To Mr. Bond

This is a letter from Agent George Smiley from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to James Bond in Casino Royale.  Two books I have just finished reading. Both are espionage novels set in the Cold War.

Falling in Love With the Villain

              We all have our favorite hero or heroes. But generally, we don’t think about our favorite villain—but we all have one. Villains have become increasingly popular in the past decade. Despicable Me proved that with a story all about rooting for the villain. Jack Sparrow—Captain Jack Sparrow, is obviously the villainous figure in the Caribbean. The Governor and his men are clearly the ones who stand for good and democracy and Jack stands for revolt and piracy. However, everyone roots for the pirates and you want Jack to get away with it and have it “be the day when you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow.” There’s a certain thing about these sorts of villains that turn them into more of anti-heroes and make the audience like them. And part of this is because of the increasing amount of prequels coming out of Hollywood in the past decade.

                Darth Vader is the most beloved villain of all time. In Return of the Jedi he becomes good and he ends the reign of the Emperor, dying in the process. From then on, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker becomes a villain people enjoy and they don’t want to see him lose. Then when George Lucas creates the prequels and we see Anakin as a child and learn why he becomes Darth Vader, we fall more and more in love with seeing the ominous, masked villain. Throughout the Harry Potter series we learn more and more about Lord Voldemort’s childhood and his history. We learn it’s not the best childhood and we sympathize a little with him. A better example is Professor Snape. He is portrayed as a more villainous character throughout the series until we go back in his life and see that he was scarred by the loss of a loved one and we see why he was so villainous. We sympathize with their stories.

                Villain’s stories are the best stories. They’re often better than the actual protagonist’s story and you can learn more from the villain than you can the hero. That’s why the world has fallen in love with the villain.  

The Best Scene So Far

The chapters in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are somewhat short and can sometimes be choppy, skipping into different characters and different points of different days. But my favorite scene so far has been chapter two, when we are introduced to George Smiley, who is having a pretty bad, was recently separated from his wife, and let go from the agency, and has the last name Smiley which is just something no person should have to live with. What I love about this George, is he just doesn’t know. Or maybe I don’t know. There’s lots of mystery between characters. But one of my favorite parts in chapter two is when he is invited to Roddy Martindale’s house for dinner and Martindale tells George why he lost his job and that George’s supervisor, whom he was very close with, really isn’t dead. Can you imagine having a horrible day, you lost your job, then your wife leaves you and takes out most of the money in your account, then some guy you just met tells you why you really lost your job and that one of your good friends and old boss isn’t really dead? Can you imagine that day? And having the last name Smiley? So there’s all that and then it twists into what Martindale thinks, and Martindale believes for “reasons” that Smiley didn’t really lose his job and is still running something confidential within the agency. Chapter 2 has been my favorite scene so far because of the constant piling of strange, sometimes depressing, mystery. 

My Top 5 Books. Ever.

5. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The story and plot twists in this book are extremely screwed up and unthinkable. However, the book was very well written and I loved Julian Barnes style, minus his sick and disturbing plot twists.


4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
Yes, I'm choosing a Harry Potter book. This is my favorite book because there is so much to it. I can't imagine writing as much as JK Rowling did just for one book and there is so much mystery to it.


3. The Shack by William Paul Young
The Shack is a fictional Christian book but whether you're a devoted Christian or a hardcore athiest you'll love the plot of this novel. There is continuous mystery and danger and really convicts a person on if they're holding grudges or not and right when you get to the end and you think everything is ok, it's not.

2. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
One of the best stories ever written. Even if you think Holden Caulfield is a snobby little punk you have to appreciate Salinger's style of writing and how much he crafts his characters, especially Holden. Loved this book.



1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is the American story. The roaring 20's were a giant pop culture party with corruption everywhere. Something I've always like about The Great Gatsby is comparing it to today's society and how things are still pretty similiar. Plus, a character like Gatsby doesn't come along in a lot of stories and he is probably the most fascinating character in any story I've ever read.

Casino Royale to Big Screen

Casino Royale was a fantastic film! I ended up watching the 2006 version, with Daniel Craig as James Bond.

            Lately I’ve been talking about genres and if they’re important or not and I’ve been pretty negative about genres. I’ve said they don’t really matter. But I’ve learned that when books hit the big screen, genre is very important. When I reviewed and compared The Rum Diary the film and adaptation wasn’t that great and it was a rather boring movie. Casino Royale was a fun and very exciting film. The Rum Diary was a fictional narrative. A narrative has potential to either be an ok film or a pretty boring film. Casino Royale is a action packed, espionage thriller. Has potential to be very fun and exciting as a movie. That’s why The Rum Diary was not well received by critics and the general audience and Casino Royale was very well received by the general public—but not all critics loved it and I can understand why.

            The big game in the novel is Bond playing Le Chiffre in Baccarat at the Casino Royale. In the movie, the game is Texas Hold ‘Em and the terrorist group Le Chiffre is playing for is called SMERSH in the novel but stays unnamed in the novel. Already, this is a classic example of how all the details in the novel cannot fit into the movie. As for Baccarat and Texas Hold ‘Em, I don’t get that. Personally, I don’t know Baccarat that well, but I know Texas Hold ‘Em very well. So my only guess is the directors wanted a card game that many people were more acquainted with.

            The other big thing that I’m having trouble figure out is Bond’s morals. In the novel, Bond is confused on the line that divides good and evil believe that good and evil are based on perception, so he could be good or evil. He also does not support killing and in the novel does not kill a single person. In the movie he doesn’t really care much about what is good and evil and kills a ton of people. He shoots tons of bad guys and just destroys anything that gets in his way. My biggest problem with this is the morals. Morals are what define a character in any story. And in the novel and the movie, as much as I enjoyed Daniel Craig playing Bond, Bond’s character doesn’t match up at all. I don’ think there was anything theatrically wrong with Bond’s novel character and don’t know why it needed change. Another small thing I noticed towards the end of the movie is James Bond didn’t smoke at all! In the movie, he’s always smoking. All the time. It was things like these with Bond’s character that bothered me. The plot stayed pretty consistent, the outcome and resolution stayed pretty consistent. However, when you mess with the main character’s morals then you start to screw with who they are and it isn’t the same character as the book.

            Unfortunately, though, Hollywood has brainwashed me and all these differences don’t make too much of difference because I loved the movie. 

The Semi-Fictional Non-Fiction Truth About Memoirs

I hate memoirs and non-fiction. I think I've mentioned that I don’t read non-fiction. However, I love a book based off of a true story—based off of, but not completely true, making it not non-fiction. When authors write something based off of a true story, some of the time they write about their lives or experiences but they sensationalize whatever it is they’re writing to make it sound cool and appeal to an audience. This is still fiction, even though it’s based off of someone’s life or experiences.

There’s a reason memoirs aren't very well liked by the average community, especially teenagers. They have nothing exciting to them. James Frey wrote A Million Little Pieces as a non-fictional memoir about his life and experiences. The book was very exciting and had lots of compelling events in it. It became a best seller because of its tremendous sales and good reception. Too bad it was fake. Frey sensationalized multiple events in his book. Wikipedia—though it isn't the most credible source—describes A Million Little Pieces as a “semi-fictional memoir.” How is that a memoir though if it’s semi-fictional? That means part of it isn't real. Memoirs are non-fiction pieces that describe one’s life. So if a memoir is semi-fictional then it didn't happen in that person’s life. So, it’s not a memoir.

All of this is just one more big reason I don’t like memoirs. It won’t be good or exciting if it isn't sensationalized and fake. This would make it not a memoir. 

Labeling Casino Royale

There are some books out there that people have a hard time putting them into one specific genre. And, while I do believe a book cannot be placed into one, single genre, they all have the one general, non-specific genre it belongs too. They say Harry Potter is fantasy. Star Wars is science fiction. They all have the one obvious genre and there really isn’t anymore that they need to be. I think if you leave it to that one specific genre then that is ok. I think Twilight is a romance. Others say it’s a romantic drama or a paranormal romance or gothic romance. Why do we need all of those tags? It’s a romance. Why keep adding words at the beginning or end?

                That’s why I like James Bond novels. They have one distinct genre—espionage. James Bond novels practically invented espionage books. When people think espionage novels they think of James Bond. Casino Royale is one of the most classic examples of espionage. It’s a top secret, confidential, dangerous and risky spy mission. Some may argue that Casino Royale could be a romantic suspense novel because of Bond’s relationship with women but that isn’t the main point of the story. Its James Bond, the spy. 

Genre Labels

Genre labels are very necessary. It’s the same thing with all these book covers and what is so important about them. If we didn’t have book cover or genre labels we wouldn’t know what we are reading. I’m not going to want to read something if it’s just a blank cover and I don’t know what kind of book it is. There’s no advertising at all.

It’d be like if you saw a commercial or preview for a movie. If it just showed you the movie title and showed a picture or scene of a character and then just said “go see this movie” then you aren’t going to have any interest in it whatsoever. You don’t know if it’s a comedy, horror, action, chick flick or whatever.

I don’t find it distracting. I mean there are labels, like non-fiction, that will turn me away from books. But that’s because I don’t like non-fiction. The genre labels help us to define what we like and dislike and what we want to read and don’t want to read. I’m sure there are people out there who see non-fiction and want to go read that book.

Book covers and genre labels are very similar things. They mean different things to different people and attract different audiences. Without them we’d be lost and all our interest would be based off of nothing. 

REVIEW 2: Casino Royale

Finally! Bond is finally being Bond and there is action and drama on every page. The book is night and day. I said in my first review of part one of the book that it was slow and lots of background details. It was necessary and it was worth it.

                One of my favorite things I’ve ever read in a book is the scene where Bond plays Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat and everything depends on the game. It is very confrontational and Fleming does an excellent job of creating tension within the scene. Because this is a blog that focuses on books made into movies, I want to point out that the tension Fleming creates on the pages is harder to create on the screen. I will watch the 2006 version of Casino Royale when I’m done with the book. But I can predict that Hollywood doesn’t get it done the way Fleming does. And this is an advantage books have. The author can take pages and pages to create the tension of a scene that takes a minute in a movie.

                One thing I love in a story is when the ‘inevitable’ hero fails. Bond loses the baccarat game which leaves him bankrupt. He has to report that he failed the mission, until he gains help from a CIA agent who give him an envelope full of money. And all of a sudden the story is going back in forth and each chapter the tension spikes and then ends with a twist. My favorite kind of story.

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover...Especially if There Isn't One

I hate boring book covers. They don’t tell me anything! Especially the book covers that are very generic and look very old fashioned. Those turn me away from the book immediately. The Harry Potter covers are extremely creative. They make me want to read the book. But The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes has an awful cover, depending on which one you look at. The cover with a gray background and an egg doesn’t interest me at all. The one with the dandelions might have interested me. If it weren’t for my English teacher, I would have never read this book, based off of its boring and generic cover. A book that targets middle school kids or 5^th or 6^th grade kids that has an uninteresting cover would be Loser by Jerry Spinelli. This is the age where kids start to judge books before they read them. And a solid green cover with the word ”loser” at the top, won’t appeal to that age group, if anything it will just hurt their feelings. The Hunger Games. To this day I have not read the book. Seen the movie, not read the book. But when people first started telling me that I had to read it, I wouldn’t. I didn’t have any clue at all what it was about. I kid you not, for so long I thought that this book was a heartwarming story about overcoming obesity. I swear! Cause the cover doesn’t offer much. A solid black cover with a circley-arrow thingy in the corner. It’s exactly like the egg on The Sense of an Ending cover. It offers nothing about the story. And I hate those kinds of covers.  

REVIEW 1: Casino Royale

Bond. James Bond. It's not what you'd expect when you read it. The movies is all about "I'm Bond. James Bond." And shooting, and explosions and James Bond not looking away from the explosion cause he's James Bond and that's what he does. The movies tend to go through the plot and the set up of the mission pretty quickly and get to the action. The book is really drawn out and everything is set up very precisely and slowly and everything has a different back story to it that Ian Flemming gives every detail about, which is what makes him such a great writer. But when you see a few '007 movies you expect a lot more action.

While the action is picking up and the book is moving a lot quicker now, the opening chapters can get pretty dry. It's all back story and there is not a lot of dialogue, another thing you wouldn't expect. You'd expect a lot of dialogue and witty catch phrases. Instead it's very detailed description of every character. And it gets pretty confusing because the descriptions are written in spy lingo like you would read them out of a file cabinet. And there is a lot of that kind of writing that can get pretty dry. Casino Royale is also set in France. So there is also a lot of French dialogue and French description that can get pretty confusing.

Overall, I like reading James Bond action. It's different from the movies because it's all slowed down so you can picture every angle and every part of the entire action. Unlike in a lot of action movies where all the action happens so fast and all at once. Although I have seen other James Bond films, I have not seen either Casino Royale films. Nor have I decided which one I will be viewing to review for my book to movie comparison. 1967 or 2006?

Best and Worst to Big Screen

Hollywood has a lot of cool special effects and a lot of money. Their technology is very advanced and makes a lot of the imagery and action in books look extremely cool. Example: The Harry Potter Series. Some people would rather read books and some would rather see movies. Most girls would rather read The Hunger Games for its inspiring literature, adventure and romance. Most guys would rather see the movie because they'd rather watch Jennifer Lawrence in a black dress with fire coming off it than read about the adventures of Katniss Everdeen. But in the end each fan is always thrilled or extremely disappointed with what Hollywood did to their book. So here is my Top 3 best and worst film adaptations.

Best Adaptations:

 3) To Kill A Mockingbird

 

Although, as I've stated in this blog before, I hate To Kill A Mockingbird I thought the film adaptation was spot on. I didn't think there was a thing wrong with the plot or characters and it was perfectly adapted for film. 

2) Jurrasic Park

Most people don't know that Jurrasic Park was a novel that came out in 1990 and was adapted into one of the most well known films of all time by Stephen Spielberg. The plot stays very consistent with the book the entire time while incorporating and creating a prehistoric world of dinosaurs in modern day with the power of Hollywood's special effects.



















1) Moneyball
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game was originally written by Michael Lewis in 2003 about the Oakland Athletics and their bold general manager Billy Beane. The book discusses much about how the economic and financial side of baseball works. The first half of the book mainly focuses on the general aspect of baseball economics then focuses on the 2002 Oakland A's and Billy Beane's unique strategy at making a run in the post season despite being the poorest team in baseball and no superstar ballplayers.
The movie focuses on Billy Beane and how he got the A's to the post season despite being the poorest team in baseball while offering insight into baseball economics. And would an audience rather see a baseball team make a Cinderella run in the playoffs while learning a little on the way or read about baseball finances with a Cinderella sports story thrown in?













Worst Adaptations:

3) The Great Gatsby
Although the plot wasn't to inaccurate the poor acting skills and slow, uninteresting settings and effects ruined F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Even if Hollywood keeps the plot great, they can't ruin it by not adding the effects and excitement that movies were created for.







 












2) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I am a huge fan of Harry Potter and was absolutely horrified when I walked out of the theater the first time I saw this movie. Much like my number one worst adaptation, the movie cut very important and key scenes from the book. The book has a very epic battle in the astronomy tower after the murder of Dumbledore. But the movie has absolutely no battle whatsoever and barely any action scene at the end. The movie also adds a scene when death eaters destroy the Weasley's home, which is not present in the book. The film is good overall, but because the plot is so twisted it belongs at number two.
















1) The Rum Diary
In my previous post I tore apart and ripped the film of The Rum Diary to pieces. In terms of plot and characters the movie was garbage. Johnny Depp was great in it. But the film just doesn't even include one of the most important characters in the book! In fact, it even replaces that character with a whole different character and that character marries another character who is married to a different character in the book and the whole story just gets screwed up and twisted. Not to mention it does a very, very, very poor job of following the plot in the book or even any real consistent plot in the movie.