"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Monday, May 11, 2015

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (John LeCarre, 1963)


Book club selection (via POC, I think).

Entertaining spy novel set in Cold War years.

It is rather amazing to think that such a thing as the Berlin Wall existed.

Even more amazing to think about the lives of the folks that worked in the intelligence services of these countries.  Though one could make the case that their services had value in those days given WWII experiences and nuclear arsenals.

Folks believed in Communism in good faith in England, at least some of them did.

Leamas, Smiley, Control.  Mundt, Fiedler.  Liz.

Final scene at the Wall.





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