Like many other things, reading is a habit you can encourage or one you can fall out of. For me the greatest single challenge when it comes to reading is finding the time. Between the day-job, writing my own stuff, and quality time spent with my sweetie-wife, it can be difficult to find the hours to sit and enjoy a good book. I recently shifted my work schedule around, starting the day-job a little but later in the day and getting home a little bit later. This was done to hopefully produced more time for my writing but it paid additional benefits in opening a little more time for reading.

Sadly the last two genre books, one a fantasy and one a hard SF, failed to work for me. The fantasy I didn’t finish, I found I was uninterested in the main character’s life, and the hard SF I did finish but found it underwhelming. After those two books I was a little concerned that my tastes had drifted enough to create an additional challenge.

Last week I picked up the novel The Spy who Came in from the Cold. I have seen the movie a few times and now I wanted to see how it compared.

Ahh, how nice to fall into a novel that just pulls you along. I’m about half way through it, reading in that snatches of time I can find, and I am thoroughly enjoying the book. (Even if the author has American’s using the phrase ‘ring you’ when we say ‘call you.’) Even setting aside the 50 odd years since its publication it is interesting visiting a very different writing style. It’s more objective and head-hopping than what we generally see for published works today.