"The Little Drummer Girl" is the third book that I've abandoned in my "20 for 20 Reading Challenge" to read twenty books that are more than twenty hours long.

I've really enjoyed the Le Carré books that I've read so far, all of which post-date "The Little Drummer Girl". This book didn't work for me. I listened to the first six and a half hours of the book and found myself increasingly reluctant to return to it, so I've pressed the life's-too-short button and abandoned it,

The book is well written and well-narrated. It has some very powerful scenes in it. The characters are well-drawn and the places are well-described. My problem started with the pace, which is slow and evolved into the characters, none of whom I care about.

After six and a half hours we've finally reached the point where our young British actress has been successfully recruited to work with the Israelis to help them (somehow) take down a Palestinian terrorist cell. I know every detail of the process used to recruit her and it seems to me to be as credible as it is frightening. Reading it was like watching a craftsman build a brick wall with a complex pattern embedded in it or watching a wrangler tame a wild horse. It's fascinating in its own way but you have to care about the craftsman or the horse. I found I didn't care for either.

So I'll never know what Charlie's mission was or whether she succeeded in it or how many people died along the way. I'm OK with that.

I'll be back for other Le Carré books but I'm saying good-bye to this one.

I seem to have books I'm a bit stuck with at the moment. I have hopes for all of them but they're a test of faith at the moment.

"The Paper Eater" is an out-there piece of SF which I think is meant to be a satire but it has unsympathetic characters and innovative punctuation that I find distracting.

"The Little Drummer Girl" is fine, if slow, while I'm listening to it but it's not something I find myself rushing to get back to. I've been using it as the soundtrack to my daily one hour walks.

My wife really enjoyed "The Holiday". I found the first chapter a bit thin but I'm told great things are to come.

I hope you all have a great reading weekend.

I can't make my mind up about this book. It's moving only slightly faster than real-life. It's like watching a plot come together in slow motion or, perhaps, like a field guide on how to recruit foreign nationals as agents to crack terrorist cells.

It feels authentic and fully realised but I'm not sure I need or want to know all this logistical stuff.  

This book seems to want me to admire the mechanics of espionage but I'm someone who has never opened the bonnet of my car to see what the engine looks like, I just use it to get me places. I'd like this book to get me somewhere fairly soon.

Agent Running in the Field, John LeCarre, author and narrator

I have always enjoyed Le Carre’s novels. This one is an exception. After listening to half the book with my husband, and struggling to make sense of it, we both agreed, the book was going nowhere. Essentially, it is about an agent working for the British Intelligence Service who is aging out of his career. Nat believed he would soon be terminated, but he was instead thrown a lifeline and given the opportunity to resurrect a defunct London office. His badminton games with Ed, another agent, are a major theme, along with his dislike of President Trump.

I have no interest in reading a bash Trump book, especially one that is slow. Therefore, once again, I have decided to do something I find myself doing more and more often, recently, something I never considered doing in the past. I have decided not to finish the book. It is slow and tedious and does not invite me back. There is too little time to read all of the books being mass produced today, to stick with a book I do not love. I am moving on.

In addition, the author should have hired a professional reader. Perhaps the tone and expression would then have been more encouraging and would have better interpreted the dialogue.