The First Book Review of the Year

I know it's the 16th already and really, that does kind of mean I'm slipping in my reading schedule, I realize, but well...there's homework and I'm getting over that New Year funk that, sadly, left me not feeling like reading. On the positive side, I'm well into my second book (which unlike the first book is actually non-fiction, going along with the whole "I should try to read more non-fiction" pseudo-resolution for this year.)

Anyway, this weekend I finished reading The Bourne Identity. (Yes, there are spoilers - probably for the movie as well as the book, but I'll try to keep them to a minimum. As this isn't a new release, it shouldn't have too much impact on people.) I'm actually mildly surprised that I hadn't read this before. It's one of the first books I remember seeing my dad reading - he loves spy thrillers and, sadly, it seems like the whole spy-thriller genre kinda took a nose dive right along with communism and the Berlin Wall. (Just to clarify, it's not sad that communism and the Berlin Wall took a nose dive. Those are good things. It just seems like the spy genre jumped the shark when that happened. Or maybe I just haven't found any good post-cold-war spy novels - if you've got recommendations, let me know.)

Now, let me first say that I really enoyed the movie of the same name with Matt Damon. However, let me also say - the book and the movie have exactly the following things in common:
-The main character uses the name Jason Bourne and he has amnesia
-There is an organization called Treadstone that's part of the US Government
-There is a character named Marie
-There is lots of action/violence

However, the general plot of the book has so very little to do with the plot of the movie, that I'm really surprised they didn't change the name of the character and the CIA organization and just have a whole other story going on. Of course, then Ludlum wouldn't have been able to sell the movie rights to his novel and capitalize on the whole getting money for a story that he didn't really write but that uses enough of the key premise that they still had to pay him for it. And the thing is? As much as I liked the movies? The book would've made a much better movie. It made way more sense than the plot they used in the movie script and it wasn't really overtly "cold war" - it would have made just as much sense if they'd modernized it but kept the underlying premise the same (and anything would've made more sense than the plot they ended up going with for the movie.)

First, Marie in the book is the brains behind Jason's search to uncover his identity and understand why people are after him. She's a highly placed Canadian bank official who sees and explains how the money Jason takes from the bank in Switzerland is used to follow him and how he can use the inner workings of banks to get information for himself. She's a critical part of the story and a very equal partner in beginning to chase down Jason's true identity - not a wilting, whimpering woman as she is in the movie.

Second, in the book you eventually find out exactly why Treadstone is after him - and for the first, oh, half of the book, it's not Treadstone that's after him, it's the bad guys he was under cover trying to trap. Treadstone really only enters the picture toward the end, when they wade in and really mess things up on the way to a fantastic conclusion.

It's worth a read if you're hankering for a good spy/action novel. And if you didn't like the movie? Give it a shot anyway, they're so different you might find you still really like the book.

I give it 4 Swiss Bank Accounts out of 5 (only because there were a few little places in the middle that dragged.)