James Bond Music - Trivia and word cloud

As many of you know, I'm a bit of a James Bond fan - I own all the books in paperback and the movies on DVD. I've got a soft spot for the movie music as well, for some reason - my eight-year-old actually requests that I play my cd of Bond theme music in the car sometimes. Here's my favorite Bond music trivia question:

The most recent two Bond movies, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, have both had theme songs which did not share the title of the movie. They were You Know My Name by Chris Cornell and Another Way To Die by Jack White and Alicia Keys, respectively. What are the two previous Bond movies whose theme songs didn't share the movie's title?
(Answer at the end...)

Anyway, I got the idea in my head the other day to make a "word cloud" using all the lyrics from all the Bond themes - I thought it would be interesting to see how it worked out. Searched some lyrics databases, copied and pasted, and used a cool website called Wordle.net. This is what I came up with:



Bizarre that the largest word (therefore the one used most) is "know," huh? I guess it does pop up in quite a few songs, but I wasn't expecting it to be so big. Fun little diversion there, anyway.

OK, the trivia answer: The theme to Octopussy was All Time High by Rita Coolidge, and the theme to The Spy Who Loved Me was Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon. I'm not counting Dr. No and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which had instrumental theme songs.

Bond Villain Swatches

So I'm a bit of a James Bond fan- I've read all the books, own all the movies, etc... So I was totally tickled when I saw that Swatch has come out with a series of special watches based on the villains of the Bond movie world. (There's even a Swatch for Blofeld's cat!) They've got a little test to see which villain you most closely match, and I'm kinda disappointed in my results. Although I do like that green faux iguana band...

Devil May Care

Testing Goodread.com's "past to blog" function. Would anyone be interested in seeing these here, instead of having to go to goodreads?

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
From the way the cover is worded, "Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming", I assume that Faulks was trying to write a real, Fleming-style Bond book. I think he succeeded - he definitely did his homework. The whole book is peppered with references to Fleming's books, from Bond's wardrobe preference to workout routines to cars to scrambled eggs. The overall plot structure felt pretty authentic, too - he even ends the book similarly to Fleming's. I thought it was thouroughly enjoyable - I'm glad someone is back writing Bond books, and Faulks seems like a great choice.



I can't compare this to any of Faulks other writing; I haven't read any of it. I did notice, though, that one of his previous books was a "collection of literary parodies," which might be interesting - and probably served him well when trying to write like Fleming...


View all my reviews.

Bond New Years

We were given tickets last night to the James Bond New Years party at Bubinga, a lounge in the Eldorado downtown. Already have costumes - I hope there's a costume contest! (Thanks, Alicia!)

Bond Books @ South Valleys Library

Bond Books @ South Valleys Library
Originally uploaded by turi_b.

Saw and enjoyed the new Bond movie recently - in honor of it, I have a display of my collection of Bond novels and other books on display at my library.

Bonus Bond trivia question: Which Bond movies had theme songs that had titles that were different from the movie's title?