A few weeks ago I had my “first” Vesper at a bar. It was made with vermouth as I don’t think the bartender had or knew what Lillet was. Hell, I didn’t either at the time lol. But I decided to try to find some today. I was successful. Looking forward to *officially* having my first Vesper for real.
3 measures of Gordon’s
1 of vodka
1/2 a measure of Kina Lillet (Lillet Blanc)
Shake it over ice and add a thin slice of lemon peel
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Never see any Astons where I live, but today I saw this beauty. 😍😍😍
Holy shit! I’m stuck on the Dimitrios fight in the science centre. I’m able to stun and then grab him no problem, but when it wants me to press specific buttons to counter his attacks and win the fight, nothing happens. Even if I do press the right button, despite having literally no time to react at all, I still lose the fight and the cycle continues. This is a ridiculous mechanic and I hate whoever programmed or allowed this to be programmed into the game. They could maybe have given you a little more time to react and press the button it wants you to. This wasn’t an issue in previous parts of this game where this was a thing, like the Mitchell fight. But here, what the fuck? Are you supposed to press the button once? Hold it? Mash it? I hate this so much!
Today I picked up the PS2 version of Quantum. Despite already owning the PS3 version, I won’t be able to compare the two. I bought the PS3 version back in October, but I haven’t gotten around to actually buying a PS3 console yet. I probably should because I also recently picked up 007 Legends lol. But anyways, PS2 Quantum. Yay! Gonna give it a whirl right now.
My journey through all the Ian Fleming books began in, I believe, 2015. I wanted to read through all of the original Bond books. This was a tall order as I’ve never really been a reader. ADHD and all that lol.
I made it though the first four books before giving up.
Then, about 6 months ago, I became inspired to read all the ones I hadn’t read yet. I recently accomplished that. And once I was done with those, I wanted to go back through Casino-Diamonds, as it had been so many years since I read those ones. Glad I did, as I had forgotten so much of what happens in them.
So between October and April, I read every original James Bond novel. While the quality often varies from book to book, it was a fun adventure to go through all of them and discover what was the same in the movie adaptations, what was different, just how much of the blueprint is actually there on the page, in relation to the screen adaptations. As Timothy Dalton once said, “it’s all there!” And it really is. Fleming provided everything.
Anyways, here’s my ranking. This is not scientific by any means. I didn’t break it down by girl, villain, plot etc. I pretty much just went purely by how much I enjoyed reading each book as a whole. Also I could probably even move this list around a bit, but I’m too lazy to really do a forensic autopsy on this. I just read 14 books in 6 months. That’s more than I’ve ever read in the rest of my life combined, what more do you want from me? lol.
Best to “worst”
Dr. No
Casino Royale
From Russia With Love
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Live And Let Die
Diamonds Are Forever
Moonraker
The Man With The Golden Gun
Goldfinger
Thunderball
For Your Eyes Only
The Spy Who Loved Me
Octopussy & The Living Daylights
I wouldn’t say the quality really drops off for me until Thunderball. The middle section drags for me. The Spy Who Loved Me, I think, probably ranks pretty low for most people. But I really do appreciate how the story is told from the Bond girl’s perspective. That’s an interesting concept. But it is pretty dull until Bond shows up. It looks like it ranks low, and it does, but I still do appreciate the concept. I know people like Moonraker a lot, and I did, too, but, similar to Thunderball, a good section of that book is pretty slow for me. It’s the whole Blades section at the start. Once Bond shows up at Drax’s place I absolutely love it. It’s amazing. But the beginning was too slow for me. But I understand why it needed to be there to set up the rest of the story. Just wasn’t as enjoyable as the rest of the book.
Going through all these books was a really cool adventure to discover book Bond and experience new Bond adventures (despite drastic shifts in quality from book to book lol,) and I’m actually kind of sad it’s over. But as a Bond fan it’s nice to know that I’ve finally gone through everything Ian Fleming wrote about James Bond. I’m happy I can say that now…despite not really being much of a reader.
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