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That will give you an unfair advantage in forum debates!
I already have that. I never misuse my powers.
Oh, mentioned and quoted in the LALD novel. Not sure if I already have it though I do have other books of his, including his Letters.
I'm glad to hear it! Have you read Fleming's Thrilling Cities (1963)?
I liked the movie too, but the novel is far better, a proper pastiche of 19th century Gothic horror/ghost stories. The movie was more like a ripoff of The Ring with an English touch, made as a period piece. The novel stick far better to the genre and the time the story is set in.
Any literary horror recommendations, @Ludovico?
A few: Where do I start? M.R. James, E Nesbit, F. Marion Crawford, Ray Russell for a more modern take... There are also a couple of great anthologies out there.
At the moment I am reading Gil Kane: The Art of the Comics and a badly translated book on Ottoman sultans.
Haven't seen the TV version but the novel is far superior to the movie.
I bought this collection yesterday after watching the Vincent Price film Masque of the Red Death. I was a big fan of Roger Corman's Poe film adaptions in my youth. I have not read any of Poe's work since school.
Poe is obviously good, too, @Fire_and_Ice_Returns. Great time of year to pick that collection up. It's been a few years for me as well. I think I've read most of his short stories. Some are definitely easier to get into than others.
I guess I favor short stories in general for the Halloween season. Robert Aickman is interesting writer to check out. He wrote some awfully atmospheric short stories that kind of work their way into your subconscious. "Wine Dark Sea" is a good one. Charles Beaumont wrote wonderful stuff, too. "Black Country," "The Hunger." All those mid-century writers churned out good stuff. Richard Matheson ("Prey"), Robert Bloch, Dahl, John Collier.
As far as other material, Fleming's TSWLM always quite suitably sets the mood on a late windy October night!
Earlier this year I got a copy of Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, and I've been waiting for October 1 to start it. There's a chapter for each night leading up to Halloween, and that's how I suppose I'll read it.
I think I've read that one, but I don't own it. I'll see if I can pick it up!
The book on kindle I purchased is illustrated it has old Poe related items such as newspaper clippings, photos and old advertisements.
Indeed I rarely do anything for Halloween I live in England, though Poe' s works may fuel some enthusiasm this year.
One of the great ambassadors for writing, though. I remember being interested in the guy for a long time, before reading any of his stuff, purely on that basis.
BOOK 15
COLONEL SUN
by Kingsley Amis
You might say that I’m a bit of a Fleming purist. Continuation novels written by Gardner, Benson and others have so far never been able to motivate me to read them. Despite having heard good things about them, Bond is synonymous with Fleming for me and others feel like intruders, perpetrators and blasphemers, even though I’m intelligent enough to realize this denunciation makes absolutely no sense. And yet, in all those years of reading and re-reading Fleming, not once had it occurred to me that perhaps I should at the very least give COLONEL SUN a try —until now. Kingsley Amis’s book is, after all, included in many lists of the “Fleming” Bond books; it’s received the same newspaper comic strip treatment as the Flemings, it is often printed as a part of yet another release of the Fleming Bond collection and it was written only a few years after Fleming’s departure from this world. All these elements make COLONEL SUN feel somewhat legitimate as a part of a Fleming Bond “bookathon”. So while I still haven’t the faintest urge to dive into Gardner’s books or any of the other continuation novels, I finally have, for the first time in my life, ordered a copy of COLONEL SUN. I sit down, drop Barry’s scores for THE SPECIALIST, THE BLACK HOLE and PLAYING BY HEART in my CD player, and get ready for a Mediterranean adventure.
With the events of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN well behind him, James Bond is living a fairly good life. But things take a turn for the worse when M is brutally kidnapped from his home, Quarterdeck. The nasty buggers, who have also killed M’s gentle housekeepers, are presently still waiting for Bond. 007 makes a narrow escape at best, but fails to prevent the perpetrators from taking M off British soil. A few easily pieced together clues send Bond to the Greek island of Vrakonisi. Once there, he joins forces with a Russian group and together they must face a common threat: Chinese Colonel Sun Liang-tan. Sun intends to stir up present attempts at a successful détente in the Middle-East, and aims to implicate the British in the process. Communist team member Ariadne Alexandrou very quickly gets romantically involved with Bond, and together they embark on a mission to liberate M from the sadistic Sun and thwart his dangerous plans.
Kingsley Amis is no Ian Fleming and he himself admits as much. While he strives to stay as close to Fleming as possible in terms of plot structure and tone, there are times when he does his own thing. Some moments in the book are particularly violent, even by Fleming’s standards, but they are also quite effective. The character of Colonel Sun, for example, doesn’t have to walk in the shadows of LeChiffre, Mr. Big or Grant in terms of viciousness and cruelty. But on other occasions, Fleming’s absence is painfully felt. His particular choice of words to describe distinct places or to make us feel the sexual tension between Bond and the girl is entirely different from Amis’s. It’s probably for the best that the latter doesn’t try to copycat Fleming all the way. Any artist should ultimately just work from his own skillset. But as this is the “15th” novel in the Fleming canon of Bond novels, one tends to notice the differences in wording and style choices right away.
That said, Amis’s own writing style works well in other places. The torture scene at the end of the novel really qualifies as a tense one. The horror of M’s invaded house is another exquisite chapter in the book. Some of the dialogues are much to my liking. Unfortunately, I have struggled a bit in the middle of the book, with chapter upon chapter adding nothing to the story and doing very little to promote the plot. We go places and we talk about things and in a vacuum, most of these moments offer interesting perspectives on world politics, the quest for personal vendetta and more. But the main story feels protracted, almost frozen at times, leaving me clueless about the author’s pacing strategies.
Perhaps I need to read this book a second, third, fourth, … time before I can come to a decent conclusion. Since Kingsley Amis isn’t called Ian Fleming and since I’ve read Fleming’s books countless times before and Amis’s only this one time, any conclusion at this point is probably an imbalanced one. So with that in mind, I’ll do my very best to be as fair as possible. I can certainly rate this book higher than Fleming’s lesser efforts; in fact, I like the story and its main characters quite a bit. The tenser moments, though present in the smallest of doses, really grab me by the throat. Characters like Col. Sun and Ariadne, but also ally Niko Litsas and ex-Nazi von Richter, make fine additions to the world of Bond. By the same token, however, I feel that the main text could have been trimmed down a bit, leaving out some “spurious” parts for the benefit of pace and narrative focus. Amis was no doubt a competent writer and I’m sure the Bond legacy could have fallen in lesser hands, so I’m overall not disparaging the man’s efforts. But there are lulls in the book which I was forced to labour through. They exist in the Flemings as well, but perhaps not in as obvious a way. All things considered, I’ve had a good time with the book, and I salute Amis for having had the guts to try and fill some pretty big shoes.
7.5/10
DD's 2018 book ranking
1) Casino Royale - 10/10
2) On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 9.5/10
3) Moonraker - 9.5/10
4) From Russia With Love - 9/10
5) Dr No - 8.5/10
6) You Only Live Twice - 8/10
7) The Spy Who Loved Me - 8/10
8) Live And Let Die - 8/10
9) Diamonds Are Forever - 7.5/10
10) The Man With The Golden Gun - 7.5/10
11) Colonel Sun - 7.5/10
12) Goldfinger - 7/10
13) Octopussy And The Living Daylights - 7/10
14) For Your Eyes Only - 7/10
15) Thunderball - 6.5/10