There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.

My first book of the year is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré. It is not my usual choice of reading material, but I loved the film, and so when my Dad received the book for Christmas and got through it in two days, I decided to read it too.

It is a spy novel set in the 70s during the Cold War. George Smiley is a British intelligence agent who had been forced into retirement after a botched operation led to a British spy being shot. But he is called back to investigate the presence of a Russian mole, a double agent, in the intelligence service. The book makes use of flashbacks to provide the background to the investigation. 

I really enjoyed the book. The plot and the writing are excellent, with some great characters such as George Smiley. It is quite a complicated story, but I benefited from having seen the film adaptation, and from being able to read it in two or three large chunks. I think if I was only reading it in small pieces at a time it would have been hard to keep track of everything.

As I said, it is not my usual genre of choice, but I thought it was a great novel and I would highly recommend it. I may even read more books by John le Carré in the future, because I did thoroughly enjoy it. A good start to the year!