I had an email from Bob today. In it, he wrote the following:
A painstaking study of Ian Fleming’s stories has shown that James Bond consumed a drink on average every 7 pages. Of the 317 drinks consumed in total, his preferred tipple by a long margin was whisky. He drinks 101 in all (bourbons & scotch). He has 30 champagnes, 35 sakes (when in Japan for You Only Live Twice (1964)). Vodka martinis total 19 and gin martinis 16. The famous “shaken not stirred” line first appeared in Diamonds are Forever (1956) and first appeared in film in Goldfinger (1964).
I think this shows a great dedication to fictional research that is extraordinary. It made me think about other fictional works that could be studied. How people are murdered in Agatha Christie novels, by which gender and further divided into age groups. When I mentioned this to Mirinda she said some crazy fan will have already written it. So I set out to see if I could find anything similar. I found a rather detailed Wikipedia entry, giving the ‘tropes’ that Christie set up in her novels. A ‘trope’ is (as far as fiction is concerned) a common theme or pattern in literature. So how she sets up the murder and the murderer. If you are in the slightest bit interested, the link is here.
Actually, Mirinda knows a woman who is totally obsessed with Agatha Christie – she knew immediately that Mirinda was living in Hercule’s place just from approaching it along the street – so I’m thinking she could probably supply an accurate list of such miscellanea.
Speaking of books…I just downloaded five ebooks for Mirinda’s Sony eReader. I love shopping digitally!
And here’s a photo of OUR daffs! They’re quite keen on my obelisk!
Daffs and the Obelisk
