I forgot how much Fleming’s Bond differs from the movie version. I haven’t read any of the original novels in many, many years. He isn’t the infallible, larger than life, super agent of the films. Fleming created a character that is flawed, more human and struggles to overcome the opposition. The writing is superb- who would think that essentially a story of two people gambling could be so interesting and engaging?

*Actually read the new released 2018 vintage edition with the white cover and with the introduction by anthony horowitz but that edition is not yet on goodreads and i will NOT add a book here on goodreads!*

Very entertaining, very different from the movies both old and new, and very outdated in many ways.

But very fun to read if you enjoy the slightly over the top spy stories.

Which i do.

The writing is really nice, detailed oriented -which i LOVE- and while it was relatively fast paced it still had this feeling of everything going slower as a lot of the books and movies around the 1950s have, if anyone else knows what i am talking about.

I honestly do NOT think that this book or series at leat the original Fleming books -if they are all written this way- are for everyone.

If you are someone that needs fast paced and lots of action, this is not the series for you.

If you can't read a book that was written in the 50s and see that while its certainly not okay to talk about women that way it was sadly the norm during that time but it bothers you endlessly, this book is not for you!

If you expect the book to be exactly as the movies are? Don't read this, it will disappoint you!

I actually really enjoyed the pacing -the slower not as fighting and over the top action, constantly firing of guns or getting into unnecessary fights- and i enjoyed the bit more reserved and darker Bond of the book.

I did find a lot of moments more humorous than i am sure they were supposed to be.
For example the amount of cigarets that you apparently needed to smoke and talk about.
Or how often it was mentioned that Bond loves his car. Or sleeps naked.
Or how much care he takes for details -all details, every detail!

Those were amusing to me more than annoying, but i can defiantly see how other people can easily see those moments as utterly annoying!

What i personally actually really enjoyed about this book was how little of a "ladies man" bond was, especially during the time he tried to do is job.
He was actually very professional and didn't want any distractions or having to worry about anyone else beside himself while he had to do his job.
I really enjoyed that about him, its so different form the "lady lover" they portray him in the movies.
And sure that was the last 20 or so pages that were all about the lovin' but it was nice that it was only added at the end!


I will defiantly continue won with the series and can't wait to see how each book is different to the movies, because so far this first book defiantly showed me why those books are so popular!

I’d never read any James Bond before, and I did so now as a kind of tribute to John LeCarre after his recent death.

I have long thought of LeCarre’s characters as the anti-Bonds. They don’t glamorize the violence. They don’t reduce the conflict to a two-dimensional game of good guys (who can kill with impunity and indifference) and bad guys (who are bad because, well, because they’re bad). And they don’t get to walk away from their work without personal suffering.

When I realized that I knew Bond only from the movies, I figured I ought to take a look at how he began.

This isn’t just any Bond book, though. It’s the first. And, for a time as I read, I felt the correlation between the book and the subsequent films was something like the one for Shrek. There, the book is slim, merely suggestive of the character who gets fleshed out in the films.

By the end, though, I realized the connection is tighter. The Bond of this book is much more vulnerable than Sean Connery and his successors – he gets nervous before the turn of a card, and he is badly beaten up and rescued only by chance – but he is ultimately every bit as arrogant and entitled. We get what feels like a throwaway scene where he contemplates quitting the service because he’s been wounded enough to question the good/bad work he’s undertaken, but that all passes quickly. He resolves at the end to remain the Bond of the book and the Bond of the movies.

Instead, there are a few moments of genuine suspense and intrigue, but there’s much more to offend. The plot is more straightforward than most of the movies, but that’s not hard. (I have always found the movies hard to follow, but that’s part of the point. Bond gets to be in one tense situation after another, and the parts linking those scenes are designed to fly by without our thinking much of them except as they amplify the white-man-savior/all-the-women-want-him qualities that define him.)

Here, Bond is trying to stop a man named “Le Chiffre” (the Cipher) from winning enough at the casino to bankroll a new operation. Le Chiffre has tried to break away from the Soviet secret service, Smersh, and he needs the money to secure himself. MI-6 figures they can possibly flip him if they prevent his winning or at least that they can have a valuable Soviet agent killed.

To give Fleming his props, it’s a thrilling scene when Bond has to flip the cards that will tell the climax of the scene. And it’s not easy to make card-playing thrilling. Beyond that, though? Not so much.

Le Chiffre, it turns out, is unambiguously Jewish, a fact that Fleming reminds us of two or three times. He’s a survivor of Dachau, he appears to be of “Jewish blood,” and he has other “Jewish mannerisms” sufficient to prove the point.

I get the impression that, for Fleming, it’s the old genteel anti-Semitism. I’m sure some of his best friends were… and all that, but in the instance of Le Chiffre it’s a sign of difference that implies his fundamental bad-guy-ness.

Just as offensive (or maybe more) is the straight-out misogyny. We meet the beguiling Vesper Lynd as a British agent who also happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. (Filled out in front and in back, we are assured, and seemingly just as desirable as the elegant sports car that Bond wrecks during a chase scene.)

Bond determines to sleep with her, of course, but then he decides she’s worth more than a one-night stand. (He even reflects on the boring experience of first kiss, first aroused kiss, the nights of great sex, and then the inevitable break-up. This will be different, he decides.) She’s so mysterious and sensual that loving her will always come with what he calls “the tang of rape.” (Yup. I actually replayed that part of the audiobook to make certain I wasn’t mishearing it.)

He determines to offer her the ultimate compliment: he will ask her to marry him.

When Vesper learns that she could have been ‘the one,’ it breaks her. She commits suicide and leaves a note explaining that she has actually been a double agent. It was instigated for good cause – an earlier lover of hers was captured, and she’s been compromised and manipulated ever since. But, still, she’s be-shmershed.

The implication is clear: she could live with herself until she realized what might have been as Mrs. Bond. After that, life was no longer worth living.

Bond is upset, which is fair, but her betrayal and death harden him. In a kind of origin-story moment, he proceeds to call his superiors and report, “The bitch is dead.” Cue end-credits. We have a superhero secret agent re-committed to killing without mercy for the good of his own smudgingly corrupt government. After all, the other guys (here, still, the Soviets) are worse.

I end where I started. LeCarre supposedly started his writing career to check the glamorous, two-dimensional morality behind Fleming. I’m glad he did because there is much here to be offended by.

Excellent spy novel, first of a long series. Fleming was a British Naval Intelligence officer in WW II. Bond and Bourne would make a great team.

Ian Fleming introduced the world to James Bond; British Secret Service agent and womaniser out to keep the world safe, time after time. Casino Royale is the first in the huge 007 franchise where Bond’s adventures lead to a card game to bring down SMERSH agent Le Chiffre. But there is more at stake than just money.

This isn’t my first Bond book, I read Jeffery Deaver’s 007 novel Carte Blanche but this is my first Fleming book. So Fleming’s Bond is very different to the movies or Deaver’s secret agent. All the main elements are the same, the womanising and the witty comments but in Casino Royale it’s a lot different to the movie of the same name. There is less action adventure and more attempts at the espionage genre.

The first half of the book is set in the casino playing high-stakes baccarat; a game I know nothing about but was interested to learn. In the end the game is supposedly easy but I still have no idea how to play it. James Bond is trying to bankrupt Le Chiffre; the treasurer of a French union and a member of the Russian secret service. The idea is pretty simple; bankrupt Le Chiffre and prevent him funding any Russian missions. Which is well and good but once this part of the book ended, that’s when this book started going downhill.

The second half of the book was pretty weak, especially when it came to Vesper. The suspense and tension end abruptly and falls flat on its face. There are a few incidences of adventure but it almost tries to turn into this romance but Fleming and the character are such huge misogynists that it doesn’t work at all. Bond is supposed to be very much in love with this woman but he knows there is something she is hiding; but it doesn’t get explored very well in the book.

Now let’s talk about that one phrase in the book that really sets people off; “sweet tang of rape”. I get what Ian Fleming is trying to say and do there, but really that phrase is not the best way to put it. All it does is just prove that Fleming is a sexist and that never really helps the book. I want to say that the idea of wanting to have sex with this woman even though it’s not the right move for Bond is a great idea but it could have been explore and worded differently.

After reading this book, I’m not sure whether I should read more of the series or just stick to the movies. I wanted to read this book to get a sense of what the book was about and also it’s on the ‘1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die’ list, but I really struggle to see how this book turned into a successful series let alone movie franchise. This is a simple case of ‘the movie is better than the book’ and it’s rare but it happens. Casino Royale may be very different, but it managed to keep the tension and explored the basic concept a whole lot better than this book ever did.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...

"A dry martini," Bond said. "In a deep champagne goblet. Three measures of Gordon's, one of Vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

When I was about ten years old, my mom took me and my sisters to see Live and Let Die. That was my introduction to James Bond. It wasn't the sort of movie we were normally allowed to see, so naturally, we loved it. Paul McCartney's theme song still brings back happy memories when I hear it on oldies stations. "When you were young, and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live (you know you did you know you did you know you did)..."

Casino Royale is the novel that introduced James Bond, Agent 007 to the world in the 1950s. Bond takes on a Soviet operative called "Le Chiffre" at Casino Royale. He needs to wipe out Le Chiffre's financial reserves at the Baccarat table. Long explanations of the rules of Baccarat are followed by even longer play-by-play descriptions of the gambling showdown between Bond and Le Chiffre, making this portion of the book about as dry as Bond's favorite cocktail.

The rest of the book does have some charm and appeal, if only for its quaintness. The methods of spycraft seem almost prehistoric against the dazzle of current technology. The trajectory of the plot was rather predictable, most likely because I've read so many other spy novels. Almost as soon as a new character was introduced, his or her real motives were transparent to me, and I could see what the outcome would be.

The book is short and semi-sweet, and worth reading if only for nostalgic purposes. AND, it has just about the best dang last line of any book I've ever read! I'm about to tell you what that last line is, which will be a serious spoiler, so stop here if you're planning to read the book and you don't like spoilers. It may be that you have to have read the book to fully appreciate the last line, but I'm going to share it anyway, just because it made me laugh.

SPOILER WARNING! LAST LINE OF THE BOOK COMING UP!



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"The bitch is dead now."

I'll be honest, I had a hard time with this book. I was about to DNF it. The first 70 pages were painful for me and it wasn't working. I think this series is very lucky that the movies were so awesome. Otherwise, this series would probably be forgotten by now.

The book is less than 200 pages and it took me forever to read. Once I got to the actual baccarat game, that was interesting and the pace picked up. I was into it and read the last 100 pages in 2 days. The game was dramatic and interesting to me. The ending was different than any movie and weird, so out of character with how I think of Bond. He falls in love - how strange. I know it has happened in the movies, but it's unusual. There were also some creepy lines about the sweetness of rape in here. Ugh.

Even though the beginning was so heavy with spy talk and initials I didn't know what they meant and spy language, the middle and end saved this story enough for me to give it a gracious and generous 3 stars, but only just. I am probably being too generous.

I enjoyed the movie and I always like to catch the newest movie with my dad. It's our thing, if possible. I much prefer the movie to the book. I will eventually try another one of these to see if Ian gets better, but I must say, I was disappointed in this. The movie really upgraded the character and made Bond much more likable. I won't be reading this again.

So after all these years of watching James Bond movies, I finally decided to give the novels a try. I don't know why I waited so long!

I had a feeling that I would be let down by the books after enjoying the movies so much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Casino Royale is the first in the series, but this was by no means my favorite of the bond stories. However, it was enjoyable and well written, and I will be continuing with the series.

I did see one of the main flaws of the character people tend to point out, which is how Bond views women. If he's not a misogynist as he's been accused of, he's definitely a chauvinist. I suppose he was in the films to a degree, but it was toned down a bit compared to the books. Now, keep in mind this book was released in 1953, so some of that was a sign of the times. Still, it paints the character as a little less likable than the suave spy we've come to know and love.

That being said, overall it was still a good read and I'll be sure to continue the series. If you are a fan of the films, I say give the books a try.

my first james bond experience! how exciting! this book lived up to my expectations - there was danger, and mystery, and romance. the whole package!

n  4 starsn  n

Line from the book I wish they could have somehow kept in the movie-"He is very good-looking. He reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael..."

I'm planning to read more of Fleming's Bond books and re-watch the movies they are based on. I realize the books and the movies are very different animals when you are dealing with Bond.

A good book to accompany one on such a task is "The Man with the Golden Touch: How The Bond Films Conquered the World," by Sinclair McKay.

The first James Bond novel. Probably 3.5 stars. The excitement is in the first two thirds of the novel. I read Goldfinger and OHMSS years ago. I enjoyed those more.

Some interesting facts that we learn in this book:

James Bond smokes 70 cigarettes per day.

James Bond loves his car.

James Bond likes to sleep naked.

This is the first Bond novel (1953) and it's a doozy. We have SMERSH, gambling, kidnapping, torture, intrigue, double-crossing, and cackling villains.

Bond is set up with millions of British pounds and told to go to France and out-gamble the evil Le Chiffre, a holocaust survivor with no "Christian name" and, supposedly, no memory of his life before age 37. His main problem is that he's a criminal in debt to some dangerous people, and needs to gamble at Casino Royale or he'll be murdered.

The long descriptions of gambling and cards in this book are boring. One chapter is basically Bond explaining how to gamble.

Bond is told that he's going to be paired with another agent and he's shocked and appalled to find out that his partner is female. Of course the woman, Vesper Lynd, is amazingly good-looking and Bond alternates throughout the book with his warring feelings of contempt for her and wanting to f*ck her.

No matter how charming Bond comes off in the films, the written Bond is a whole different animal. Hearing his inner monologue is enough to make you want to tear your eyes out. He doesn't consider women to be human, or people. He also makes horrible stereotypes about everyone in the book who is not a white British man. He also gets really turned on at the thought of rape, although he never rapes anyone in this book. It's very disturbing to read about.

Also, to all the women who think James Bond is really hot - you may think that about the movie character but I seriously doubt you would feel the same about the book character. Constantly described as cold, harsh, brutal, cruel, ruthless, and hard (over and over and over) by Fleming, Bond is hardly someone you'd want to have a relationship with - or even a one-night-stand. He describes women in this book as: beasts, wretches, fools, idiots, and bitches. A LOT. He tends to go off on long, sexist/racist rants in his head. Also, his idea of sex is always described as: ravishment, ravaging, 'bending her to his will,' or a way to 'coldly...put his body to the test.'

When Vesper gets kidnapped at one point, he is furious with her and curses her out. He makes the cold, logical decision that her life doesn't matter (since she is an agent) and plans accordingly - her death is acceptable. When both she and Bond are kidnapped and in the back of a car being driven to god-knows-where to be raped or tortured, Bond is TURNED ON by how sexy she looks with bound and with her legs exposed. ON HIS WAY TO BE TORTURED, this is what he's thinking - about a woman who is helpless and probably about to be gang-raped. I mean, this is a sick, sick man here.

I think it's fair to mention that Bond's genitals are brutally tortured for an hour by Le Chiffre. After this ordeal, Bond spends a lot of time in the hospital recovering. I liked that Fleming wasn't trying to make him some super-human who recovers immediately. Of course, Bond eventually decides that taking Vesper to bed will be the perfect test to make sure his equipment is still functioning properly.

I understand that these books are classics and that James Bond is an icon. I really do. And I understand why people love the books - adventure, torture, being a spy who is rich, beds tons of women, and travels to exotic places. It's not that I don't understand the appeal of this pulp fiction. Wholly unrealistic, it's a fantasy. Real, actual spywork (I'd imagine) is NOTHING like the government giving you millions of pounds to gamble away, pairing you up with a sexy female agent that they are fine with you having sex with, and setting you up in a resort-like location where your every whim is catered to. Because that's your 'cover.' *rolls eyes

I don't blame anyone for loving, enjoying, and gobbling up these books. However, as a woman in 2014 I just can't ignore the screaming, in-your-face racism and sexism that permeates every page of this novel.

Fleming is a good author - there are some gems in here, some great lines and some deep philosophical pondering on Bond's part (this surprised me, he's usually very shallow). Also, no one can write a long villain speech like Fleming can. Le Chiffre's long speech to Bond about how he's going to torture him and there's no hope is wonderful and can be perfectly imagined playing out on the big screen. Classic.

Tl;dr - Exciting spy novel drenched in misogyny and racism.

I'll include some of the more inflammatory passages here. Don't read them if you're easily upset.

And then there was this pest of a girl. He sighed. Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around. One had to look out for them and take care of them.
"Bitch," said Bond, and then remembering the Muntzes, he said "bitch" again more loudly and walked out of the room.

When gambling:
Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued.

When Vesper gets kidnapped:
This was just what he had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave the men's work to the men? And now for this to happen to him, just when the job had come off so beautifully: for Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ransom like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch. Bond boiled at the thought of the fix he was in.
Note: She gets kidnapped and he's annoyed because it throws a wrench in his plans. How dare she inconvenience him like this?!?!? Doesn't she know how annoying it is?

Here's the part where he's being tortured and thinks about her being gang-raped:
Through the red mist of pain, Bond thought of Vesper. He could imagine how she was being used by the two gunmen. They would be making the most of her before she was sent for by Le Chiffre. He thought of the fat wet lips of the Corsican and the slow cruelty of the thin man. Poor wretch to have been dragged into this. Poor little beast.

When Vesper's bound in the car with her skirt over her head and Bond's also kidnapped, next to her:
...his eroticism had been hotly aroused by the sight of her indecent nakedness.

The appeal of raping the woman you "love":
And he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the tang of rape. Loving her physically would each be a thrilling voyage without the anticlimax or arrival.
Bond often talks in this book about getting the "arrogant, private, cold" Vesper to bend to his will in bed. Not only is he talking about spicy rape condiment to make sex more appealing (always like the first time, when they fight you a bit, I guess he's saying) but in an earlier passage he says he wanted her cold and arrogant body. He wanted to see tears and desire in her remote blue eyes and to take the ropes of her black hair in his hands and bend her long body back under his. Tears? Really? Crying during sex is just such a turn-on. <-- sarcasm

Even though Bond wants to take a chance on Vesper (he considers retiring from the Service and toys with the idea of marrying her) she turns out to be a double agent. Her lover is a captive and they'll kill him if she doesn't obey. She ends up nobly killing herself in order to 'save' Bond, to which he responds with deep hatred for her and referring to her as a 'bitch' again. Charming.

UPDATE: In the name of research, I re-watched the 2006 Casino Royale movie. I must say I find it vastly superior to the book. It embraces all the same plot points and basic ideas, but manages to make both Bond and Vesper Lynd into much better people than they are in the book. Bond actually seems as if he cares about Vesper, he seems to be more charming and less of a psychopathic a**hole. Also, Eva Green as Vesper brings some much needed cheekiness and teasing to the role. This creates a sexual tension between her and Bond that was stronger than that of the book. In the book she bounces between helpless/teary/servile and sullen/withdrawn/sulky. Neither of these attitudes is as charming as her pretty, sassy, and smart character in the film. The gambling is not as boring as it is in the book, and you don't have to endure Bond's snide comments about anyone who's not white. Not to mention the beautiful, amazing, talented, gorgeous, brilliant, superb Dame Judi Dench is in the film as M. :)

If you know me at all, you'd know that me saying that the film is better than the book is absolute blasphemy. This is only the second time I've ever thought this in my life. So you know it's serious. :)