Everyone lives three lives - a public life, a private life and a secret life. Now we can add a fourth -a blog life. It is public because it is posted on the web, it feels private because it is person to machine and it could be secret because no one might ever stumble on the url. The additional dimension is the terrifying possibility that someone might see it and horrors, might post an intrusive, judgemental comment.
It's not a diary because it is physically designed to be seen and commented on.... and yet it gives the blogger the illusion of being utterly private. Ho hum so much for the philosophy.

I'm half way through The Sea, John Banville's Booker winning novel. This is a truly terrible book, easily the worst Booker winner ever,(even worse than 'Amsterdam'). It starts in "I dreamed I was in Manderley again" style and continues in this dated vein, getting more silly and pretentious the deeper you go into a rather banal and predictable plot. I am going to get a red pen and delete all the superfluous adjectives and adverbs in the book - we will be left with ten pages of irritation instead of two hundred or whatever. I have lent The Sea to my friend Jayne to ruin her weekend.

In fairness the new Salman Rashdie, which fittingly did not make it to the Booker shortlist, is really excellent and not quite as impenetrable as his earlier work. Equally, shortlist non-winners like Julian Barnes' Arthur, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Zadie Smith's On Beauty were very good and all valuable contributions to the curled up in front of the fire scene. I have never read Banville before and I certainly never will again.