Hello, welcome to my blog

Mostly you will find, here, transcribed entries from the secret diary that I used to keep as a teenager between 1970 and 1975. I try to be honest with my transcriptions, but, just occasionally I do edit, to protect myself or others from embarrassment or some other emotion.
Also, though, I like to do a brief review of the books I have been reading, so these are interspersed throughout. I reserve the right to write blog entries, also, about other random things.
Why do I keep this blog? I don't know. I am an academic and one of my research interests is around how people construct their own identities. The diary transcriptions, and what I write about my books, are very much about revealing something of my identity.

Monday, 20 September 2010

Kazuo Ishiguro - Just finished reading . . .

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

7 out of 10


I don't much care for reading short stories, I like to get my teeth into a longer narrative. I guess, though, that, as short stories go, these might rank in the first division. With Annie Proulx.
I've read Ishiguro before (Remains of the Day - Yay!, The Unconsoled - what???) and he always leaves me feeling a bit dissatisfied. There are gaps in the reader's knowledge, and unlikely scenarios arise. This is a clever book, in that each story has links to the others, through themes; music, relationships, men who are drifting, but I could have put it down and not finished it, because I wasn't bothered about how the stories might end. I think he's a very clever, accomplished author. It's just that he doesn't speak to me.

Did the book have anything in common with Joanne Trollope's 'Marrying the Mistress'? Well - the both look at dodgy relationships.

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