The Bourne Trilogy

I really thought I had read all three books years ago. I picked up the Bourne Identity figuring it would be a good beach book for when I was in Mexico and quickly realized how many details I had forgotten. When I got to the third book I realized I didn't remember it at all. So either my memory is really bad or I didn't actually get through it the first time.

These books fall into the small list of books that have been made into movies that I actually also really enjoy. I think the reason this adaptation works so well is because the movies are not at all like the books, so you don't have that whole "well this isn't how I imagined it" feeling nagging at you through the whole movie. The screenwriter basically took the premise of the books - man trained by CIA to be an assassin, man gets amnesia, hyginks ensue - and then branched into his own story from there. And I understand why you would do that because the books are very much a part of the era in which they were written and the movies are an updated version with America's new enemies.

I kind of love Robert Ludlum and spy novels and books that keep you on the edge of your seat biting your nails thinking oh my god will he actually escape this time all the while knowing that he is the hero and of course he will escape but oh my god WILL HE ESCAPE?? And in the Bourne books, will he go back to being the nice normal professor David Webb with his beautiful wife or will the spector of Bourne/Delta continue to haunt him. I kind of think of him as more than a little schizophrenic, not naturally but because he has been trained to be these other two men, has had to be these other men convincingly so that he could do the job he was created for. Eventually the pretending becomes a reality.