From Russia With Love

What can I say? Entirely escapist. And James Bond, as written, is certainly not Sean Connery. Even though SMERSH centers its plot entirely on killing Bond, mentioning his role in the previous four books, and even though he falls straight for their ruse to capture and kill him, he doesn't seem to warrant the attention. He is not the superspy portrayed in the movies. The movie does seem to hold relatively closely to the plot, though. But it is Bond's arrogance that ends up with Kellim Bey being killed, and his lack of cunning that mistakes Red Grant for a British secret service agent. Bond's escape from Grant is entirely too easy. But it is interesting that Rosa Krebs does seem to deliver a fatal kick with a poisoned toe knife in the end of the book. I wonder if Fleming had grown tired of him by this point, but was convinced to bring him back from the dead for a sequel in Dr. No.

Author: Fleming, Ian

Date Published: 1957

Length: 7hr 52min

Narrator: Vance, Simon

Catch 22

Another book that I read as a 19/20 year old and thought was really funny and spot on then, and that I think is probably one of the great novels on re-reading now. Parts of the absurdity of it made me laugh out loud, again, but I also realized that it is so much more than a book about bureaucracy or against war. It's a book about the absurdity of the human condition, a point made by Yossarian when he walks through the streets of Rome trying to befriend Nately's whore's kid sister.

Catch 22 isn't just a bureaucratic trick; it's the trap that we are all caught in just being alive. War is just of way of making that more clear to the rest of us. I found it hard not to dismiss Yossarian and to root for him all at the same time. Of course, when he refused the deal from Colonel Korn, especially after looking for the whore's kid sister, it is one of the few "stand-up" moments in the novel.

I also had a lot of trouble not thinking that all of my life was absurd when I got up from reading it. Everything in the universe seemed like a huge joke was being played on me. But then, it really is a huge joke being played on me.

Author: Heller, Joseph

Date Published: 1961

Length: 19hr 59min

Narrator: Sanders, J. O.

Grendel

I thought that this was a great novel when I read it back in the late 70's, and it has only gotten better with age. Grendel's character is hard to deal with much of the time, but what would you expect from a nihilist who is driven by forces that he cannot control and has trouble comprehending? At times Grendel comes off as a petulant little boy who destroys because he cannot have his own way, and he calls for his uncomprehending mother a lot when he runs into trouble. He is so taken in by the poet and the stories of common humanity that it wounds him deeply when he realizes that the stories were all lies and fabrications that thrust him into the outer darkness.

The dragon is an interesting creature who can see past and future and finds all of it meaningless except for the hoarding of gold. Beowulf then comes off as something of a prig, even as he restores order to the human realm of things.

Author: Gardner, John

Date Published: 1971

Length: 5hr 31min

Narrator: Guidall, George

The Lost Symbol

Not nearly as good as DaVinci Code, and it drags on far too long, but it does for the Masons what DaVinci did for Knights Templar, et. Al. An awful lot of the book seems very far fetched, but it was kinda like a detective novel built around new age themes and conspiracy theories all rolled into one. Enjoyable but not nearly as compelling as Brown's other work.

Author: Brown, Dan

Date Published: 2009

Length: 17hr 48min

Narrator: Michael, Paul

For Whom the Bell Tolls

A perfectly written novel. Certainly rates among the very best American novels ever written. The final scene with Robert Jordan waiting to die is worth the read up until that point and may be the best prose ever written, comparable to the Used Car speech of Grapes of Wrather and Lee's instruction to Hamilton on the centrality of timshel in East of Eden.

Hemingway takes stream of consciousness a step further and shows a man's consciousness at war with itself, self-serving, self-denigrating, self-denying at the same time. It points to the sharpening of consciousness in the face of death, so much so that Robert Jordan feels that he has gained the meaning of a lifetime in 3 days’ time, and even knowing that his death was inevitable, much like that of a Greek tragedy.

If true suffering emerges on the other side of suffering, then Robert Jordan is the proto-man in his essential garb, facing death and determined to follow through with his destiny, even though he feels that it is wrong. I don't get it, in terms of a man sticking to and following orders for a cause, but Robert Jordan comes the closest in making me believe it.

Author: Hemingway, Ernest

Date Published: 1940

Length: 16hr 28min

Narrator: Scott, Campbell