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.

Saturday, 29 October 2011

Orhan Pamuk and Doris Lessing - Currently reading . . .

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

A very long book. Whereas Isabelle Allende can cram the activities and events of several genrations into a novel, Pamuk is lingering over detail and small (yet big) things. I have been unsure, but have persevered with this book. THEN - this morning I have come to Chapter 69! Now I know this is a great novel. (Not that he needs my approval, being a Nobel prize winner.)
More when I've finished it.

I've been listening to Doris Lessing's 'Alfred and Emily' in the car, but I had to abandon it because the second half was so unlike the first. The foreword to this book made me well up with tears, when she explains that she going to tell the story of how her parents' lives might have been different if some key events hadn't happened.
Imagine inventing new lives for your parents.

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