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Plane Reading

Before I get to the reading, please excuse me while I rant about one of the films I saw on my flight yesterday? 300! What a turkey! How can anyone take such a good story and make such a rotten anachronistic movie? The idea that the Spartans (as nasty and blood thirsty bunch as ever roamed the planet) were a model of freedom in any modern sense of the word is too daft for words and how come, if the Persians were held back at Thermopylae by the Spartan phalanx, were most of the battle scenes of individual Spartan soldiers dashing around on an open plane. Bah humbug!

Anyway, when not getting irritated watching a silly film, I read Mission Song by John LeCarre. There was a time when I waited the arrival of the latest LeCarre the way people now await a Harry Potter book, but it’s been a while since I actually read anything new by him. His latest offering is a thriller based on an African language interpretor getting caught up in nasty goings on in Central Africa (good reading for a translator on a flight to Nairobi). Suffice it to say that it’s a great book with a fascinating plot. The characters are all believable (though all rather unpleasant) and the insights into the work of an interpretor are great fun. You can get the book from Amazon, though WH Smith are selling it in the shops for half price, so you may prefer doing that!