Arnaud Maggs

Arnaud Maggs
by montrealonlinepress

Arte Contemporânea
by montrealonlinepress

Devil May Care, a James Bond Novel

Devil May Care is the thirty-sixth James Bond novel. Written by Sebastian Faulks ("writing as Ian Fleming"), it was published on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Bond creator Ian Fleming's birth.[1][update needed]

The popular novelist, famous for Charlotte Gray and Birdsong, was selected by the estate of the late 007-author in 2006, though his identity was not revealed to the public until July 2007 when a publishing date for the work was officially announced along with its title.

The novel is set in the Cold War in 1967 (and in Ian Fleming's original continuity, following The Man With The Golden Gun) and the action is played out "across two continents, exotic locations and some of the world's most thrilling cities".[2] U.S. publisher Doubleday confirmed one of the locations will be Paris. [3]

Many online and print sources (for example, AOL Entertainment [4]) erroneously stated that Devil May Care will be the first new James Bond novel published since 1966. In fact, dozens of full-length Bond novels were published, officially, between 1968 and 2002 by the authors Kingsley Amis (as "Robert Markham"), John Pearson, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, and Raymond Benson. In addition, Charlie Higson and Samantha Weinberg (as "Kate Westbrook") have been publishing Bond-related novels since 2005. Faulks' book is, however, the first novel to focus on the adult James Bond, as conceived by Fleming, since 2002 and, as noted above, it takes place in the time-frame of Fleming's original novels, the first such book since Amis' Colonel Sun (discounting the spin-off Young Bond and The Moneypenny Diaries lines).

The jacket artwork features the model Tuuli Shipster, muse of the British photographer, Rankin. Tuuli said: "I was thrilled that Penguin chose me to be their Bond girl. It’s fantastic to be involved with something so iconic."[5] She was also involved in the book's launch on board HMS Exeter on 27 May 2008.[6]

The cover photograph was taken by British photographer and commercials director, Kevin Summers. The jacket image was created by the design agency The Partners.[5]

Devil May Care has been published in hardback by Penguin Books in the UK and its territories (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Europe) and in Ireland. In the US it has been published by Doubleday. Many of the publishers will be using this jacket. Penguin are launching a brand new imprint – Penguin 007 – under which they will publish all their Bond titles, including Devil May Care.[5]

From Wiki
Preorder at Amazon.com
Official Ian Fleming Website.
Penguin Website

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (second gig)

Ghost in the Shell (the tv show) also know as the anime show that made me read a book, is back for a second season. The first thing I noted was: Produced by the Ghost in the Shell committee, this indicated to me some kind of loss of funding, what I think is very common in anime shows. The second thing I noted was a significant decreased in the animation quality, that went from a fairly realistic approach to the more "classic" anime look in the character designs and backgrounds. Is a shame that an outstanding show like this both in animation and content gets a character doing a monologue with a 2 frame animation. But regardless of that the second episode "Night Cruise" delivers an excellent character driven plot orbiting around a lonely "Notes from the Underground" kind of character that reminded me why Ghost in the Shell is such a good show and so different from anything else on animation or even tv.

Made me read a book?

{ book.lastread

• Science Fiction Favourites, Isaac Asimov more>
• In Other Words, Christopher J. Moore, Simon Winchester more>
• Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky more>
• Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger more>
• The Laughing Man, from Nine Stories, JD Salinger more>
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare more>
• Darwin his Daughter & Human Evolution, Randal Keynes more>
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon more>
• American Gods, Neil Gaiman more>
• Rashomon & Others , Ryonosuke Akutagawa more>

*note: all the links are of the edition read.

{ book.quote

• "of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are there: it might have been!"
  John Whittier (from Gilbert Austin, 2002)
  
• "the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favor of the immortality of the soul"
  Eduard Burne-Jones (from John William Waterhouse paintings book)
  
• "I never think of the future... it comes soon enough."
  Albert Einstein (from Adult Swing promo of Ghost in the Shell)
  
• "what I thought I'd do there was I'd become one of those deaf mutes."
  JD Salinger (from: Catcher in the Rye, from series: Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex)
  
• How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
  Alexander Pope (from poem lyrics of Eloisa to Abelard, from movie: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
  
• "It's not easy to believe."
  "I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."
  "Really?"
  "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
  Neil Gaiman (from: American Gods)
  
  *note: I now this is a long quote but take your time and read it, it is totally worth it.
  
  

Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

I saw this book sitting in the shelf at the bookstore and thanks to a reference from Ghost in the Shell, opened and started reading it, the beginning is very bold and unapologetic so I guess I am going to read it all and then try to figure out what the reference was. So I finished reading it, excellent reading. It seems to be a high school required reading around here so most people have read it or remember the book. I keep finding references to it everywhere, the night I finished reading it The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson had as a guest Chuck Palahniuk author of Fight Club (the book!) was promoting his new book Haunted and the host compared this to The Catcher in the Rye while I was holding the book and reading the last pages.
As for the Ghost in the Shell reference is this quote that repeats over and over as a theme of the show:"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes". Also one of the recurring characters is called: The Laughing Man, like one of Salinger short stories, interesting enough The Laughing Man is a fictional character inside a fictional story.
Upon a little research I found rumors of a movie being developed, and also movies that took the essence of the character and used to infuse it with some pop resonance (Igby goes Down, and The Good Girl).
read?

a: books index

• { book.reviews
  Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger)
  
• { book.lastread
• { book.quote