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casino_royale
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CASINO ROYALE by Ian Fleming
2004. (1953) Penguin Modern Classics. Paperback.
One of my treasured teenage gifts was 4 of the James Bond books from
my generous brother Craig. The covers had sexy models posing in front
of giant novelty pistols. The titles Craig got me were Casino Royale,
Live and Let Die, Diamonds are Forever (the model showing some
exciting nipple) and Thunderball.
Many publishers have got their hands on the James Bond titles over the
years and here Penguin give it their best treatment with ten of the
books published in the Penguin Modern Classics series with silver
livery. I got them in a boxed set at a second hand sale and they were
nicely cheap, $30 if memory serves, they might have been as cheap as
$20. I threw away the containing box.
The page numbers of these editions are three-digits wide, zero filled.
(the active numbers are bolded). So instead of page 1,2,3 to page 181,
this book has page 001, 002, 003 to page 181. I think this is solely
so the books can have a page 007 in them.
Publishers rewriting existing books with the help of sensitivity
readers is all the rage this year after some children's classics by
Roald Dahl got the treatment. Ian Fleming's books are very much of
their time (1950s-1960s) and will doubtless be a target for modern
revision soon. There's some very racist stuff towards Koreans in
Goldfinger that should go, and this following paragraph from Casino
Royale, as Bond chases the kidnapped Vesper, can't appeal to many
women.
"This was just what he had been afraid of. Those 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 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."
There's a common mistake in pub trivia nights where idiots insist that
the first James Bond movie was the spoof Casino Royale with David
Niven, Peter Sellars, Orson Welles, Woody Allen and many others. This
is quite ridiculous as that movie is a spoof of the existing Bond
movies, so a few existing Bond movies came first. The first Bond movie
was of course Doctor No and the sexy female star, the wonderfully
named Ursula Andress, appears in both Doctor No and the spoof Casino
Royale.
My favourite Bond trivia question (of my own creation) is "What is the
second Ian Fleming James Bond book?". The answer: Live and Let Die.
There have been a few other Bond spoof movies over the years; only the
Austin Powers movies were successful. Two that I've watched and
enjoyed are "Licensed to Love and Kill" from the 1970s with New
Avengers star Gareth Hunt and "Spy Hard" with Leslie Nielsen and Weird
Al Jankovic providing a fantastic Shirley Bassey theme song, sustaining
the final note until his head explodes.
Some have argued that the James Bond movies are self-parodying
especially in the Roger Moore raised eyebrow, straighten-the-tie
days. My favourite one-liner from Moonraker, "I think he's attempting
re-entry", was brilliantly described by brother Craig as so corny it
was "Hard Pore Corn".
The proper Daniel Craig movie of Casino Royale was very well done and
used a lot of elements from the Ian Fleming book; updating the
gambling from Baccarat to No Limit Texas Holdem Poker; which was
sweeping the world by storm in the 2000s.
My grown-up reading of the novel yielded many details that I'd
forgotten or skimmed over in my teenage read. Le Chiffre was in
financial trouble because he'd invested in a string of French brothels
three months before France made brothels and pornography illegal.
There's a long John-le-Carre style chapter between Bond and Mathis
where Bond ponders "who are the good guys and the bad guys anyway?"
Bond's recovery from his torture and his time with Vesper takes up
fully 77 pages; the last third of the book, which makes Vesper's
suicide and the revelation of the last chapter all the more effective.
I'll try to read all the Flemings this year; I've read most of them
before but a few will be first readings. I've reviewed "Moonraker"
already (March 2020) so I might leave that until last in the reading
cycle.
The webpage https://tainthemeat.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/james-bond-novels/
has lovely pictures of the Penguin Modern Classics Bond covers. Because my
copies are from a "007 Ten pack" I don't have four of these editions,
I'm missing For Your Eyes Only, The Man with the Golden Gun,
Octopussy/Living Daylights and The Spy Who Loved Me. These will be
pretty hard to find in these exact editions; I have the books in other
editions and will simply read those for my complete James Bond reading.
Late November 2023: I've read and reviewed the first six Bond books,
in groups of three, and have enough time remaining in the year to
read three more or even six more. Next up is "Goldfinger".
Ian Fleming wrote most of Casino Royale on his typewriter in Jamaica
on his honeymoon. Most guys are busy doing something else on their
honeymoon.
11th May 2023.
My book reviews are at https://github.com/stucooper/booksiveread