Category: Tour de Bond

This week’s novel, You Only Live Twice is a significant one for me, for a bunch of reasons: One, I think it may be Fleming’s best novel (not necessarily his best BOND novel, which I’ll elaborate upon shortly). Two, it was the last Bond novel published while Fleming was still alive — the two remaining, The Man With The Golden Gun and the short collection Octopussy and the Living Daylights, were published posthumously. Three, the film version is my favorite of all of the Connery Bonds (and therefore, arguably, my favorite of all the Bond films), despite the fact that the film’s plot bears no resemblance at all to the plot of the novel… and, in fact, was the first film to differ so completely.
Continue reading “Tour de Bond: You Only Live Twice (1964)”

We’re doubling up this week — and I’ll be up front about the reason why: I cannot stand The Spy Who Loved Me. It stands out like a sore thumb in the Bond canon — an experiment gone wrong, as if Fleming had taken his efforts to try other styles (like the Maugham-esque “Quantum of Solace” ) and expanded it to full novel length. Fleming recognized it as a failure himself, in fact — when he sold the film rights to the franchise, he specified that only the title of The Spy Who Loved Me could be used, and that the producers must develop their own original plot in its place.
Continue reading “Tour de Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) & On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963)”