Pooter

A trip to London today for a meeting held at the hall of one of the City's Worshipful Companies. As always, one of the fringe benefits of a trip to London is a little bit of additional reading time, and so I finished off 'The Diary of a Nobody'. This was one of the books on the 'list of betterment' in 'The Year of Reading Dangerously' (as I said at the start of the week - definitely more about that at some point soon). Whilst I was in Blackwell's in Oxford last week, I discovered that there is a (newish?) series of Oxford Classics, and they were going a BOGOF deal, so I picked up Diary of a Nobody as well as the short stories of Oscar Wilde.

Having read Pooter's diary, I would say that:

• it reads to me now more as an insight into another time than as a comedy;
• I'm not sure if we are supposed to find Pooter a sympathetic character as well as have fun at his expense, but again, maybe that was clearer at the time;
• the end of the book felt a little contrived, was this meant to be some form of moral message about rewards to the hard-working, or an opportunity to show the limitation of Pooter's ambition?;
• I seems fairly clear where Sue Townsend got some of her ideas, but Mole seems a much more appealing character than Pooter; and
• perhaps I should tread carefully in commenting on Pooter, especially in a blog - the modern form of a diary - for fear of the comparison.