Bond. James Bond.

I remember seeing a couple of Bond novels on my cousin Sara's bookshelf when we were kids. I remember her reading one, but I never did. I bypassed them, along with mystery novels. I just always had plenty to read what with SF&F and classics and whatever else fell into my hands, and I never knew the lack. My older cousin Sanna was pretty into that kind of thing; I remember seeing Sherlock Holmes on her shelf, and a set of books about an investigator named Solar Pons. The name grabbed me but the books didn't; I always had my hands full with other stuff. Sara did get me into suspense just a tiny bit - she gave me "Brat Farrar" by Josephine Tey, and I loved it so much that I read most if not all of Tey's other works. On another occasion she praised "Assignment in Brittany" until I broke down and read that, too. Good stuff. A lot of good stuff.

But Casino Royale put me in the mood for more Bond, and I decided to check them out. Literally. From the library. I've chugged through "Casino Royale" the first, and to me the most pure so far, and then "Live and Let Die", "Moonraker" and "Diamonds are Forever". I'm enjoying the opportunity to rip through them all in sequence. I read some stuff online about Bond and Ian Fleming, and the differences between the movie Bond and the man in the books. I gather that he gets rather grim toward the end, with a serious drinking problem and no lasting relationships... It seems to be the logical conclusion to the life we see in the movies, although the moviemakers chose to show us the "happy" side of the killer. The books are terribly, terribly dated, but in a very amusing way and I've had fun reading the car bits to Ross. Women are always girls, black people are always Negros with a capital "N". Cars are early 19th century models. Drinking and smoking are constants. I feel like a bit of an anthropologist as I page through the books, soaking in the details of another time and wondering if it's worth my time to watch all the movies again.