For all their apparent sophistication, fictional spies like James Bond and Jason Bourne are rarely literary creatures. Sterling Archer, however, most definitely is. As this supercut (below) from film editor Serena Bramble illustrates, our favorite hard-drinking, ocelot-loving man of mystery is just as likely to fire off a bookish reference as he is a Walther PPK.
archer's favorite reference material is The lord of the Rings
As Bramble notes on Indiewire, the show's creator, Adam Reed, has said that Archer's literary one-liners are a result of Reed's time as "frustrated English major." However, adds Bramble, they also make for a good contrast with "the more deplorable aspects of Archer's personality," highlighting his humanity and his intelligence while playing up his "lonely, friendless childhood and adolescence." (Of all the books that Archer references, classic lonely-adolescence-fare The Lord of the Rings appears the most often.)
There's a few of our favorite references missing from the supercut — not least of all Pam's back tattoo of Lord Byron's poem The Destruction of Sennacherib — but Bramble has put together more than enough to create a reading list for the summer. Who knows, you might start out browsing a bit of Émile Zola this year, and next thing you know you're up to your neck in tactical knitwear.