Popsugar Reading Challenge Book #8

At the beginning I created 3 loose rules:

1. Go in order to prevent cherry picking the easy prompts
2. Any format – e book or print – but has to follow the prompt
3. Finish any book I started

I’ve managed to stick to these rules until now.

An espionage thriller: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre

100 pages in and I was so confused and tired of re reading passages that I gave up. I texted my mom saying that I hated the book. If she was into it (it was her pick after all), I would suffer through it, but her response was in agreement. In fact she texted back “Life is too short to read a bad book”

What is it about? Honestly, I’m not so sure. From what I gathered there was a big uprising in the Spy game in London which resulted in the old school Spies begin forced into retirement. The new crew do things very different. About 70 pages in or so, the plot comes to light a little in a story told by a new Spy who believes that the British are in cahoots with the Russians.

I stopped there, so who knows what happens to these guys, but I’m assuming they ferret out the bad spies, kick out the new boss and get reinstated. Of course, that could be all wrong too. I’ll never know.

What was so wrong with it? Literally everything. To start, I felt like I was dropped in the middle of a story and was expected to understand it all. The audience was obviously supposed to be British and into spy novels. The terminology, the slang, the locations…all were way over my head and difficult to grasp. The plot was slow to form, unless I just missed it, and even then was boring and predictable.

I don’t recommend this book at all although a Google search revealed that it is a movie now, so maybe just watch it instead. Unless you are the intended audience, then you may love it.

0/5