Ian Flemming

Having finished my Jane Eyre post (finally!... I know that i've got to edit it and add a few things in :)), i thought that i would skip away from classical literature for the moment and just post about the books that i have been reading recently!
I will continue to update my post on the Odyssey to help you guys out, but the next classical literature post probably wont come until after christmas and is likely to be either 'Of Mice and Men' or Shakespeare (probably King Lear)... so feel free to comment if you have a preference!
So the books that I have been reading are ten of Ian Fleming's James Bond. I've loved the films and couldn't bear the fact that i hadn't read any of the books... so I started reading them.
 I find the character of James very interesting. The best agent in the secret service and a known womaniser who drinks far more than the recommended amount and smokes all the time. The portrayal of women in these books are that they are accessories. He doesn't trust them to work with and certainly doesn't want to work with them. However, he cannot work with a women, without sleeping with the women.
The amount of times that Fleming writes that his character is constantly in love with whichever women he is sleeping with is unbelievable! The man only marries at the end of 'On her majesty's secret service' and his wife dies almost immediately.
Now that i've put that rant to bed I can talk about Fleming's fantastic ability to grab his audience. His clearly describes every scene and every setting. The books don't lack for action and the fight scenes certainly aren't as ridiculous or dated as the scenes that you see in the Sean Connery films.
Some of the books are very different from the films... Casino Royale and Moonraker are very different. Casino Royale has a lot more focus on the actual casino. When we meet James Bond, he is already at the casino and gambling away... making lots of money to prepare for his big task. James isn't poisoned by Le Chiffre and Mathis isn't a traitor. Vesper is the traitor- she explains all to James in her suicide letter. The ending of the film was changed. The humour is very dry and the books are very serious. James appears to be focused and completely oblivious to Her. When he meets her, he assumes that he will sleep with her but only after the work is done.
Moonraker is very different because the plot was changed in the film. There is no plot to start life on another planet and create a superior race- just as the moonraker didn't go missing. Jaws doesn't feature in it at all (which was disappointing) and James catches him cheating at cards in a club that M plays at.
The character development of James is subtle and slow but by the tenth book, not only is he lucky to be alive (he almost died in 'From Russia With Love' and the ending is not the same as in the film), but he is also on the verge of losing his job after mucking up two operations. He has got married, watched his wife be murdered by his enemy and seems to finally giving in to his alcohol problems. He meant to retire from the service anyway and now we are seeing a completely different side of James that we haven't been allowed to see.
I can imagine that you are wondering if it is worth reading the other 8 or 9 books to get to this side of James and that you might just want to skip ahead to the end and see what happens, but each book is a separate book in it's own right. Each book contains action and drama and makes you desperate to read the next one.
With a new film set to come out in the next year or two, now is a great time to become a James bond expert and be able to assess if the film has got the correct presentation of James bond.