Smiley's People, John Le Carre

Title:		Smiley's People
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

Another Le Carre. This one is the climax of the Smiley/Karla series, which means I missed one. I believe I can find a copy of The Honorable Schoolboy somewhere, though, and my guess is that the order isn't that critical. Still, my error.

Smiley's People, though, is quite good. Le Carre manages to keep the entire genre and conflict interesting even now, years after the Berlin Wall has come down and the Soviet Union has disappeared as a political entity.

If you have any interest in spy fiction, Le Carre seems to be worth a read. Recommended.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. John Le Carre

Title:		Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

Good stuff. I hadn't read any Le Carre before and I really enjoyed this. It's the first of the series in which George Smiley (in his retirement) comes back to combat Karla, the Soviet spy master.

It turns out that Le Carre (Actually David John Moore Cornwell) really worked in two British spy agencies (MI5 and MI6) so he's got a nose for making his fiction sound like truth.

I, of course, can't tell you if it's really possible - not being in the spy business myself - but I can tell you it reads well, and that's what counts in this case.

Recommended.

Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

Title:		Last Chance to See
Authors:		Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
Rating:

As everyone here probably knows by now, I love Douglas Adams's writing style. He was both funny and honest, even when writing fiction.

Last Chance to See is - sadly - not fiction. In it Adams and Carwardine document trips to see some of the rarest animals in existence - animals on the brink of extinction - along with meeting some of those working to save them. The trips took place in the mid to late 1980s, and at least the first one was for a magazine article. It is possible all of their trips resulted in articles that were later substantially rewritten to put them into book form.

Of the book itself I can say this: Adams can write. He does nearly all the writing, despite the author credit to Carwardine, and it's classic Adams in style, even if the subjects are a lot less funny than his usual.

He managed - in just a few pages - to convince me that I never want to go to Africa, for example. Maybe things have improved in the 20+ years since these things happened, but I rather doubt it, human nature being what it is. Seeing the creatures there might be inspiring, but details of getting there and the governments one has to work through render Africa a less than ideal vacation spot in my opinion.

He tells heart breaking stories about the animals and places they go see, but frames them with enough humor - mostly at his own expense - to make the presentation something I could continue reading. (I'm one of those who can't watch programs about endangered animals. They make me cringe to the point where I have to turn them off. As a member of the human race I am at a minimum guilty by association and resource consumption, and I don't like it.)

Last Chance to See is worth reading. Adams drives home some key points and shows how silly (and stupid) we are as a species in the process.