MI6 Book Club - Casino Royale

[mi6-cafe-mod.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the first MI6 Cafe book club! Get your drinks, snacks and any notes you have and gather round for Book Club!

If you want any resources for the Casino Royale book, please find the link to the resources in the sidebar on the right! Please check the schedule to find out what we're discussing this week!

Book Club is designed to be a place where you can go beyond the Bond movies and delve into another medium with our favourite secret agent. There is no set discussions, if you have anything interesting you want to discuss about your reading experience, comments on the text, or even how reading the book might have changed your view on the characters in the movies then do share!

How this works

• Reading of Casino Royale starts now!


• On the 8th of August there will be a discussion post for chapters 1-13


• On the 15th of August there will be a discussion post for chapters 14-27 and the book as a whole


• The discussion post at the halfway point is for the specified chapters only! Please don't post spoilers for the rest of the book in the first one, or in the comments on this post, for that matter

Trigger Warnings
The Bond books were written in the 1950s and 60s, and contain examples of things that are not exceptable today. Casino Royale contains examples of:

• g*psy slur used


• discussion of rape


• racism


• sexism

The book also contains examples of:

• smoking and excessive alcohol consumption


• violence


• suicide


• torture


• drug use (mention)


• car accident


• death

No one should read something that makes them uncomfortable, so please heed the warnings. If you have any questions or need clarification, contact isthisrubble (livejournal or tumblr). If you have read the book before and think there are other things that should be on the lists, comment below so everyone can see.

Some Questions to get us started!

1) What do you expect to be different in the book from the movies?
2) Is this your first time reading any of the Bond books?
3) Has reading the book so far inspired you to change the way you approach Bond in fandom?

Happy discussing!

Comments

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

1) What do you expect to be different in the book from the movies? I think the books are a lot more serious than the movies, less jokes, less over-the-top-ness, etc.

2) Is this your first time reading any of the Bond books? I've read I think the first half of the series already. Some of them I've only read once, others I've got on my bookshelf and have read quite a few times.

3) Has reading the book so far inspired you to change the way you approach Bond in fandom? Once I started reading the books it really changed the way I looked at James Bond as a character. I'm really interested to see if other readers have a similar reaction...

What are first time readers expecting from the books? Do you think what you learn from the books will bleed into your headcanons for the movieverse?

Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

1) I think in some ways the POV might be be a bit more intimate; we have access to Bond's thoughts rather than just seeing his actions, as we do in the movies.

2) I've read "The Spy Who Loved Me" and enjoyed it very much! But of course that is an atypical one, being told from the Bond Girl's POV. So Casino Royale is my first Bond-POV Bond book!

3) Just the first chapter or two are a goldmine of character information about what Fleming describes as the practical realities of being a spy, so that's been interesting to see. (Another book/movie difference: Movies don't usually have the luxury of showing the more mundane levels of spycraft.) I'm also intrigued by the small moments showing Bond's relationship with M. IDK, there's just lots of good stuff going on!

A note about currency: Early in the book, Bond notes that he has a capital of 23,000 pounds. A quick Google search put a 1950 pound as having the same buying power of 20.5 pounds in today's money; if that holds up, then 23,000 1950 pounds would be 471,500 in today's pounds. So, you could round up to about 500,000 pounds if you wanted a round number. In today's money, that's about $750,000, the exchange rate being about 1.5 pounds to the dollar.

Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

1) Yeah, I agree; although there are humorous or indulgent moments, the overall tone seems to be more serious.

What am I expecting? I guess I want to find out what made these books so popular! What kind of stories did Fleming tell that helped make Bond such a powerful fictional character? And I'd love to just get some more details in a worldbuilding kind of way. See more of Tanner, how MI6 functions in the books, that sort of thing. At times I'm a total magpie when it comes to headcanons, so I'm perfectly happy to pick and choose traits from Bond's book character to potentially apply to movieverse Bond as well.

Since you've read several Bond books already, what makes them worth a reread for you?

-Castillon

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

I really love all the everyday aspects of Bond's world that we get from the books, and also I find them refreshing, like when you eat something to cleanse the palate in between courses of a fancy dinner - the movies are quite over the top and fanfic can be sickly sweet, so they're a nice change

otherwise, well, they're good books, and Fleming has this thing he does, where the last sentence or two of each chapter isn't a cliffhanger, but they make you want to find out what happens next right now

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

2) I haven't read that one yet, it'll be interesting to see what it's like

3) yes, this I love so much

I worked out that a 1000 franc tip Bond gives in the first chapter is about USD$25 now, I think, which put all the money talk in perspective...

[spike-wilbury.livejournal.com]

1. books are super serial than the movies. and like, in the 50s/60s. everything is outdated and not in the technology era as we are so used to.

2. Nope, I've read about half of the Fleming books and more than half of the Gardner books and also the Young Bond series by Charlie Higson.

3. The books are, on a whole different level than the movies. it's really what i try to tell people. sure the movie and the books have the same name and same characters but that's usually it. you have to have an open mind on what they decided to cut from the book to put in the movie and you have to omit certain things from the book that will go into the movie. I enjoy both and can try and keep them separated [and fail miserably]

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

1) I'm not 100% sure what you mean here ???

3) yes, exactly!

[spike-wilbury.livejournal.com]

the original fleming books were written in the 50s/60s and while in the first few books, contain little to no technology, certain things that they do, we don't even see in day to day life now. [public phones, smoking everywhere, etc] whereas now too, everything that happened to james in a lot of the books, would have been prevented by a cellphone call or a laptop which he doens't have [because they don't exist] that's kinda what i mean

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

ah ok, right! that's what I thought you were saying. I got confused by "books are super serial than the movies"

[spike-wilbury.livejournal.com]

yeah, sarcasm is hard to do on the internet :c

Re: Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh, that last thing is something I'll keep a lookout for! I've done one reading of Casino Royale now, but I was so wrapped up in the story that I didn't think as much about the technique of Fleming's writing. Thanks! ^ ^

-Castillon

Re: Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

3) Thanks, that's another good way to put the money in perspective! Also, it is now canon that Bond tips well when he can. :D

-Castillon

Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

1) It's true that they're outdated now as far as tech goes, but I think they were pretty modern when they came out? l read an article talking about how Bond is always eating then-exotic food, like that avocado he orders for dessert with Vesper. Hmm! This idea of whether the books are modern for their time is something I'm going to have to think more about for this week's discussion!

-Castillon

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

going off on a tangent here, but why the hell does he eat that for dessert like ??????? I swear someone eats bone marrow and strawberries for dessert once in another book too wtf

Re: Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

What I read on one person's website--they wrote a book about the food of James Bond; I think they're in the aca-links somewhere in the resources--is that avocados were so new/exotic to the Western, post-war world that people didn't really know how or when to eat them? It was just like, "Avocados, those are cool! What do we do with them? IDK, but they're going to get eaten! And I'm going to mention them in my book to show people how sophisticated and knowledgeable Bond is!" This was a time when most Western people hadn't heard of guacamole, I suppose. I imagine the thinking was something like, "Avocados are technically fruit, so maybe they go in the dessert course?" or something like that. Or maybe Fleming was just the kind of person who liked a post-meal avocado and did a bit of self-insert, as he apparently did with Bond's enjoyment of scrambled eggs and stuff. :D

-Castillon

Re: Castillon

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

James Bond is literally the ultimate self insert, seriously

he looks like Fleming, eats like Fleming, drinks like Fleming, smokes like Fleming, womanises like Fleming, has a WW2 history like Fleming...

... but Bond is the better version, the version Fleming would have liked to be

[peterpandyke.livejournal.com]

1) What do you expect to be different in the book from the movies?
Basically, I agree with the general opinion that books are more serious. And I like that we get to read what Bond thinks, and why he does things he does, and also all the details that never make it into the movies (like the scrambled eggs).

2) Is this your first time reading any of the Bond books?
Nope, I read all of them a couple of years ago, and some of the post-Fleming ones as well. But it's going to be my first time reading Casino Royale in the original. So it's going to be really cool copmparing it with the translated one.

3) Has reading the book so far inspired you to change the way you approach Bond in fandom?
Fandom often paints Bond as less serious or funny or with all the focus on tragic backstory, and books remind me that Fleming's Bond was a bit different.

Re: Castillon

[peterpandyke.livejournal.com]

the alternative title of the whole series should be "Things Fleming Wanted To Do But The War Has Ended" or "Things Fleming Saw People Do And Wanted To Do Himself"

Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

2) Wow, that's so cool that you will have read Casino Royale in more than one language! I'd love to know about any interesting translation differences.

See you at the book club tomorrow! :D