ValeReads Kyriosity's Reviews > The Diary of Samuel Pepys

My recent rewatch of 84 Charing Cross Road reminded me that Pepys's diary was on my bucket list, but, unlike Helene Hanff, I was quite content with this four-hour abridgement. I did Boswell's Johnson unabridged, but a hundred and ten hours of Pepys sounds about as appealing as a case of intestinal parasites. His first-hand accounts of historical events—the restoration of Charles II, the Plague, and especially the Great Fire—are certainly worthwhile, but the man himself had the morals of an alley cat. There wasn't a woman of any class or station he wasn't content to mess around with, and the episodes included in this edition were more than enough for me. I assume modern print editions include translations of the foreign-language passages, so I was disappointed that they didn't bother to provide that in the audio...until I realized that those were the bits with all the salacious details of his sexual dalliances, so I recalibrated to gratitude for the linguistic obfuscation. I was also grateful for having burned all of my journals eleven years ago, because nobody needs to imbibe that quantity of anybody else's self-involvement.

Narrator was good.