The literary Bond is more snobbish and sadistic than the movie ones. His movie antagonists are more internationalised than the specifically Soviet etc. literary ones, for box office reasons.
I read them all when in my mid-teens in the 60s and thoroughly enjoyed them. I tried reading one a few years ago and could barely get through it. Decades of life experience teach you too much for them to be plausible. Too many things are done in ways that are needless or could be better done in a more obvious and logical way, or perhaps just don’t add up. Others don’t fit with what you’ve come to know about human nature and how things work in a real world sense.
I found the same to be true with Perry Mason novels as well, sadly.
I just started reading them a few months ago.
I used to watch the Connery movies on tv as a kid back in the 80’s. Then I saw a few of the Brosnan films in the 90’s.
In my opinion, the Craig films are the best.
But back to the books… I have read Moonraker, Casino Royale and From Russia With Love.
They have been quite enjoyable, though hopelessly dated with their depiction of women (basically as creatures totally unfit to make it in the world).
In the books, Bond is depicted more as a civil servant with perks, but also a pretty staid life. It’s not until he’s on assignment that the movie Bond comes out, but the books make it clear that those assignments are really few and far between. He also comes off in the books as competent, but also frequently benefitting from luck.
In my mind while reading, I definitely see Connery. However, I think Craig has really best captured the character of Bond from the books.
I would recommend reading Moonraker for a good taste of Bond from the books.
Here’s an excellent post by Mr. Ekers from some years ago. Even better than his description of the European discovery of porcelain. 
ETA: Although this is not a comparison of the character, but the plots.
Not only does Book Bond have egregious plot-armor, but the character basically seems aware of the fact that he is the protagonist of his own book series, and so can’t die. His plans generally boil down to him walking in the front door of the heavily guarded enemy lair, getting captured and figuring that once the bullets are done flying he’ll be fine and everyone else will be dead.
Ha, that Bond summary may have been my first (certainly ONE of my first) posts on this board.
I don’t offhand recall the porcelain description, though.
If we’re considering Fleming’s own opinion on what movie Bond should have been, I’ve read (but can’t immediately cite since I can’t find the damned Bond Encyclopedia at the moment) that Fleming had in mind a David Niven type, i.e. a cad and outcast from the upper classes, expelled from Eton, sleeping with married women to avoid entanglements etc. Fleming has a character describe Niven in positive terms in “You Only Live Twice” (one of the Japanese pearl divers, a beautiful young woman named Kissy Suzuki, describes having been hired to make some films in Hollywood and finding the experience most unpleasant, but for the kindness of Niven), but by the next (and last) novel, “The Man With the Golden Gun”, Bond declines a knighthood by saying “* am a Scottish peasant”, which strikes me as Fleming likening the character to Sean Connery rather than Niven, since Connery by then had made his first two Bond films.
Personally, I have my doubts that Niven could have made a good James Bond. Even if we discount the crazy-ass 1967 Casino Royale, I’m not sure Niven quite had the toughness necessary. His role in The Guns of Navarone was more of “smart guy who does tech stuff but lacks the spine for truly ungentlemanly behaviour.” Perhaps Niven had some other proto-action-movie roles that suggest otherwise, but I’m not familiar with them.
Huh, I misread the dates. I vaguely recall that my first or one of my first posts here was Bond-related.
Found it:
The encyclopedia mentioned is the same one I can’t find at the moment to confirm Fleming’s opinion of David Niven, though in fairness, it might only be Gould’s opinion of Fleming’s opinion of Niven.
Hah…“Bryan Ekers, Montreal…” I was so young. Anyway, novel-Bond was ordering shaken martinis as early as “Casino Royale.”
And of course the movies carefully hew to reality.
I look forward to your series James Bond, Accountant…
True, but Bond’s predilection for disciplining, chastising and generally roughly treating the ladies is pretty much based upon Flemings own lifelong embrace of S & M. You read them after you learn about that fact, well it was the only way he was evet going to put such material in and get published.
Honestly, the books show him as basically a boring analyst: rolls into the office at 10 and shuffles paperwork, then leaves at 5 for an evening alone. Rinse and repeat.
Yes, that’s as I remember the books. Bond works at a desk a lot of the time. IIRC, he was a hand-to-hand instructor as well, but that might have been in one of the non-Fleming books. He has a flat where he lives alone. What little description there is of the flat doesn’t make it sound particularly luxurious. Does he belong to a club or am I conflating M having a club with Bond having one?
Anyway, except when he got assigned some “wet work,” book Bond didn’t seem to lead a glamorous or exciting life. Calling his life dreary might be a bit too much, but compared to movie Bond he does live like a reasonably well paid government employee, not a jet-set spy.
Maybe James Bond, Ornithologist.
As I recall, M invites Bond to dinner at his club in the novel Moonraker. It’s one of the only scenes in the books where Bond gets to show off his taste for fine food, and it’s limited to ordering the peas, because it’s spring, and they’ll probably be fresh and not out of the tin.
Noooooooo! I’ve been SAVING those to read during my Declining Years, which are fast approaching!
One of the books, From Russia With Love, describes Bond stuck in dreary paperwork. The novel starts with several chapters of the backgrounds of Donovan Grant (the psychopathic killer working for SMERSH), Rosa Klebb (head of operations for SMERSH), Kronsteen (the chess-master operations planner for SMERSH), and SMERSH starting to put together a plan designed to seriously bitchslap the Western intelligence services, etc…
Bond shows up around chapter five or six, which starts with “The soft life had got ahold of Bond and was slowly smothering him in its flabby embrace,” or something like that. Bond at this point has been stuck in London for months following his mission in America (“Diamonds are Forever”), long enough for Tiffany Case, who’d moved in with him after the events of that novel, to get tired of him and move back out, which Bond has to admit he kind of prefers - not being tied down to any one woman.
Some of Bond’s paperwork activities are described, including him being on a committee and getting into a minor dustup with another member who thought intellectuals were prone to wearing their hair long and indulging in homosexuality, or some such crap (possibly alternatively, he was bored while reading a lengthy report about “philopon”, a version of meth that was becoming rampant in urban Japan - I can’t find my novels at the moment to check).
In any event, the dulled reflexes of “the soft life” are implied to blame for Bond not becoming suspicious that a television salesman had been bothering his live-in housekeeper, May. The salesman is actually a Soviet agent making clandestine inquiries into Bond’s movements, confirming that he is currently in London. Also, when the story surfaces of a beautiful cipher clerk named Tatania Romanova claiming she’s distantly fallen in love with Bond and wishes to defect and bring a top-secret decoding machine with her, both M and Bond are sufficiently dulled by boredom that they jump on this bizarre opportunity instead of being appropriately cautious. Their man in Istanbul, Darko Kerim, has not been similarly dulled and maintains his active distrust, right up until he gets killed.
Well you know, I could be wrong. Plenty of adults here seem to like 'em fine. Maybe it’s just me. I hope I haven’t poisoned the well for you, but if it turns out you don’t care for 'em after all you might want to check out the Nero Wolfe novels where the fun lies in the characterizations and the interplay between the characters. I discovered them relatively late in life and I’m glad I did.
Thanks! I read most of the Nero Wolfe novels as a teen also. Over the past few years I’ve gone back and re-read the ones from the '30s and '40s, which I consider the best ones, and they hold up just fine!
Oops, I meant they’re enjoying the Bond books fine so you might enjoy the Mason books as well.
Then you might also like the Nero Wolfe A&E series. It’s available now on Youtube and Netflix and on DVD from Amazon. Can’t recommend it highly enough.