About this title: James Bond is introduced in Fleming's first novel, a classic spy thriller replete with devilish villains, daring escapes, and, of course, dry martinis.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges and creases. read more
Description: Good. Book shows minor use. Cover and Binding have minimal wear and the pages have only minimal creases. A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Signet Book
Date Published: 1953
ISBN-13:9780451027245ISBN:0451027248
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Very light edge and corner wear. Light corner creases. No marks. Tight, square book. Tanning pages. No spine creases. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. James Bond. Audience: General/trade. read more
"I enjoyed these books greatly when i found them...in Jr. High School, I belive that's called "middle-school" now. In other words when I was around 13 years old. they hold up fairly well...better than the newer movise. Bond just doesn't ring true in some of the more PC adpations of him lately, do you think?
This is the first Bond book...he meets SMRESH, gets tortured, almost loses certain body parts that are very important to him (and most men), gambles for high stakes, takes a lover...you know, just another day at the office for 007.
Thses are still pretty good reads, back then i would have rated them higher I suppose, but then at 13 I also read all the Man Fron UNCLE books.
The first Bond novel, dated but enjoyable, better than the movies in some ways. And don't be too shocked that James isn't exactly the super agent in the books he is in the movies. he succeeds, but tends to get kicked around a lot."
"I read this book because I wanted to know why some of the "older" folks had attitude about the Bond movies. Personally, I don't think they've read the books! There hasn't been much I've read lately that has been this slow - and I HAVE read books from the 50s and 60s so I am aware that they're definitely written differently than more current books.
Not only is James Bond one of the most sexist pricks I've ever read but he doesn't DO anything. There are two whole scenes of action in these 180 pages. TWO! And he spent a whole chapter explaining how to play baccarat. That's all. He ate dinner and told Vesper (don't get me started about what a non-character she is) how the game was played and how he was going to beat his opponent.
While James Bond is known for being 'sexist', in this book he's closer to 'swine'. I do know that Ian Fleming got his start as a newspaper writer but this character wasn't written well. I'm going to read another of the books in the set and I'm hoping he grew more well-rounded as the series progressed.
So that is what I thought. All in all, I'm glad I read it because now I can appreciate the movies all the more."
"The three stars may be deceptive. Ian Fleming, credited by goodredads as author of this book, is a truly terrible writer. This book adapts the English comic strip that adapted Fleming's novels in the fifties. The three stories in this book can be difficult to judge. The two stories adapted from the only two Fleming novels I have read, read better than Fleming, but the plots by adapter John McLusky are so simplified that they are not satisfying. The artist also improves over time. The third adaptation, Moonraker, seems the best to me because the art has improved and the story works in is own terms. Assuming that would also be true of the first two stories had I not read Fleming, I give the book three stars. That one story is a lot of fun.
Here is the strangest thing of all--Bond looks almost exactly like Sean Connery, a few years before Connery was cast as Bond. You have to wonder if the producers were influenced by the look of the strip when they finally settled on Connery."
"I've never read a Bond novel...and I'm a more recent fan of the films so when I saw this on the library display, I decided to give it a whirl. It definitely reflects the 1950s copyright date but reads well. Some good tight but detailed description, vigorous vocabulary and decent story-telling. It was fun to see the core of the Bond character before the layers of legend added by the most of the film series, andI was surprised at how un-flashy, gadgety or over-the-top it really was. It felt a lot closer in tone (and even in the core story) to the 2006 Casino Royale film (which is probably my favorite Bond anyway...).
One element that fascinated me was in a chapter called The Nature of Evil. As Bond recovers from his confrontation with LeChiffre, he has a conversation with Mathis about the nature of evil, the good guys, the bad guys, how do you determine which is which when the good guys seem to do the same things the bad do...are they still good? Does it make a difference if you're motivated by duty, by principle, by personal gain or revenge, by love or persuasion? It's a rare glimpse into the moral cloudiness and complexity that Bond can be...there's something deeper there than the suave superspy we've come to expect. I think it was this tangent and thoughtfulness that sets this story a little beyond average.
Plus, I would soooo borrow the opening paragraph as an example for a creative writing class, if I were teaching. It rolls senses, emotions, soul and values into a scene in 2 tight sentences: "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling--a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension--becomes unbearable, and the senses awake and revolt from it.""
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