#92 - "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons

The next book I forgot to write about is Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.  This one grew on me.  Whenever anyone asked me how it was when I was about halfway through, I’d say, "meh, well at least it’s short," only 233 pages -- little ones.  But by the time the story was coming to a close, I found myself kinda caring about these crazy characters and sorta wanting to know what was going to happen with them.

The back cover of my book nearly ruined the whole thing for me.  It says: “Very probably the funniest book ever written.”  Um.  No it’s not.  It is a well-known fact that I am not a good judge of funny.  I really don’t think most things that are supposed to be funny are funny at all, even when I’m the only one in the room not laughing.  However, I know that this book could not possibly be the funniest book ever (seriously, “ever”?  That’s pretty assumptive, right?).  Once I accepted that I wasn’t going to laugh out loud reading this, I decided it was a pretty cute book.  That’s the best word for it: cute.

Basically, Cold Comfort Farm is a big spoof on a certain type of ridiculous melodramatic early-20th century British novels aimed at young women.  Quite possibly that made it quite funny to people at the time it was published (or "very probably"?).  The story follows 20-ish, recently orphaned, society girl Flora Poste as she moves in with a ragtaggle group of completely crazy distant relatives on a farm in rural England and pretty much takes over everyone’s lives.  She sets out to "fix" everyone and everything at Cold Comfort, and creates an intricate web of schemes and plans to do so in the most well-meaning and always over-the-top ways.

I have to admit, I did find one thing pretty funny.  The names of the cows at Cold Comfort Farm are Graceless, Pointless, Feckless and Aimless; and the bull’s name is Big Business.  The rest of the book was mildly amusing, pretty cute, and, in the long run, definitely worth the easy, light read.

#93 - "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" by John Le Carre

I’ve been reading, I promise.  I’ve also been busy forgetting to write about what I’ve been busy reading.  That’s just real dumb of me because now I have to go back and try to remember what I read, which was the whole point of me writing about these books in the first place.  Ugh.  

So first I read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carre.  I liked this one!  It’s a spy mystery, which had me a little skeptical at first.  I mean, I like watching spy movies just fine, but I wasn’t so sure about having to read one.  However, this was not at all what I expected.  Tinker, Tailor is not at all an action-packed, shoot-’em-up, Matt Damon-starring spy thriller.  It has some action.  It has a little shooting.  It has a few thrills.  But for the most part it’s way more focused on the psychological, on the mindset of the spy, than on the action.  It shows the spies as real people, and these people are definitely not James Bond.  These spies are overweight people, injured people, people whose wives cheat on them, people with children at home, people who live in fear.

Set during the Cold War, the premise of the mystery is that there is a Russian mole at “The Circus,” the name given to the British Secret Intelligence Agency, and middle-aged, chubby, retired George Smiley is charged with the task of finding out who the mole is.  The story backtracks through the memories of George and several other key characters to build the timeline of events that lead to the discovery of this double agent.  The name of the book, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, refers to code names from a nursery rhyme that I’ve never heard of.  

Wikipedia tells me that there may be a movie in the works.