Amph 60+ Years of James Bond 007

As Gez said, start with Casino Royale. You'll recognise elements from the film in there, but more as inspirations as opposed to direct translations from page to screen.

If you want to read Fleming at his best, I'd say:

1. Read From Russia, With Love. A great novel, and fairly close to the film. Bond doesn't appear until about page 80 or something.
2. Read Thunderball then OHMSS. They're very close to the films too, with OHMSS being part of a trilogy with Thunderball. OHMSS is easily Fleming's best work.

The other books, save for The Spy Who Loved Me, are good but you have to allow for the chauvinism, homophobia*, and racism of 1950s upper class England. It's not malicious, in the way American racism is - just an assumption that at the top of the civilisational pyramid is the English gentleman, and all others are beneath this.

(* his dislike of lesbians is fascinating, because it makes no damned sense).

One of my favourite lines from Casino Royale is typical of some of his biases; "Since all French people suffer from liver complaints..."

 

That's the thing - it's no good looking at these books with 21st century eyes , Fleming was quite cosmopolitan , yes he was a snob but he was well traveled and brought foreign culture to the masses , yes he made it exotic but that was fun , he brought a sense of texture and colour ( colour in various forms ) that excited us in the west .
I always felt he treated foreign culture like cuisine , that decadent unapologetic sense of smell and taste .

 

And we take for granted that most of us (sup, Murica) have passports and can access the globe with reasonably affordable airfares. In Fleming's day, such travel was out of reach of most even middle class readers, so his adventures in France, and the US, and Jamaica etc were all completely exotic and new.

 

I’ve read three of them - FRWL, OHMSS, and Thunderball - which happen to be the top three named by Ender above. I liked FRWL and OHMSS, but I found Thunderball to be pretty boring.

 

Thunderball is closely linked to the film, so I recommended it for that reason alone. I'd always put OHMSS and CR at the top.

 

Yeah, I can see that, and I only kind of like Thunderball the movie. Sometime I’d like to read Casino Royale.

 

Though I find Thunderball the weak link of the Blofeld trilogy, there is an interesting dynamic between Bond, Largo and Domino, and the intimate climax and ending vastly more effective than the sturm und drang of the film adaptation. (And definitely read the phantasmagoric finale, You Only Live Twice. What a way to end Bond's journey!)

 

We just listened to the Casino Royale audiobook over the long weekend, actually. Had to drive to a destination wedding, and normally the other half is out like a light on car trips so I thought I'll treat myself as the baby and her slept. Turns out, she loved it. Fleming's prose is very punchy, and he obviously acquired it through his training as a journalist. Examples:

"He sat down next door in the seat she had left and watched the grim suburbs of Philadelphia showing their sores, like beggars, to the rich train."

"The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same difference between a beautiful and a plain woman — a matter of millimetres".

 

I have been putting Archer reruns on Netflix when I'm feeding the mini-Ender, and I noticed an issue here that the James Bonding podcast numpties have had with Daniel Craig's Bond too. The subtitles for when Woodhouse speaks to Mallory say "mum", and the Bonding idiots thought Craig said "mum" to Dench's M in Skyfall.

What is it about "ma'am" being pronounced like harm, not ham, that confuses people?

 

The fact that it's supposed to be pronounced like "ham?"

 

I'm more annoyed that his name is spelled Woodhouse , it should be Wodehouse !

 

I always thought it was "marm". This whole time. I'm so sorry

 

Oh god, me too!

 

what's marm ?

 

Ma'am pronounced to rhyme with harm, as opposed to rhyming with jam. dp4m is also merely reciting what the filml the Queen said, when in actuality the protocol rhymes it with "jam" (thus proving he's neither clever not cultured, just a fan of Stephen Frears). In reality, the pronunciation in real English of "ma'am" is dependent on regions, and status. "Ma'am" rhyming with harm, calm, palm etc is RP, and it's perhaps for this reason that Her Maj is addressed in a way that rhymes it with "jam" (not having her addressed as an equal of a Baroness or a Lady).

In any event, "ma'am" as in "jam" is royal protocol, and not reflective of the "one true" pronunciation.

 

Her Maj also rhymes with her vaj, but we tend not to include that for obvious reasons...

PS - never seen The Queen though very much enjoyed The King's Speech...

 

How dare you speak of Her that way. She's not some Margaery Tyrrell.

 

I've had the books for about 10 years and have only read Casino Royale and Live and Let Die all the way through so. I enjoyed both of them, so I really should get round to reading the rest.

 

The James Bonding guys just rewatched TWINE. They covered the disconnect in the script, in which everything but Christmas Jones stuff is actually well written and, especially in Elektra's case, quite subversive of tropes. Elektra is manipulating Renard's love, weaponising it in a way that is usually seen as the "man manipulating the love of the woman to his advantage". It works well here because Sophie Marceau and Robert Carlyle are great actors and Carlyle in particular imbues Renard with a subtle kind of pathos, underplaying each scene to make Renard sympathetic. For someone branded a terrorist, and who often kills callously, it's a good choice.

I might rewatch it because I've long defended the film in spite of Denise Richards, and their comments (they also had Dani Snow on the show) made me think it's worth another watch.

 

http://www.darkhorizons.com/bond-future-unclear-due-to-mgm-sale/

Something like this seems to happen every other year.

 

The James Bond Radio podcast has been doing an audiobook of the novelisation of The Spy Who Loved Me recently. Considering it was also written by the screenwriter Christopher Wood, you'd think it would just be the movie in book form but surprisingly it's a lot darker and is much more in line with Fleming than the campy Roger Moore films. It's worth giving a go if you like the original books.

 

Wood was a Fleming fan and hated the campiness of those films.

Also, erm... not sure I agree:

https://www.gq.com/story/james-bond-skyfall-most-influential-outfit

 

@Ender Sai

Was watching Channel Nine last night.

I can name one thing more unwatchable than Spectre.

Spoiler

Spectre with ad breaks.

 

It's a good look. But was nobody paying attention to how great Bond's casual wardrobe was in Quantum of Solace?