Ayme, Effand, Burney

So I've read all of Marcel Ayme's novels. Some of them are truly excellent, although they are not know outside France: Travelingue, a tragedy ending in murder, Uranus, an immediate post-WWII novel, La Vouivre, a novel with a fantastical character who is the only remnant of Celtic culture in French myths. I loved them all, written with economy but a great precise vocabulary, characters that are interesting, plots whose ends I cannot predict.

I also read Benedetta Craveri's book on Mme d'Effand, a pre-revolutionary French salonniere. It was mildly interesting.

Finally, I started in on the six volumes of Fanny Burney's diaries. Like Virginia Woolf's, I don't know as much about their environment to recognize the people, as I did with Goncourt, say. The letters and diaries are chronological, so that I find it more challenging. On my nighttable for today: the works of Beaumarchais, best known for Noces de Figaro, and a biography of Gustave Flaubert.