CommanderBond.net
  1. The New CommanderBond.net Literary 007 Section Officially Opens

    By Evan Willnow on 2002-05-02

    CommanderBond.net is proud to introduce the new CBn Literary 007 Section.

    Much more work will need to be done to complete the whole section, but for now Phase I is complete. This first phase is the completion of 'Summaries' of all of the Ian Fleming books. These summaries are more of a quick look at each book rather than a plot run down. Each contains the first paragraph of the book, a short introduction, a bit that we are calling 'The Blurb' which contains the text from either the back or inside which was used to sell the book for one of its editions, a bit titled 'Better Than The Film' that holds a few paragraphs of the book that fits the category. Also each will list the chapter titles of the books, the dates the events of the book occurred (thanks to Walter von Tagen III), and a list of links to help find more information about the book.

    The Summaries:

    While we are not trying to re-invent the wheel with the CBn Literary 007 Section, but we are trying to reverse engineer it. The James Bond Internet is full of lists with the villains, the girls, and the locations and of reviews with four, five, or ten star ratings. While these things are good and we will provide links to some of the better ones, we will be striving to put something a bit different on CBn.

    With the Fleming summaries complete you will start seeing articles that will attempt to take a new look at the literary James Bond; including some examinations of the details, looks at the subtext, and whatever else just there seems to be a need to be said about this collection of books. Sure, we will have reviews also, but we won't be going to go out of our way just to post a collection of reviews of books that have been sitting on the shelves for forty to fifty years already. If the three hundred reviews written so far haven't encourage a die hard fan to pick up (or put down) a book that can be had from a used book store or eBay for a dollar, one more review is not going to help either. Plus we must suspect that the majority of the readers of CBn's Literary 007 Section will have read at least most of Fleming's output. We hope to present articles that might give these readers an alternate perspective to the books, perhaps encourage them to read the books again.

    And for those who have not read some or all of the books, perhaps we'll present an article that holds the spark to crack the cover that none of the myriad of reviews have.

    The next phases of the section will be as follows:
    Phase II: Amis
    Phase III: Benson
    Phase IV: Gardner
    (The Gardner phase will follow the Benson phase because, frankly, it will be a lot more work to complete.)
    In all of these phases 'Better Than The Film' snippet will be replaced by 'A Fleming Moment'.

    Stay tuned to CommanderBond.net for all the latest literary James Bond news.