Books recommended by James Bond
14 books

All James Bond novels

by Ian Fleming
James Bond
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by Ian Fleming
Books from James Bond

The New Tsar

An epic tale of Vladimir Putin's path to power, as he emerged from obscurity to become one of the world's most conflicted and important leaders. Former New York TimesMoscow Bureau Chief Steven Lee Myers has followed Putin since well before the recent events in the Ukraine, and gives us the fullest and most engaging account available of his rise to power. A gripping, page-turning narrative about Russian power and prestige, the book depicts a cool and calculating leader with enormous ambition and few scruples. As the world struggles to confront a newly assertive Russia, the importance of understanding Putin has never been greater. Vladimir Putin rose out of Soviet deprivation to the pinnacle of influence in the new Russian nation. He came to office in 2000 as a reformer, cutting taxes and expanding property rights, bringing a measure of order and eventually prosperity to millions whose only experience of democracy in the early years following the Soviet collapse was instability, poverty and criminality. But soon Putin orchestrated the preservation of a new kind of authoritarianism, consolidating power, reasserting his country's might, brutally crushing revolts and swiftly dispatching dissenters, even as he retained the support of many.
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Pierce Brosnan The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Myers The first 007 after the end of the Soviet Union, Brosnan's Bond would undoubtedly be fascinated with the changing political currents in post-Soviet Russia. This new biography of Putin written by New York Times' former Moscow bureau chief, Steven Lee Myers, paints a vivid portrait of the man whose name is now synonymous with Russian politics; it'd be sure to help Bond catch up on what he's missed since Goldeneye.
Books from James Bond

The Year of Lear

Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in 1606 influenced three of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies written that year—King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. “The Year of Lear is irresistible—a banquet of wisdom” (The New York Times Book Review).In the years leading up to 1606, Shakespeare’s great productivity had ebbed. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn—King Lear—then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. It was a memorable year in England as well—a terrorist plot conceived by a small group of Catholic gentry had been uncovered at the last hour. The foiled Gunpowder Plot would have blown up the king and royal family along with the nation’s political and religious leadership. The aborted plot renewed anti-Catholic sentiment and laid bare divisions in the kingdom. It was against this background that Shakespeare finished Lear, a play about a divided kingdom, then wrote a tragedy that turned on the murder of a Scottish king, Macbeth. He ended this astonishing year with a third masterpiece no less steeped in current events and concerns: Antony and Cleopatra. “Exciting and sometimes revelatory, in The Year of Lear, James Shapiro takes a closer look at the political and social turmoil that contributed to the creation of three supreme masterpieces” (The Washington Post). He places them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions. “His great gift is to make the plays seem at once more comprehensible and more staggering” (The New York Review of Books). For anyone interested in Shakespeare, this is an indispensable book.
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Timothy Dalton The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro Fun Fact: Timothy Dalton spent the better part of the 1970s with the Royal Shakespeare Company. This new book examining the impact of the tumultuous year of 1606 on some of Shakespeare's best-known works would definitely appeal to the refined side of Dalton's Bond.
Books from James Bond

The Gun Seller

When Thomas Lang, a hired gunman with a soft heart, is contracted to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts instead to warn the intended victim - a good deed that doesn't go unpunished. Within hours Lang is butting heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femmes fatales, whilst trying to save a beautiful lady ... and prevent an international bloodbath to boot.A wonderfully funny novel from one of Britain's most famous comedians and star of award-winning US TV medical drama series, House.
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Roger Moore The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie This hilarious spoof on the spy-genre is almost as goofy as Moore's Bond. Almost. In The Gun Seller, when Thomas Lang isn't getting smashed on his favorite whiskey or smashed on the head with a Buddha statue, he's jumping out of helicopters and, sometimes, actually doing some spying.
Books from James Bond

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Read this fantastic, atmospheric Australian thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a group of young girls.It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared. They never returned. Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction the reader must decide for themselves.NOW A MAJOR BBC TV SERIES - STARRING NATALIE DORMER
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George Lazenby Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay The oft-forgotten Bond, George Lazenby's version of the famous spy was romantic, melancholy, much like this classic mystery. Set in Lazenby's native Australia, a group of boarding school girls enjoy the eponymous picnic, when three of them suddenly vanish without a trace. Who would their disappearance most remind Lazenby's Bond of--the short-lived Mrs. Bond or his own career?
Books from James Bond

Ivanhoe

The classic epic of chivalry and courtly love features the disinherited knight Ivanhoe, his fair lady Rowena, and such larger-than-life characters as Richard the Lion-Hearted and Robin Hood. This novel of the Crusades, chivalry, and courtly love not only recreates history, but made history as well.
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Sean Connery - Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott A Scotch classic, just like Connery.