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The thing is, the book is already released, and I even saw it was available to order through Amazon UK. I just don’t understand why the book would be delayed like that in the US when it is already finished.
I went ahead and took your advice. Funny enough, it was cheaper to buy the book through Amazon UK than it would have been to buy it through the US site. And that includes the shipping cost.
1964
BOOK 16
SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW JAMES BOND
by Clive Gifford
Yes, I do. I like to think that I know James Bond. Or at least I like to think that I know James Bond well enough to be able to pass a quiz on the subject of 007. But just to make sure that I qualify as a hardcore James Bond fan, I bought Clive Gifford’s SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW JAMES BOND – THE UNAUTHORISED QUIZ BOOK, published in 2006.
I’ll admit it, I’m lying. I bought the book because I’m a collector of Bond stuff and like so many fans I went through a period of ordering every new item in the James Bond catalogue, including “unauthorized” ones like this book. I have gotten smarter since. But with the book in my possession anyway, I figured I might as well page through it and take the bloody quiz sooner or later. And “sooner or later” turned out to be last Friday night…
SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW JAMES BOND offers 50 questions per film, about every film from DR NO to DIE ANOTHER DAY, excluding the two non-EON films. A so-called “mixed quiz”, no doubt added before the release of Craig’s first film, also includes some trivial questions about CASINO ROYALE. Gifford probes our minds for answers to preposterously simple questions like “which character in [Thunderball] wears an eyepatch on his left eye” and “what is the first gadget Q shows Bond [in Licence To Kill]?” Some tougher ones are included too, like “what is the registration of the helicopter Bond flies in at the start of [For Your Eyes Only]?” Not really the sort of detail I pay a lot of attention to, but a welcome challenge nonetheless. You see, the casual Bond fan ought to be able to get at least a good 1000 of the 1050 answers right without cheating. In fact, a true Bond fan doesn’t even have to read the full question most of the time. When a question in the DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER chapter begins with “who” and says “fingerprint scanning” two words later, the answer is most obviously Q and never mind further details like “Vegas” and “casino”. The author’s proclivity for asking really simple things like “what code number was British agent, Alec Trevalyan?” heavily reduces the fun even a seasoned Bond fan could still have with James Bond quizzes. Some of the Internet quizzes on James Bond that I have taken in my spare time are much more puzzling and thus also a lot more exciting and in fact educational.
This, of course, makes me wonder whom this book is intended for in the first place. Us? Most likely not, since that would be like submitting a mathematics professor to simple high school geometry problems. The child or layman then; the person who knows that James Bond is 007 but couldn’t tell you which film features the Octopussy cult? I’m not sure if such a distant fan cares enough to qualify as your target demographic for this book. You understand why I seriously doubt we’re dealing with a bestseller here.
The book’s number 1 failure, in my opinion, is its organizational choice to offer separate segments of questions arranged by film. Far more interesting for us, Bond fans, would have been quizzes about links, patterns, contradictions, … across the entire series, but clearly, that’s not what the author had in mind. While such questions might have resulted in a few thought-provoking new perspectives on certain details from the Bond films, they would also have rendered the book exceptionally niche. But at least it would have had a target demographic then; now I’m not sure if it has any at all! Also, I find it severely disappointing that no questions are asked about the Fleming books, the movie scores, behind-the-scenes trivia and more. The author restricts his focus to the films, indisputably trying to include as broad a readership as possible, though again I submit that by doing so, he has actually narrowed said readership to those few collectors foolish enough, like yours truly, to buy this book.
Another issue I developed with the book early on lies with the medium itself. Verification of answers, if desired of course, must be done by constantly flipping between the questions and the appendix at the end of the book. It bothered me that I had to do so because that’s just not a very comfortable way of reading a book, even if “reading” hardly matters here. But let us make no mistake about the outdatedness of the format. In 2006, the Internet already offered countless perfectly satisfying quizzes about literally everything, including James Bond. You click, and the program reveals the score. So you can forget about jumping back and forth between the middle and the end of the book. Even if we assume that this book would be used to breathe new life into a dead geek party with a James Bond quiz, the Internet is still a much more convenient way of doing that. So why bother?
Indeed, why bother? Apparently, Clive Gifford has authored over 90 books for children and adults on a variety of subjects. He has even won a few awards for some of those, so I assume he’s a good and prolific writer. But SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW JAMES BOND strikes me as a masturbatory effort, intended as an easy crowd pleaser but overall failing to add anything new to the plethora of James Bond reference books already available out there. Since this book neither examines nor critically reviews the Bond films but instead milks an old and dry cow even dryer by asking, for instance, dozens of “who” questions to which the answer is “James Bond”, I can only describe it as an unacceptably dull book. Going through it is not a pleasant way to kill a few hours but hard labour. And I performed said labour because the completist in me feels tragically compelled to finish any book he starts. In this case, SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW JAMES BOND helped to reassure me that my knowledge of the most superficial facts regarding the first 20 Bond films is still strong. And that’s the best thing I can say about this book. I cannot comment on the author’s prose, story, character design, … His efforts go about as far as those of the people who assemble calendars with a silly joke for each day of the year printed on them. While keeping in mind that this is barely what you might call “a book”, I can nevertheless say that it’s without a doubt the most disappointing “book” I have “read” so far this year. Even the medium feels obsolete if not the content alone. I cannot endorse you buying this compilation of James Bond questions; do not buy this book, it’s utterly useless.
1.5/10
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
16) So You Think You Know James Bond - 1.5/10
I read that in the year 2000, ironically a few months before C4's Big Brother first aired. Great novel. It's also the year I was born. :)
Indeed it is. Orwell was quite the visionary. A very dystopian vision of the future. He foresaw the CCTV surveillance culture and so many other plagues of the modern world.
Of course. How could I forget?! The fake news. Fake news.
I'd actually say that Orwell was not prophetic and he did not write 1984 as a prophetic novel. He wrote a cautionary tale about a far left utopia (although he was himself a socialist or at least social democrat). Very little if any of the technology used in Oceania was inexistant or unheard of in 1948, Ingsoc ideology was a thinly disguised crypto Marxist with a dash of fascism and more importantly the premisse leading to Oceanian society were at best far fetched, something Orwell was conscious about. Having a CCTV equivalent in 1984 is more a lucky guess than anything else.
BOOK 17
JAMES BOND THE SECRET WORLD OF 007
by Alastair Dougall
There was a time when I would have loved reading a book that pretends the world of the cinematic James Bond is perfectly real; a book that treats all the characters, gadgets, missions… as the subject of scientific scrutiny. In fact, I would probably have gone through such a book twelve times a day, every single day of the year, most of those times without actually reading the text but instead just looking at the pictures and absorbing all the fanciful details. I would also have been about 10 years old, 15 at most. And while I have managed to retain my youthful looks, I am well past that age now.
JAMES BOND THE SECRET WORLD OF 007 doesn’t strike me as a book written for Bond fans my age, people who have already studied and discussed all the films at length, who have memorized every single ridiculous detail and who have come to understand that sometimes an object is just an object and not a concealed weapon, communication gadget or motor vehicle. To enjoy the films, including the sillier ones, is one thing; to express jubilant delight when reading a book that childishly explains the world of Bond to me as if it were real, now that’s something else entirely. The emphasis, by the way, in on “childishly”. You can follow this model and still remain informative. This book, however, sees us as an audience of pre-teens who have heard of Bond but haven’t watched a single movie yet.
JAMES BOND THE SECRET WORLD OF 007 opens with a message from ‘M’, informing us that it’s quite unusual for MI6 to provide such open access to its most secret files. I’m immediately horrorstricken that this is the path the authors have chosen. The book then takes us through some general Bond-related themes (Q, locations, girls,…) and eventually hops from film to film in a systematic fashion, listing and depicting props, gadgets, characters, vehicles and even beautifully drawn lay-outs of the many villains’ lairs. Every left and right page form one large canvas on which images from the films and artistic renditions of objects lie chaotically spread. Small text strips are forced in between and around those pictures, resulting in a confusing, unordered and fragmented collection of trivia. This undoubtedly creates a pleasant reading dynamic for young and easily distracted readers, but it’s not really something I can still enjoy at my age. In fact, the book reminds me of some educational reading material my parents used to throw under the Christmas tree. Such books would always assume that an overabundance of pictures and a lack of dense and lengthy prose can win an unfocused mind’s attention. Sadly, the book also fell victim to several off-putting lay-out errors. Words are sometimes missing or literally trapped behind pictures. Said pictures are, for the most part, of excellent quality; and yet, there are times when the picture quality is the very opposite of excellent. One example quickly springs to mind: an image of Moon’s North-Korean base from the DIE ANOTHER DAY pre-credits sequence looks like someone photographed the television screen with a cheap mobile phone when the film was on. The uneven picture quality, the fact that a few slipups in that department were so easily overlooked, falsely suggests that some of the insert work was done by an amateur operating from a Windows ’95 system.
The problem is also that Bond is not an exact science. The author, Alastair Dougall, often just makes up stuff to lend more credence to a certain tool or character. For example, according to this book, May-Day was genetically modified, just like Zorin. That’s a first for me. I always thought of her as simply a well-trained woman. Likewise, the gas attendant visited by Bond right before “All Time High” starts playing, is, according to this book, an MI6 agent… Emphasis is furthermore placed on seemingly irrelevant parts of vehicles, clothing, lairs and more, almost as if to make things much more ingenious and futuristically exciting than they really are. This is definitely where I draw the line. Treating random objects like marvels of technology and presenting them the same way an infant would imagine an engineer or architect to do it, the book becomes borderline insulting after a while. I’m not only not learning anything new, I’m instead forced to tolerate false focal points and made-up stuff. The only thing that keeps me going, are the impressive illustrations by Roger Stewart.
Stewart elevates everything, from Dr. No’s nuclear chamber to Blofeld’s oil rig hideout, to a level almost too good for this book. His drawings remind me of books I’ve found in my parents’ collections, dating back to the 60s. They are quite charming and colorful; a book with nothing but those drawings would still be worth the full price. Other drawings include “exploded” diagrams of events and moves from the movies, detailing every important phase of the event in a linear sequence--frame-by-frame as it were. The true artist behind this book, for me personally, is Roger Stewart.
If this book really wants us to believe that these are genuine MI6 files, how does it cope then with the fact that we’ve had six different actors in the role of Bond so far? Well, the book never shows Connery, Lazenby, Moore or Dalton (except in the appendix) but only acknowledges Brosnan. My copy ends with QUANTUM OF SOLACE and the final two chapters also feature pictures of Craig, no doubt inserted to make reprints of the book more commercially viable during the Craig years. Either way, the painful absence of pictures of our first four actors is, of course, part of the fictional premise that this book is published in the world of Bond. And this is what I struggle with most. I haven’t forgotten what it was like to be a Bond fan at a single digit age, but as an adult, I cannot be expected to enjoy this reversed fourth-wall gimmick for dozens and dozens of pages. I’m not angry with the author or the illustrator, though. This is clearly a book for the youngest Bond fans out there. I was once one of them and this book would have rocked my world back then.
THE SECRET WORLD OF 007 will teach you nothing and in times of DVD, Bluray and Internet everything, at least half of the pictures, the ones taken directly from the films, fail to justify an investment in this book as well. In fact, the only thing that made me glad to have paged through the book, is the substantial collection of Stewart’s dazzling illustrations. They alone are worth your time and, possibly, your money. Everything else is a pretentious waste of time and a failed attempt at making us believe that we have tumbled down the rabbit hole and into James Bond wonderland. But if you are new to the game, possibly not even a teen, go ahead and enjoy this book. You’ll love it; it was meant for you. And only for you.
4/10
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
16) James Bond The Secret World Of 007 - 4/10
17) So You Think You Know James Bond - 1.5/10
BOOK 18
THE MAKING OF CASINO ROYALE (1967)
by Michael Richardson
I had watched and re-watched all of the Bond films already released when in 1996, a friend of mine introduced me to CASINO ROYALE, though at first only in name. Remember, those were the pre-Internet days for most of us, but my friend had one of those annually updated film databases on CD-ROM. (Coolest kid on the playground. Well, maybe not, but I was nevertheless very jealous.) One time, he decided to challenge little old me, a self-proclaimed Bond connoisseur. I was 14, mind. My friend asked me if I had ever heard of CASINO ROYALE. Of course I had; Fleming’s first novel. I had even read it. Then my friend inquired into my awareness of a film by that name. Nonsense, I said, no such film has ever been made. Something about rights issues or whatever. And suddenly, a printed text from the digital database was scornfully shoved in my face. It talked about a 1967 CASINO ROYALE adaptation, starring people whom I knew of course, including David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress, Orson Welles and the hot babe from THE DEEP. I stood perplexed, but rather than beating the living daylights out of my friend for publicly humiliating me, I thanked him for this valuable piece of trivia and proudly declared that I had found a new mission in life. I would track down this film CASINO ROYALE, no matter what. That said, I was a pretty lazy person back then so I decided to let the film find me rather than the other way around.
Sometime later, my mother surprised me with a little present: a new release of CASINO ROYALE on videotape. Unbeknownst to her, this cheap little film she had picked up in the video store--"my son loves James Bond and I have never spotted a David Niven one in his collection before”--was precisely the one I had been wanting to see for a few weeks now. See? The film would find me alright. Horribly excited and full of expectations, I threw myself on the couch, ready to watch this film from start to finish and nothing would interrupt me, not even the Apocalypse! But after about five minutes, my jaws were on the floor. What the--?
Can you blame me? I was 14 and had no knowledge of the production history of this film. How could I possibly have been prepared for this psychedelic chaos, for this insult to Ian Fleming’s legacy? Out of respect for my mother, I treated the videotape like I treated all others I had; I put it safely away and pretended it had been a delight. But mother, you wouldn’t like this film so please don’t watch it. It’s too loud, too noisy, and you don’t appreciate those things. Yes, I know you were around in the 60s--look, just promise me you won’t watch this one… And yet, within a mere few weeks after swallowing the bitter pill of horror and disillusionment, something lured me back to the film. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that challenged me to another duel, but I felt perversely fascinated by this mind-blowing clutter from the nineteen sixties. Groovy! I stopped trying to extract a Bond film out of it and began a long-lasting romance with the strange amalgamate of astonishingly beautiful girls, impressive sets, quirky performances and the wonderful Burt Bacharach score. Incompatible though they were, all the segments of the film, individually, screamed outrageously loud in their respective genres. This wasn’t a Bond film by any stretch of the imagination. This wasn’t even a film by any conventional standards of plot consistency! But it called to me, almost religiously, and it both intrigued and amused me. I became one of those people, yes.
The following years, I started to dive a lot deeper into the production history of the Bond films. Reading up on how CASINO ROYALE had come into existence, things suddenly began to make sense. It dawned on me that producer Charles K. Feldman had sought refuge to “spoofing”, purely out of fear of suffering stiff competition from the EON films, and also that the film wasn’t a box office bomb despite general belief to the contrary. Meanwhile, interaction with Bond fans from all over the world taught me that many people are pulling a “BATMAN AND ROBIN” on this one, pretending it never happened. Harsh denial of its existence had befallen CASINO ROYALE almost by default. The 2006 EON film of the same name, starring Daniel Craig and Eva Green, is usually considered ‘the’ CASINO ROYALE, replacing the 1967 film as ‘the’ adaptation of Fleming’s novel. And yet, I cannot complete a Bond film marathon without paying a visit to this ugly duckling. And time and again, I’m amazed by how compulsively watchable it is, even without drugs. Once again: groovy!
And then in 2015 a “making of” book is published about CASINO ROYALE (1967). Film researcher Michael Richardson devotes some 200 densely written pages to a luscious account of the troubled production history of Feldman’s ambitious Bond project. Several years in the making, sending Columbia’s costs through the roof and bruising many egos, CASINO ROYALE’s story is a never-ending collection of jaw-dropping anecdotes. More or less chronologically told, the tale of how this film came to be, deserves its own movie adaptation, something in the vein of THE DISASTER ARTIST. Compiled from various sources, copiously referenced in footnotes, Richardson’s account is simultaneously amusing and tragic. Fingers are accusingly pointed in the direction of Feldman, who allegedly understood nothing about filmmaking, and of Peter Sellers, whose increasingly troublesome outbursts of childish egotripping damaged the film more than anything else. Richardson pays enormous attention to detail, throwing the vault wide open as it were. Having consulted several sources before, including a “making of” special on the CASINO ROYALE (1967) BluRay and a chapter devoted to the film in John Cork and Bruce Scivally’s JAMES BOND: THE LEGACY, I was surprised to learn so many more new things by reading this book. In fact, the only reason I didn’t finish reading the book in one sitting is an old-fashioned case of lacking time; that’s how into the material I was. Apart from his thorough research, seemingly leaving no stone unturned, Richardson should also pride himself on his very entertaining prose. It’s one thing to write about a fascinating subject, it’s another thing entirely to write about it in a fascinating manner. He does both.
THE MAKING OF CASINO ROYALE (1967) is a pocket-sized paperback without pictures. It could have easily been scaled-up to a large hardcover book replete with coloured photos, adding a visual dimension to this journey. However, costs would have gone up no doubt and I’m not sure Richardson and publisher Telos could have just grabbed stills and images from the film. The best way to read the book as it now is, in my opinion, is to watch the film first and watch it again after reading. What it did for me is appreciate certain scenes a lot more, and also appreciate the technical efforts that went into the picture. I additionally tend to be a little less kind towards diva Sellers now that I have learned even more about his extravagant conduct. The book furthermore talks about various drafts of the script and certain ideas and filmed scenes that were eventually dropped from the final cut. Here and there, leftovers from those ideas can still be found in the film. Understanding where they come from certainly helps to make some sense out of all the jazz Columbia’s half-cooked final cut would eventually provide. Lastly, the book doesn’t beg us to love the film or regard it as the best thing you’ve ever seen but were too dumb to understand. Richardson is perfectly honest in his assessments and he doesn’t shy away from pointing out all that’s wrong with the film. Nor does he forget there’s something like the EON Productions Bond films: he expresses no animosity towards CASINO ROYALE’s principal competitor. Like any good film journalist, he writes without imparting personal taste.
I have found a review of the book online that calls Richardson’s text “pedestrian writing”. I fail to see where that comes from. Rather than being a namby-pamby academic writer, Richardson toys around with words to get his ideas conveyed in a clear and amusing way. Then again, if you’re expecting a highbrow, scholarly assessment which pulls all the joy out of the reading experience, you’re likely to have no business learning about CASINO ROYALE (1967) anyway. Another reviewer was keen to point out that the text abruptly stops halfway through the book. Nonsense. The story of the film runs for a qualified 184 pages; an additional 45 pages is filled with biographies and appendices. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that. Luckily, most reviews I have read are completely positive, and I share those sentiments. I had a blast reading THE MAKING OF CASINO ROYALE (1967). It provides useful insights in one of the most contested of all the “Bond films”--and yes, to call it a Bond film is like painting a large target for shooting practice on my back. The anecdotal bits in the book come in large quantities but are never a hindrance. Ultimately, it is a fascinating journey into an almost insane production history, burdened with poor decisions and rife with obscene excesses of all kinds. The result, a psychedelic trip down crazy lane, serves as a testament of that marvelous decade in which Adam West performed the Bat-dance, William Shatner bedded alien poontang and living Volkswagen Beetles won car races. Viewed in a time capsule, CASINO ROYALE (1967) is the perfect example of how the Free Love Movement may have conceived a Bond film at the time. It planted the seeds for Austin Powers’ grandiose tributes to the EON Bonds. But it’s far from a perfect film. Who would want that anyway? Its many imperfections, politely put, have perhaps secured its incessant relevance as one of the best worst films of all time. Whether you’re a fan of the film or not, every Bond fan should at least be prepared to learn more about the curious story behind the first albeit troubled movie adaptation of Fleming’s first book. Would it have been better if Fleming had never sold the rights to his original novel until Harry and Cubby joined forces? Perhaps. Then again, The Look Of Love and “Ai. It worries me too.” are two of many reasons why I enjoy revisiting the film that was deemed “too much for one James Bond” once every two or so years. So let’s play the piper, chill out, duck for explosive grouse, and go nuts. Thanks to Richardson’s book, it all starts making sense, in so far as that’s possible of course…
9/10
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) The Making Of Casino Royale (1967) - 9/10
6) Dr No - 8.5/10
7) You Only Live Twice - 8/10
8) The Spy Who Loved Me - 8/10
9) Live And Let Die - 8/10
10) Diamonds Are Forever - 7.5/10
11) The Man With The Golden Gun - 7.5/10
12) Colonel Sun - 7.5/10
13) Goldfinger - 7/10
14) Octopussy And The Living Daylights - 7/10
15) For Your Eyes Only - 7/10
16) Thunderball - 6.5/10
17) James Bond The Secret World Of 007 - 4/10
18) So You Think You Know James Bond - 1.5/10
Besant? What is A. Besant?
Collection of short stories ranging from 8 to 60 pages, first published 1950-1962.
"I Remember Babylon"
"Summertime on Icarus"
"Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting..."
"Who's There?"
"Hate"
"Into the Comet"
"An Ape about the House"
"Saturn Rising"
"Let There be Light"
"Death and the Senator"
"Trouble With Time"
"Before Eden"
"A Slight Case of Sunstroke"
"Dog Star"
"The Road to the Sea"
Thank you, sir. None here that I have read before. I will seek the book out!
1913
"Summertime on Icarus"-THE HOTTEST PLACE OF REAL ESTATE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
"Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting..."-OUT OF THE CRADLE
"Who's There?"-THE HAUNTED SPACESUIT
"Hate"-AT THE END OF THE ORBIT
"Into the Comet"-INSIDE THE COMET
"Trouble With Time"-CRIME ON MARS
"A Slight Case of Sunstroke"-THE STROKE OF THE SUN
"Dog Star"-MOONDOG
"The Road to the Sea"-SEEKER OF THE SPHINX
I still haven't read them. I've read most of Clarke's novels, though.
If we're talking Asimov, things are different. I've read almost every Asimov book I've ever managed to find. I rank him slightly higher than Clarke.
Norwegian translation of Robert Rankin s THE ANTIPOPE (1981)