The James Bond Books

[diebitter]

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have you seen the lazenby movie?

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OHMSS is actually my favorite Bond movie.

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Excellent choice.

I've read all the Fleming ones several times, and some of the offshoots once.

There were 14 original books with Fleming's name attached.

Of these:

'The spy Who Loved Me' was written by some woman from her perspective, and is a silly romance novel that isn't worth reading.

Two are collections of short stories: 'Octopussy' and 'The Living Daylights'. The second is better, but these are stories really out of the mainstream Bond history, and okay if you read the main novels and want a bit more.

The rest have a distinct chronology and are best read that way (if * the ones where the films are quite close to the book):

Casino Royale
Live and Let Die
Moonraker
Diamonds Are Forever
From Russia, With Love*
Doctor No *
Goldfinger *
Thunderball *
On Her Majesty's Secret Service *
You Only Live Twice
The Man With the Golden Gun

They are indeed white-hot thrillers, and mostly internationally-flavoured, so not too parochially English. The exceptions to this is Moonraker. However, Moonraker is such a kick-ass tale (Jams Bond vs evil Nazis!) is really doesn't matter.


I recommend reading these in order. You will like. There's no standouts, they're all pretty good, but if I had to choose, I'd say 'You Only Live Twice', cos it's so WEIRD and still grounded in Bond-dom.

Also they make excellent audio books - check your local library to see if they keep some of them (they do in the UK, at least).

[DrPublo]

I bought the whole series in used books on EBay a few years back. What a great read.

The Doc