This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Diaries as novels. Even though they're works of fiction, you still feel joyfully naughty at reading something so personal. It's almost like taking a sinfully sneaky peek at your best friend's journal. Last week, possibly the most famous diarist of recent times released her third diary onto the world. Yes, Bridget Jones is back, so this week I thought it would be fun to share the diaries I've enjoyed over the years and one that I have on my to-be-read pile.
1. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend – As David Walliams says on Adrian's website, Adrian Mole “was probably the biggest phenomenon of my youth after ‘Star Wars’, and ‘Star Wars’ was bigger than God.” I remember exactly where I was when I first started reading Adrian Mole and I've grown up with Adrian over the years and continued to read his diaries. The Wilderness Years, The Cappuccino Years and The Prostrate Years. Throughout which he is, of course, Profoundly in Love with Pandora. God love him.
2. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding – Well of course I had to mention this, the first diary she wrote. Not only did many women recognise some of themselves in Bridget (spawning a sketch by The Fast Show where dinner party guests were convinced they were literally Bridget Jones), but the book was credited, alongside Marian Keyes' Watermelon, as the novel that started the chick lit phenomenon.
3. The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell – If I'm honest I didn't like the book, Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell (I didn't get it). Yet I adored the TV series and the films. (Yep, even the last one though it tested me many times.) But thank goodness someone saw something in the novel. I was a little unsure if I'd like The Carrie Diaries because of this but the SATC series had ended and I needed something, anything. But you know what, I liked it. And so I bought the second of her diaries, Summer and the City.
4. A Diary of The Lady by Rachel Johnson – This isn't actually fiction, it's all true. Rachel Johnson is a journalist who has written The Mummy Diaries, Notting Hell and Shire Hell. When The Lady magazine wanted to revamp itself she was asked to edit it. Never having edited in her life this is her diary of the first year. There's a lot of name-dropping, but we see behind the scenes plus a little mischievousness. Its also eye-opening and rather inspiring.
5. Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour – This is one of those books I promised myself I would read when I first got into blogging quite a few years ago now, but never got around to. It follows high class prostitute Belle De Jour, who started writing on her award winning blog about her secret life. It's said not to be for the faint hearted and I've just read the first entry on samedi, le 1 novembre and I can vouch for that. This is the book and author which led to the TV series staring Billy Piper.