Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming

This second Bond book was quite hard to read, primarily, I think, because it was a product of its time.

The problem is that a good chunk of it is set in New York and on the East Coast, and that it centers on black culture. Or, rather, the problem is that writing from 1954 (or thereabouts) and from the UK, Ian Fleming has a terribly stereotypical view of American black culture at the time.

I don't believe that Fleming was intending to be racist, but his writing would certain come across as such today. One of the biggest annoyances is that he uses a pretty offensive black dialect (not that I ever like dialect, mind you), and the other is that he seems to envision that many or most blacks are engaged in some big Voodoo criminal conspiracy.

Let me just say, bleh.

And also let me just say, today being what it is, my god how far we've come in 54 years.

The book beyond that is OK to good. It feels a bit more like the Bond of the movies, as there are some gun battles and a big villain who explains his over-complicated death trap to Bond. There's also some nice tension and a very good finale.

However, the actual Bond is still a bit different: he's willing to admit fear. However, it looks like he might be one more step toward the womanizing of the movies; we'll see what happens to this book's "true love", who actually survives to the end of the book.

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I talked to Donald about the ethnic stereotypes in this book and he said, "Wait until you get to the one set in Japan."

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And glancing at the synopsis of the movie "adapted" from this book, I'm humored to see that it enjoyed a totally different type of ethnic stereotyping: it was released right in the middle of the blaxploitation era.

I really gotta run through the movies some time after I've read the books.

Travel Day

As much as I love vacationing in Hawaii, I hate the Travel Day, which today was. It was especially obnoxious because we got delayed for approximately 3 hours at SFO before our plane finally took off, most of that sitting aboard the plane. Trip to Hawaii + 3 hours on the ground = No Good.

There were multiple mechanical problems with the plane, first some sensor that had broken, then some valve in the engine that was also out (or, at least, stuck on). It didn't leave me very comfortable, having a plane that had multiple problems simultaneously spring up, but the flight was fine.

It was actually our second weird travel experience of the day. We took BART out to SFO, as usual, and even though we were on a train specifically scheduled to go to SFO, for some reason the train driver took us out to Millbrae first. I have never in my life seen a BART train go to the wrong place, but that surely happened today. Weird.

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In any case, we got in to Lihue a few minutes before 9pm (HT). Since we left the house at 9am (PT), that means about 14 hours in transit, which was at least a couple of hours longer than it should be. But, we're here safe and sound now.

We went out and looked at the stars a bit with the folks tonight. Very pretty. Saw many, many more stars than our visible back at home, even the Milky Way wending its way across the sky.

Tomorrow, we should get down to the beach (and get the rest of the way settled).

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Our poor cats are probably slowly coming the realization that we're not coming home. Cobweb and Munchkin will do fine, as we've left them alone before, but I worry about poor Lucy, who's never been away from her people.

Well, we had to leave her alone sometime. Fortunately we have folks coming by throughout the week who should make sure that the cats stay out of trouble and also remind them that there are humans in the world.