On Her Majesty's Secret Service, by Ian Fleming
published 1963 - read 2005

This is he first Bond novel I've ever undertaken. I came in with at best a cursory familiarity with the character, thanks to the maybe half-dozen of the movies that I've seen some portion of.  It should be said that I picture Bond as looking like Pierce Brosnan, talking like Sean Connery, and acting like Roger Moore. The film of On Her Majesty's Secret Service starred George Lazenby, so no doubt I am going to be somewhat disoriented if I ever get around to watching that. Anyway! The book is fun! Very quickly digestible, as you'd expect from the sort of pulpy genre, but a little more involved in details than necessary, which only makes it loveable.  I occasionally got lost in the barrages of untranslated French and stuff to do with card games (what the heck is baccarat, anyway?), but whatever.  Note as well that the books are apparently much less gadget- and explosion-oriented than the films - it's a lot more about spying, albeit the most spicily overcooked and violent spying imaginable in the 1960's.  I was fine by that. Long story short, this was fun and I will probably end up reading more of these; as I've said before, I'm a sucker for books about badasses.

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