William Boyd continues to delight me. This is a superb tale – a fictional journal of a man of letters. I found it to be ‘unputdownable’. A rich and interesting tale which interweaves with many of the 20th century’s well-known personalities. An added bonus was that it presented me with a rich reading list.
It gave me an insight into the relativity of what many consider important in life. Compound this with ‘Status Anxiety’ (Alain de Botton) and ‘The Best a Man can Get’ (John O’Farrell) and one’s thinking and value scale can be reset – for the better (discuss).
Here’s a favourite quotation from the book. Apparently they are the lyrics of a song (unattributed):
Life is short
Something, something,
We’re all getting older
So don’t be an also ran,
Something, something,
Dance little man,
Dance whenever you can
Delightful…
