I have tried to write this post a couple of times, but apparently my brain doesn't have enough thoughts in it to write proper book reviews - so here is a kind of slapdash ad hoc summary of thoughts I had on the two books I've finished lately.
A Spy Among Friends - Ben Macintyre
- I am a person who doesn't read a great deal of non-fiction, a fact which I do intend to remedy at some point. This book was very readable. I enjoyed it a lot.
- All the people in this book were well-intentioned but horrible people, particularly with regard to their families. They just had too much shit going on in their lives to think they had time to also have wives who needed support and children to build relationships with. And basically, if you are going to prioritise your job that hard, maybe having a family is not a great idea.
- MI6 would've have like 500 fewer problems if they'd been less attached to the British class system.
- Cold War espionage was just as silly in real life as it is in movies. Like, "If I walk past the cafe carrying a newspaper, we need to arganise a meeting. If I am carrying a paperback novel, she should never speak to each other again" levels of silly.
- This book filled me with excellent original fiction thoughts.
Adaptation - Malinda Lo
- I picked this book up solely because I'd heard it was YA with a bisexual protagonist. It did not disappoint in this respect: the protagonist was indeed bisexual. (I can't remember at this point whether the book explicitly used the word "bisexual" any more, which is an important thing to remember, so sorry about that...)
- Love triangles. Oh god, the love triangle. Although on the bright side, in this case, when the choice was between the long-time friend with whom she had common interests, and the new person who she has strong physical attraction to, it wasn't immediately obvious what choice she would make.
- Speaking of, relationships built entirely on physical attraction just don't make sense to me, so no matter how hard the author tries to make the new and sexually exciting character compelling, I'm going to be barracking for the long-time friend.
- I mean, overall, it was easy-to-read and pretty fun, so I can't complain, but I wasn't really super enthusiastic.
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