Mi6 Cafe Book Club - Casino Royale - Finishing Book

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Welcome back to Book Club! Get your drinks, snacks and any notes you have and gather round for the final discussions on Casino Royale!

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!

Some Questions to get us started!

1) What do you think of the book overall? What bits would you want to improve?
2) Has the book changed your opinion on James Bond (the character)? Why is this?
3) Have you enjoyed the read along for this month? What has been your favourite bits so far?

These questions are just to get you started, as always please post your opinions, views and other discussion points about the book that you want to talk about! Happy discussing!

Note - we will be discussing the WHOLE book this week, so naturally there will be spoilers if you have not yet finished the book!

Please note - our next book is Live and Let Die, and will start on the 5th of September. Please check the schedules and resources post for more information about the book club times and where you can find copies of the book!

Comments

Re: Castillon (14-16)

[(Anonymous)]

15) Hmm, that's a good question! (These have all been wonderful questions, btw! I understand the book even better for having considered them.) My guess is that Bond worried that he and Mathis wouldn't be able to do a capture because Le Chiffre would sneak around and go somewhere other than his little seaside cottage. And if his planned shoot-out didn't work, then telling Mathis would involve telling his own government as well, and there'd be a chance--a small one, but there--that they'd authorize the swap of the check for the girl.

It reads like pride is a big part of that first rush of planning and decision-making. There might be some kind of instinctive desire to hide the fact that Le Chiffre got the best of him by getting to Vesper. Bond has just won, and now Le Chiffre has spoiled his victory, and, in the scenario in which he lies to Mathis, bested him in a shoot-out over Vesper. Bond wouldn't want to admit his failure (Vesper's failure--MI6's failure), particularly to Mathis and another organization, and so he plans to sweep it all under the rug.

I think Head of S said that assassination would just make Le Chiffre a martyr, and that probably goes for capture as well. This entire operation was about humiliating and defanging Le Chiffre in order to cause a blow of morale and finances to "Redland."

Agent Carter looks good! I am just so terrible at watching TV, though, haha. But I have so much respect for women spies in WWII--I'm just growling in frustration right now, in fact, because I read a wonderful little book about them but can't remember the title to recommend it to you, and it's not on Amazon; must have been a small printing or something. BUT YES. Bond with his "get back to your pots and pans" comment, omg, literally a "get back in the kitchen where you belong" attitude. Ugh. Vesper teaches him differently, a bit, about the competence of a woman spy, but I'd love for Agent Carter to give that chauvinistic attitude a nice wallop.

-Castillon

Re: Castillon (14-16)

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

I think pride is a really, really big problem for Bond in this book if not overall, tbh