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How many Bond novels have you actually read?

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  • jobojobo
    Posts: 7,507
    @Dragonpol

    Thanks for the advice. Will check it out.
  • vzokvzok
    Posts: 4,044
    mybudgetbond wrote: »
    The Candian one has a few good stories but most aren’t great. They bring Bond in contact with Cthulu & the apocalypse. Weird. There’s a good story set in Cuba though.

    Thanks for the information.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    jobo wrote: »
    @Dragonpol

    Thanks for the advice. Will check it out.

    My pleasure. Enjoy!
  • ToTheRightToTheRight
    Posts: 16,167
    I read all the Flemings, and COLONEL SUN. Of the Gardner's LICENSE RENEWED, FOR SPECIAL SERVICES, ICEBREAKER, ROLE OF HONOR, SCORPIUS, BROKENCLAW and THE MAN FROM BARBAROSSA. I started Benson's ZERO MINUS TEN, but didn't get past the first few chapters.
    I also read the two Christopher Wood novelizations, and Gardner's LTK novelization.

  • timmertimmer
    Posts: 4,622
    Dragonpol wrote: »
    jobo wrote: »
    I have read all of the Flemings obviously. Also tried Trigger Morris. Was reasonably enjoyable but not enough to wet my appetite for the other continuation novels... Any of them I definitely should read?

    I'd say that the first one, Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun (1968), is an absolute must-read. It's the original one, and also the best of the lot. It probably helps that Amis knew Fleming briefly and was a serious scholar of his Bond work (The James Bond Dossier and The Book of Bond or Every Man His Own 007 both having been published by Jonathan Cape in 1965).

    It's also the only other Bond novel beside those of Fleming to have been written and published in the 1960s so that certainly adds to its feel of authenticity. Unlike the modern Bond novels of Faulks, Boyd and Horowitz, Colonel Sun is period set as it was written in the actual period! For me, that makes all the difference.

    Colonel Sun has also been used extensively in the Bond films, culminating in the use of its infamous torture scene in the last Bond film Spectre (2015), and it even received a credit to the Amis Literary Estate. That and its authentic 1960s flavour, a great villain and an interesting location and plot mean that Colonel Sun is as near to an honorary Fleming Bond novel as we are ever likely to get! It's therefore very much "the Leader of the Pack" when it comes to the literary Bond continuation novels.

    Great post draggers. Colonel Sun is probably must read beyond Fleming, for the reasons you mention.
    I would add the Pearson book too, the James Bond Authorized biography.Pearson also authored a respected Fleming biography.
    Pearson picks up Bond in 1973, still very much in the Fleming timeline, and fills in some of Bonds hstory, working with the scraps of info Fleming gave us, whilst sending the semi-retired Bond off on a fresh mission especially suited to his talents and past history.
    Pearson also runs with the Fleming mischievouness, originally floated in YOLT, that he Fleming was commissioned to write the Bond novels as a disinformation, counter-intelligence opp against the Soviets.
    For this book at least we can believe that Bond really does exist and we are in on the secret.
  • ToTheRightToTheRight
    Posts: 16,167
    Colonel Sun was great and I feel it's been a complete crime Eon has only utilized parts of this excellent novel. Of all the continuation books, this one I think most certainly should have been adapted to the big screen.
    It might have been more interesting to have done Colonel Sun as the follow up to CR , rather than a sequel. The Craig era could have been either filmed adaptations of the continuation novels or the remaining short stories. I'd have taken that over the story arc any day.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,636
    Birdleson wrote: »
    ToTheRight wrote: »
    Colonel Sun was great and I feel it's been a complete crime Eon has only utilized parts of this excellent novel. Of all the continuation books, this one I think most certainly should have been adapted to the big screen.
    It might have been more interesting to have done Colonel Sun as the follow up to CR , rather than a sequel. The Craig era could have been either filmed adaptations of the continuation novels or the remaining short stories. I'd have taken that over the story arc any day.

    That would have worked well.

    Agreed 100%. Does EON have the legal rights to just flat out adapt any of the post Fleming novels?

  • TorgeirtrapTorgeirtrap
    Posts: 17,756
    Birdleson wrote: »
    Yes, they buy the rights to them all out of hand, I believe, to avoid any more TB, CR situations.

    Smart.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    edited August 2018 Posts: 6,304
    Birdleson wrote: »
    Yes, they buy the rights to them all out of hand, I believe, to avoid any more TB, CR situations.

    Yes, one of the best things about the Broccoli/Wilson recent tenure is that they have gotten the rights to all of Fleming back. Fleming didn't make it easy on them, frankly.

    And expect Eon to keep its IP exclusively and indefinitely. In the US at least, Eon will just draft off Disney, who will fight tooth and nail to keep its mid-1900s properties out of the public domain.
  • BondStuBondStu Moonraker 6
    Posts: 373
    All of them. And I do mean ALL of them.
  • IGotABrudderIGotABrudder UK
    Posts: 631
    Ah, I have learned something then. I was under the impression that the reason why the movie title sequences always say “Ian Fleming’s James Bond” rather than just “James Bond” is because of legal difficulties over the character of JB when written by other authors. This is a problem not faced by (for example) Harry Potter films, they don’t need to say “JK Rowling’s Harry Potter” because there is no other author involved.

    If Eon have bought up the other novels anyway then that’s not a problem at all.

    Back to the topic: I’ve read Fleming, Colonel Sun, and the Christopher Wood novelisations.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    IGotABrudder wrote: »
    Ah, I have learned something then. I was under the impression that the reason why the movie title sequences always say “Ian Fleming’s James Bond” rather than just “James Bond” is because of legal difficulties over the character of JB when written by other authors. This is a problem not faced by (for example) Harry Potter films, they don’t need to say “JK Rowling’s Harry Potter” because there is no other author involved.

    I don t know about that. I think it has just become tradition, as with Tarzan. Copyright expired for that character a long time ago, but he is still referred to as Edgar Rice Burrough s Tarzan on whatever media platforms he shows up on.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited August 2019 Posts: 18,281
    Thunderfinger wrote: »
    IGotABrudder wrote: »
    Ah, I have learned something then. I was under the impression that the reason why the movie title sequences always say “Ian Fleming’s James Bond” rather than just “James Bond” is because of legal difficulties over the character of JB when written by other authors. This is a problem not faced by (for example) Harry Potter films, they don’t need to say “JK Rowling’s Harry Potter” because there is no other author involved.

    I don t know about that. I think it has just become tradition, as with Tarzan. Copyright expired for that character a long time ago, but he is still referred to as Edgar Rice Burrough s Tarzan on whatever media platforms he shows up on.

    In any event I think it's only fair as Ian Fleming is the creator of James Bond after all and all these films flow from his creative processes. I never thought it had anything to do with the continuation novels though as I believe this practice by Eon well predates the publication of the first of those (Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun) in March 1968.

    In point of fact, even the continuation novels from at least the John Gardner era onwards have followed this practice Eon started in the films, with having for just one example "Ian Fleming's James Bond in John Gardner's Never Send Flowers" adorn the paperback and sometimes even the first edition hardback novels.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,636
    They REALLY need to put Christopher Wood's novelisations back in print. I'm curious.
  • BondStuBondStu Moonraker 6
    Posts: 373
    MaxCasino wrote: »
    They REALLY need to put Christopher Wood's novelisations back in print. I'm curious.

    I got those cheap off Amazon. "Pre-loved" (ahem)
  • ToTheRightToTheRight
    Posts: 16,167
    MaxCasino wrote: »
    They REALLY need to put Christopher Wood's novelisations back in print. I'm curious.

    They're pretty cool. Wood basically takes the plots of those two Roger films and gives them a Fleming tone.
  • BondStuBondStu Moonraker 6
    Posts: 373
    ToTheRight wrote: »
    MaxCasino wrote: »
    They REALLY need to put Christopher Wood's novelisations back in print. I'm curious.

    They're pretty cool. Wood basically takes the plots of those two Roger films and gives them a Fleming tone.

    He's actually surprisingly good at aping Fleming.
  • thedovethedove hiding in the Greek underworld
    Posts: 5,433
    I've read all the Fleming novels. All of Gardner novels (I like most of them) I have read all of Benson (High Time to Kill was his best) and then all the other recent novels. Except Solo by Boyd. I have missed that one, not sure if I am missing something good.

    I never read the Young Bond series and again not sure if I am missing something. I have yet to read Col. Sun. I read Wood's novelization of Moonraker but not Spy.

    This thread is giving me an itch to go back and read some of them again.
  • Agent7777Agent7777 England
    Posts: 37
    All of the Fleming novels. Also read a couple of the Raymond Benson's (The Facts of Death/Never Dream of Dying), Solo by William Boyd and the recent Anthony Horowitz novels, which I think are pretty good (particularly Trigger Mortis). Next up I would like to try Colonel Sun.
  • GerardGerard
    edited September 2019 Posts: 5,994
    I've read them all : Fleming, Markham, Pearson, Wood, Gardner, Benson, Faulks, Deaver, Boyd, Horowitz, Higson, Cole and Westbrook. The only things I haven't read are Benson's and Westbrook's short stories.
  • BondStuBondStu Moonraker 6
    Posts: 373
    The best Bond author after Fleming is Charlie Higson. I loved his Young Bond book series.
  • UnivexUnivex
    Posts: 6,709
    I've only read the Fleming's. But I've read them many times over. Some once a year.

    That's all.
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