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.

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Colum McCann - just finished reading .....

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
9.5/10


I read this book in anticipation of a trip to New York. It has been recommended as a book though which to get to know the city and its people. I can't think how a novel could be written better. The chapters knit together and link across to each other in a cyclical way, and we end up knowing about life in the Bronx and on Park Avenue, the lives of prostitutes and judges and artists. And over the top of all of them a man is walking on a high wire stretched out between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. The twin towers, in this story, are newly built and not  yet fully populated. The reader and the author know what the future holds, but this is not a part of the story told here.
There is some considerable skill in helping a reader to understand what it might be like to be a high-wire walker. How does Colum McCann manage that?

Man on a high wire - Philip Pettit

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