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, 23 December 2013

Jane Austen - just finished reading

Persuasion - Jane Austen

8.5/10


My lovely sister bought me a beautifully bound set of Jane Austen's novels for my birthday. I've read them all before, of course - at first reluctantly at school, and then more willingly since then. In fact - this time I wasn't reluctant, nor just willing - I was eager!

I can't give Persuasion 10/10 because I find the heroine, Anne Elliot, a bit of a prissy, pining missy, who never really seems to get round to doing anything. She just watches and waits for things to happen to her. She gets her man in the end though. Yet we know that Jane Austen can create more pro-active, interesting women like Fanny Morland and Elizabeth Bennett, and the other Bennett sisters, so she loses marks for Ms Elliot.

But it was a page-turner, and every sentence says so much in a Jane Austen novel, and we learn so much about society then and now so it gets a high score.

I do wish she was around to write some more books for me.

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