Tuesday

I was given an ereader - a Kobo - for Christmas and I have been exploring its potentials. I have discovered it is good for reading in bed and while travelling. It is bad for reading poetry (though this appears to depend on how the digitisation has been done) and academic books with end or footnotes.

Like most ereader owners I have been investigating the freebies (though as a writer this slightly goes against the grain as the writer (or his/her estate) presumably doesn't get paid). Most of the free downloads are out of print books which means discovering some volumes I would never have nosed into otherwise.

One such was Famous Women: George Sand by Bertha Thomas, a surprisingly pacy and fresh read given it was written/published in 1883. I also found out more about Sand, a woman I knew more by myth than fact.

This is what she had to say about the revolutionaries/politicians that disappointed her: 'What I see in the midst of the divergencies of all these reforming sects is a waste of generous sentiments and of noble thoughts, a tendency towards social amelioration, but an impossibility for the time to bring forth through the want of a head to that great body with a hundred hands, that tears itself to pieces, for not knowing what to attack. So far the struggles make only dust and noise. We have not yet come to the era that will construct new societies, and people them with perfected men.'

How apt even for today.