Casino Royale – Ian Fleming, 1953 ★★★★½

Giving Birth to Bond

Did any cultural icon ever make an entrance as brilliant and yet as strange as Bond James Bond?

For a long time I had an odd relationship to Casino Royale. I was not alone. It took over a half-century for the movies to get it right, long after putting on screen nearly everything else Ian Fleming wrote, even the kiddie book about that car.

All The Words, Vol. Two – Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1989 ★★★

Monty Python: The Spam Years

Genius is hard to capture, and hard to sustain. The impulse to keep doing what works often misleads; so too can the desire to change things up. If you do something that makes a large portion of your audience uncomfortable, the challenge can be that much greater, particularly if you are dependent on government sponsorship while honing your craft.

All this comes into play when reviewing this second, final volume of one of television comedy’s most legendary achievements, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Vol. Two collects transcripts for the last 22 episodes of the famous series, those airing from December 1970 to December 1974.

Walter Winchell – Michael Herr, 1990 ★½

Unfinished Novel about an Incomplete Man

There is a scene in Walter Winchell where the title character is about to get the old heave-ho from show biz. “Pep you got, but pep ain’t talent,” his agent tells the song-and-dance man. But pep will change everything for Winchell; mass media will never be the same.

Down And Out In Paris And London – George Orwell, 1933 ★★★

Before Becoming an Adjective

When your last name becomes an adjective, it means you left a mark. George Orwell has rare company that way, but when looking at his first book, the term Orwellian feels off.

Paranoia and a brooding kind of prescience are my standard Orwellian associations. They go out the window reading Down And Out In Paris And London, Orwell’s memoir of a destitute life in France and England. Big Brother is no longer watching; nobody even cares. Yet there are compensations. Given how dry and gloomy 1984 and Animal Farm are, I wasn’t expecting the humor or characterizations I got here.

Hedda Gabler – Henrik Ibsen, 1890 ★★★½

Armed and Dangerous

Is Hedda Gabler a woman misunderstood, or a sociopath who can’t deny herself her own darkest impulses? I won’t play it safe: Whatever makes her tick, she’s one nasty broad.

And nasty is good when served up as Ibsen does here, with subtlety, compassion, and buckets of jet-black humor so dark as to be indistinguishable from despair. While it is hard fixing exactly who Hedda Gabler is, or why she does what she does, there’s no taking your eyes off the stage or the page while she holds court.

Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets – Hergé, 1929-30 ½★

Hergé’s Creaky Cornerstone

Sometimes the humblest beginnings lead on to great results. Such a cliché became a needed mantra while wading through this mess.

The earliest Tintin adventure to reach us in book form, Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets is a showcase for bad drawings and slack plotting so egregious it is a wonder author Hergé managed to raise himself to the level of bare competence, let alone unsurpassed magnificence in the field of comic-book art. It should be inspiring: The stone the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone. But what a chore to read!

Duel Of Eagles – Peter Townsend, 1969 ★★½

Death over England

There are two kinds of war books. Some inspire with tales of heroism and adventure. Others depress by recounting tragedy and betrayal. I was expecting this to be the first kind. I was wrong.

An RAF fighter pilot, Peter Townsend was a veteran of history’s most critical air battle. When Great Britain stood alone against Hitler in the Battle of Britain, Townsend led a squadron of Hurricanes to defend his land. From July to October, 1940, the RAF beat back the Luftwaffe, inflicting a 2-to-1 casualty ratio.