The Summer Fair, Reeve's recovery and a bunch of reviews

It was Bea's school fair today. Bea wandered around with her friends while bateleur and I walked around with Ryan. He tried out various rides, we all ate hamburgers and I thought the bubble machine (blowing bubbles in one area) was great. It was also rather nice weather - much better than I remember the rest of the month being.

Reeve has more or less recovered from whatever it was that happened to him on Monday. He came home very late that night with a wound in one of his rear legs, he was subdued and limping around slowly. He also seemed much keener on us and on being fussed over than he usually is. However, he proceeded to recover over the next few days and now seems back to his usual speedy, grumpy self.

I bought myself a second-hand copy of the omnibus of the first five Carré books and I've now read the first three stories on the train.

• Call for the Dead - In many ways this was rather more murder mystery than spy story. It introduces Smiley and I found him an instantly engaging protagonist. I liked the plot, the atmosphere and other characters and headed straight on to book two.
• A Murder of Quality - This one isn't a spy story at all. It's a straightforward murder mystery set around an elitist school. Smiley plays detective and I thought it was all rather well done. It helps that I really like murder mysteries.
• The Spy who came in from the Cold - Smiley is barely in this one, instead a colleague, Alec Leamas, takes centre stage and it starts with him waiting to extract the last of his agents from East Germany. It's difficult to say much about this one without spoilering everywhere, but it's definitely a spy story and I can see why it won awards. I'm not a huge fan of the ending, but there you go.

After having to send back the first copy of North by Northwest to LoveFilms because it wouldn't play, bateleur and I watched three films in fairly quick succession.

• Skyfall - Loved Judi Dench. The rest of the cast were pretty good as well. It was gripping and enjoyable... but didn't really feel like Bond.
• North by Northwest - Ancient, but still very watchable. The three things that aged it the most were the sexism, the lighting and the car scenes. It's a lovely concept, although I suspect I was less taken with Cary Grant than I was supposed to be.
• The Hunger Games - Enjoyable, atmospheric and it seemed nicely done (although I haven't read the book). The film was obviously the first of a set. I wasn't entirely convinced by Jennifer Lawerence (although not the easiest part to act), but I liked Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz and Donald Sutherland.

The month has been very light on role-playing, but we did have the second session of Alistair's Star Wars game. It was a huge combat in a space station, followed by a huge space combat outside said station. Lots of dice rolling and damage. We also now have most of our character sheets.