When he is in the groove, the James Bond books fly by like an Aston Martin on a winding French road. The absolute best book from Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, ranked from the most popular to the least, based on the votes cast for each title. Keep an eye on your inbox. Strengths: That aside, Casino Royale is everything you want from a Bond novel. The gambling scenes are intense; Vesper Lynd is up to Bond’s scratch in every way; SMERSH is at its most menacing; and Bond himself seems both capable and exposed. This list has the most popular James Bond books, and includes related images and first published dates as well. His Caribbean lies at the nexus of world struggle, and Bond finds himself in the middle of a tug of war between Castro and capitalism.

And while Fleming was great with action and procedure, his greatest creation is Bond himself. sex, action, and intrigue. We spend the first few dozen pages getting to know a badass Soviet hitman, and then he disappears for a hundred pages.

The second book in the James Bond series, Fleming absolutely tortures Bond in this novel and it’s gripping to imagine the effortless and unstoppable secret agent crumble, then equally as hoorah-worthy when he bounces back. 0. A heart-racing ski-chase and a mountain-top helicopter raid. I can’t logically recommend starting your 007 reading list with any novel other than Casino Royale, where Fleming paints the world and man down to every detail.

So which Bond film is the most accurate? I’m going to assume you saw the 2006 Daniel Craig movie (which in my opinion was the best Bond movie ever made) so I won’t go into the plot.

Need I say more?


This engaging and high-octane adventure makes for one of Fleming’s best works. Strengths: Dr. No’s “Crab Key” is the archetypal lair, resplendent with an enormous glass wall exposed to the open ocean, scrupulously maintained luxury accommodations, and inexplicably ready-made obstacle-course escape route. A cool, collected, and smoking hot female intelligence agent that Bond respects, but also puts the A-level moves on. Thunderball also introduced the aforementioned iconic Bond villain, Ernst Blofeld, who returns in two more novels. No spam. We promise. When he takes a wrong turn, there’s very little time to recover.

Bond doesn’t appear in the first third of the book as Fleming sets the stage and plan of the Soviet Union plot. Hit the comments to share your favorites. Copyright ©2020 Designtechnica Corporation. A gambling scene that, while not in a casino, is as satisfying as any car chase. The history and fluctuating value of cormorant guano is explained at weirdly pleasurable length here as well. It’s as crisp and hard-hitting as an ice-cold martini. Despite its revelatory aces, the read is distasteful for its colonialist attitudes that are downright racist. Is it our favorite of his books? Thank you for signing up! Here, the voodoo chieftain/SMERSH operative Mr. Big is an all-seeing gorilla, who controls wildlife and the locals. You could do worse than to start and end your Bond reading here. He tries to imbue his non-white characters with personality and individuality, but his characterizations come out as grotesques. Perhaps it’s my own ignorance of post-war Soviet/NATO propaganda warfare, but discrediting Le Chiffre in public seemed too subtle a goal for a spy thriller.

So, this summer I decided to read all of the original Ian Fleming Bond novels. After Bond’s wife is killed at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, we’re due for a climactic bang between the broken-down 007 and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, one of the most iconic villains in the James Bond series.

The pages are dense and rich with detail;  you can tell Fleming put his blood, sweat, and time into this novel. A believable but larger than life ex-Nazi rocket scientist with an amazing name (Hugo Drax). Fleming also captures our attention with believable and strong characters and his exotic imagination, taking Bond from to Istanbul to Paris. You don’t have to know the acronyms and backgrounds of any Bond baddies to understand what’s going on. All rights reserved.

Yep, you read that right.
Fleming wrote “thrillers designed to be read as literature” and, in the process of publishing more than a dozen books, cracked open a world of exotic adventure, ultimate babes, gadgets, and gear, shaping the spy genre as we know it today. Considered the origin of the spy novel genre, this Bond book is based around an atomic bomb threat. This is also the first time Bond goes against someone with admittedly superior marksmanship, and his twin interest in and fear of matching skills with Scaramanga, “The Man With The Golden Gun,” is compelling. One sticking point for Bond fans has been how often the films stray away from their source material. Dr. No, one of Fleming’s most vivid novels, sweeps you away to the humid island of Jamaica and carries you along for the clandestine ride as 007 investigates the suspicious Dr. Julius No. Live and Let Die (1954) The Diamond Smugglers is non-fiction mirror to Diamonds Are Forever. From Russia With Love is a sexy, sexy Bond book, so expect to feel flushed with Tatiana Romanov first meets James. A mysterious group of nubile young women. Here’s an overview. Bond’s guard is let down and we get a true sense of the man grieving behind the Beretta. Bond is coupled with one of the best heroines of Fleming’s writing, officer Brand, who works for Scotland Yard and never falls for James’ charms and seduction.

list created April 3rd, 2010 By Seth Rector Feb 29, 2020. Henchmen whose bizarre uniformity actually makes sense. He is both fascinated and repelled by America, admiring its spirit, resources, and optimism, while also finding it a hollow showplace for consumerism. Strengths: Apart from Bond himself, the pleasure of these novels is in the con: from cormorant guano in Dr. No to nuclear warheads in Thunderball. Weaknesses: As a character, Emilio Largo isn’t among the best of Bond’s adversaries. So much bookish goodness–all day, every day. No himself is fearsome and maniacally, inhumanly rational, as symbolized by his mechanical hands. The writing itself is sharp and piercing, and the Bahamas setting jumps off the page. The format is also fresh and inventive — a complete jump for Fleming, who had written four 007 novels before this. Many will argue it’s the only good 007 book Fleming ever wrote and the only one you need to read. Goldfinger lacks a magnetic leading lady and relies, as so many of these novels do, on head-smacking coincidence. His mistress, Domino Vitali, is a fine paramour for Bond, but not on the order of Vesper Lynd or Teresa di Vicenzo. The best three would probably be enjoyable to anyone who likes a spy novel; the bottom three James Bond books are painful for even the most devoted fans of 007. What do you think are the best James Bond books? He wrote each of the novels while on his annual three-month vacation from his newspaper job in London. What follows is my ranking of the these twelve original James Bond novels from worst to best.