lukejfoster

It would be safe to say that virtually every adult in the English-speaking world, and almost certainly the rest, has heard of James Bond, British secret agent 007, the glamorous spy with the high-tech gadgets who saves the day while killing over-the-top villains and romancing beautiful women. The Bond series is, after all, one of the most popular movie franchises of all time. While I do enjoy the movies a great deal, I also enjoy Ian Fleming’s novels quite a bit.

Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond novels, spent the first part of his career in British Naval Intelligence, and was a key figure in several military operations in World War II. When he switched to writing novels, he brought a great deal of that knowledge to his books. They were therefore more grounded in the spycraft of the time, in more realism than one might expect.

It’s also interesting to note that Fleming created Bond to be an intentionally dull protagonist who had interesting things happen to him. It’s a curious literary choice, but it worked well for him. In the 1950s and ’60s, his books were some of the biggest sellers in the world. John F. Kennedy even said From Russia, With Love was his favorite book.

I first read this series fifteen or twenty years ago. I actually read them in order, as I tend to do sometimes. I enjoyed them not in spite of their differences from the films, but because of them. They were all one unique voice, and that they didn’t have what had become the rather formulaic elements we got in the films. I also like how grounded in reality they were, and while some of the films adhered closely to the source material, others were drastically different. If I’m not mistaken, the only thing Moonraker the movie had in common with Moonraker the book was the title.

I will note that those books were very much products of their time, with story elements and plot points that certainly wouldn’t be welcome in books published today. It has been some time since I have read them, though, so I can’t speak to particulars.

Fleming only wrote 14 James Bond novels and short stories before he died, but he left behind a legacy. Many other writers have written their own, authorized novels in the series, but I haven’t red those yet. I may, someday, but I hold those originals with a particular fondness.

I would like to reread them all again, to see how well they hold up. Maybe I’ll even do it this year. It’s certainly doable, but after last year’s challenge and my plan to finish off another favorite series this year, I may hold off for a little while.

The results, to use a terrible joke, will not be for my eyes only.

Back in June, I challenged myself to read all of Agatha Christie’s books by the end of the year. Last week, I completed this goal. Eighty novels and short story collections and two nonfiction books. This does not include the books she wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, but 82 books seemed like more than enough.

What did I learn from this? First, her most popular books – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder on the Orient Express, to name two – are popular for a reason. But she also wrote many that, while not as well known, I thought reached a similar level of quality. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? and Endless Night are just two of them.

Christie was also someone who incorporated her life experiences into her work. While most people think of her stories as all set in quaint English villages, and most of them were, she also worked her experiences in the Middle East with her archeologist husband into a number of her stories.

They were also very clever, too. While someone who wrote 80+ books could see themselves getting repetitive, Christie avoided that for the most part. In fact, there were some cases where I assumed the book I was reading was a retread of another, only to be proved wrong before long.

But for all their good points, there are some negatives that should be addressed. First, she dropped some very casual racism into her stories (and, infamously, the original title of And Then There Were None). While it’s worth pointing out that the racism faded as the years went on, it was still present in a great deal of her work. Second, sexism seemed ingrained in her work, since it almost certainly was in her life and the society around her. Whether those issues are enough to disqualify her work or should be read with caveats as being products of their time, I’ll leave to other debates.

There’s no doubt that Christie is an incredible, influential writer, and I’m glad I spent this year going through her bibliography. I’m not sure I would commit to such a huge reading challenge in such a short time span again, though, as towards the end it felt more like work than enjoyment. If you decide to follow in my footsteps, I recommend giving yourself more than half a year.

So that’s that. Thanks to my grandmother for being such an influence, even if it was so many years after the fact. I had an enjoyable, mystery-filled year.