Why diaries?

As I head into a new year, I wonder, why do I love diaries? Why do you?

Finding someone else’s diary — that of a sister or brother or, God forbid, a parent or a child’s — puts us in a world of temptation. Do I read it and find out their deepest secrets? What do they say about me? What if I find out something I really don’t want to know?

Most of us, I would suggest, managed to avoid the temptation, kept the skeletons in the c…