17) Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming

I’m very grateful to for sending me this – I had read a heavily abridged version years ago (back when my mother was involved in adult literacy schemes, I found it on her desk one day) but there is no substitute for the real thing. And this, not the film, is the real thing. No silly Caribbean escapades to fill in space and use budget, we are straight in with the gambling, the defeat, the bail-out by allies, the victory at the table, the kidnapping, the torture, the escape, the betrayal.

What surprised me a bit is that I don’t think Bond’s amoral, exploitative attitude to women is presented at all in an approving way. He has been dehumanised by his work, and this is his tragedy; one of his colleagues tells him, at the end of a chapter which has had a surprising discussion of good and evil, “don’t let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine.” And indeed when Bond ought to be displaying due care and suspicion in the last chapters, he is distracted by unaccustomed emotion, and misses the clues obvious to the reader.

Anyway, a very good, quick read.

Top five UnSuggestions for this book:
1) The Pursuit of God, by A. W. Tozer
2) Knowing God, by J. I. Packer
3) Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation, by Debbie Stoller
4) Good in bed, by Jennifer Weiner
5) Institutes of the Christian religion, by John Calvin