Amazingly, I actually managed to finish some books.
61: A Spy Among Friends - Ben Macintyre
Macintyre tells the story of Kim Philby, the 'Third Man', who was at the very heart of the British secret service for years while operating in deep cover as a Soviet agent. This is Macintyre's bread and butter and he tells it well, even if my attention wandered a bit amidst yet another account of long, bibulous evenings amongst old Etonian jolly good chaps engaging in tradecraft. This old boys' network was, of course, precisely what allowed Philby to continue operating - incredibly - for years after he’d been outed publicly as a spy. Really quite extraordinary.
62: The Anomaly - Hervé Le Tellier trans. Adriana Hunter
What to say about this? It was chosen for our bookclub as I most definitely wouldn’t have read it otherwise. 'Wanky French pretentious claptrap' is my headline review, but to be a bit more generous - an Air France plane is caught in an incident of extreme turbulence, and when the pilot regains control and requests landing clearance, consternation ensues - the very same plane, with all the same passengers, went through turbulence and landed three months earlier.
World leaders, top scientists and religious gurus embark on a frantic and yet tedious quest for explanations, while the (now) twinned passengers grapple with meeting their identical selves (other than the one who committed suicide, who’s now suddenly feeling cheerful and indeed positively frisky).
It’s all très French, philosophical and I think is supposed to be gripping, but I found it painful to wade through. It starts off like a (bad) thriller, then swerves into an opening section introducing the (terminally dull) passengers and drones on for several centuries, then after the turbulent event that causes the anomaly, there’s a tedious chunk of religious argument to be thrashed out, not forgetting the pseudo-scientific claptrap trying to explain how this time slip event could have happened (we're all in a giant computer program, apparently).
Le Tellier is the president of Oulipo, arty French literary group, and this book won the Prix Goncourt. I’m very happy to admit I’m probably just thick but blimey, life is too short. This would have been a DNF after page 2 had I not been obliged to read it.