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What I read -- October, 2013



“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” by John Le Carre. Margaret Atwood had mentioned it, and someone in an article about the ongoing failures of spies, and I’d heard that he was a good writer, so I got it out of the library. This might not have been the best place to start – the first 100 pages were full of characters with backstory that I didn’t totally get. However, I knew I’d be able to get through it because I passed p. 60 without a problem. I guess I raved about it enough, because Ed picked it up when I was done.

“All These Things I’ve Done” by Gabrielle Zevin. Another library book. I wasn’t really clear on how the world got this way, but the exploration of the results of prohibition was excellent. I loved the somewhat incompetent crime family. The way chocolate made people behave just because it was illegal was an interesting statement about drugs in general, I thought. Some of the characters were stereotypical, but the important relationship – that between Anya and her brain-damaged brother Leo, was really well done. I didn’t realize it was part of a trilogy until I was trying to quote it and had to google.

“Late Eclipses” by Seanan McGuire. The boy negotiated with me that I had to read this before I read the books I got for my birthday, suggesting that I read faster than him so I’d be done this and them before he finished book five, since he plays more tanks than I do (!). The thing that was remarkable here was something she’s probably been doing all along – you know something bad is going to happen, but it’s never quite the bad thing that you expect.

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