doesn't feel quite timeless enough to be at the top of it. Worthwhile to get a different view on the genre, but nothing special.
The fourteenth classical recording: #407 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake
I'm not sure whether listening is the best way to enjoy a ballet, but that is the focus of this list. I did this listen just trying to immerse myself and see what I could get out of it. The score is still said to be what stood out in the original heavily criticised performance. It's an evocative performance that goes through the moods of the piece quite well. Even if there are 'hooks' for the dancers at points, it doesn't feel quite as necessary.
Even so, without the visuals to lead you, the music does lose some impact. There are times when it really is just music, and this clearly isn't the best way to experience it. Something to try and figure out for the future. For now, at least, it was epic enough often enough.
The twenty-eighth book: #28 Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus - Alexander Pope
This was the result of a single train journey. There's not loads to comment on here - written as the first book of a longer satire, the collaborators never really finished their parts and this is what remains. The product of the first chapters for a memoir, these are mostly short stories from the life of... A lot of them are satirical - which, as mentioned earlier today, doesn't always land well a few centuries later - and a lot of it seems disjointed, unfortunately. There are some good bits in here, but I didn't have the annotated version, where notes outnumber actual text by what seems like at least two to one, and so this disappointed for me.