Jump to content


This is a read only archive of the old forums
The new CBn forums are located at https://quarterdeck.commanderbond.net/

 
Photo

James Bond will return in William Boyd's Solo


155 replies to this topic

Poll: James Bond in Solo (64 member(s) have cast votes)

Do you like the title?

You cannot see the results of the poll until you have voted. Please login and cast your vote to see the results of this poll.

Guessing game - who or what is Solo?

You cannot see the results of the poll until you have voted. Please login and cast your vote to see the results of this poll.

Current hopes for it?

You cannot see the results of the poll until you have voted. Please login and cast your vote to see the results of this poll.

Will you buy it?

You cannot see the results of the poll until you have voted. Please login and cast your vote to see the results of this poll.
Vote Guests cannot vote

#121 FOX MULDER

FOX MULDER

    Sub-Lieutenant

  • Crew
  • Pip
  • 178 posts

Posted 24 September 2013 - 07:00 PM

By the way, for a book that is released in two days there curiously don´t seem to be any reviews yet.

 

Is there an embargo on it? Hasn´t the publisher made it available to the critics?

 

I'm fairly certain that it's embargoed.

I work in a bookshop and we usually get a new title on the shelves a few days before the official release date - so far, no sign of SOLO. That tells me it's under lock and key until Thursday, even to critics.



#122 Walecs

Walecs

    Lieutenant

  • Crew
  • PipPip
  • 789 posts
  • Location:Italy

Posted 24 September 2013 - 07:09 PM

The bookshop where I have preordered it won't have it before next tuesday.


Edited by Walecs, 25 September 2013 - 12:13 PM.


#123 saint mark

saint mark

    Sub-Lieutenant

  • Crew
  • Pip
  • 146 posts

Posted 24 September 2013 - 09:44 PM

I pre-ordered both Doctor Sleep & Solo, and was tempted by the new Donna Tartt as well. For now I keep busy with the new Jo Nesbo (released 12 September).

 

A busy time for good books.



#124 Dustin

Dustin

    Commander

  • Commanding Officers
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 5786 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 02:08 PM

CBner's reviewing SOLO please head this way: http://debrief.comma...spoilers-ahead/



#125 tdalton

tdalton

    Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 11680 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 02:09 PM

I don't know if anyone has already posted this (did a quick look around and didn't see it here), but William Boyd did an interview in which he discusses Solo, Bond, Ian Fleming, and so forth:

 

William Boyd talks Ian Fleming, James Bond, and Solo



#126 Dustin

Dustin

    Commander

  • Commanding Officers
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 5786 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 02:39 PM

Kudos to tdalton. Now on the main page: http://commanderbond...-way-round.html



#127 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 04:53 PM

theguardian review http://www.theguardi...es-bond-mission



#128 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 05:57 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_t4QoOYY7o



#129 007jamesbond

007jamesbond

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1371 posts
  • Location:Vancouver

Posted 25 September 2013 - 06:23 PM

It seem like the Guardian like Solo and give it a review without giving anything away! 



#130 zencat

zencat

    Commander GCMG

  • Commanding Officers
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 25814 posts
  • Location:Studio City, CA

Posted 25 September 2013 - 08:19 PM

So much for the modest promotional campaign. :)

 

http://www.thebookbo...s-revealed.html



#131 glidrose

glidrose

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 2469 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 11:12 PM

Before agreeing to write the book, Boyd asked Daniel Craig if he should write it. Craig said "yes".

 

http://www.express.c...el-Craig-as-007



#132 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 25 September 2013 - 11:58 PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk...t-arts-24227999

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk...t-arts-24282651

 

http://www.edinburgh...royal-1-3112969



#133 doubler83

doubler83

    Lieutenant

  • Crew
  • PipPip
  • 747 posts

Posted 26 September 2013 - 07:24 AM

Pre-ordered from Amazon and totally forgot about it until I received an email from them to say it had been dispatched and I'd only paid £3.85 for it. Bargain!



#134 Major Tallon

Major Tallon

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 2107 posts
  • Location:Mid-USA

Posted 26 September 2013 - 01:24 PM

Amazing!  The release of Solo was a page two story in this morning's Indianapolis Star, a newspaper that typically gives short shrift to anything that doesn't happen in Indiana.  You could have knocked me down with a feather.  It seems that Bond is still big news everywhere.



#135 Guy Haines

Guy Haines

    Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 3075 posts
  • Location:"Special envoy" no more. As of 7/5/15 elected to office somewhere in Nottinghamshire, England.

Posted 26 September 2013 - 03:12 PM

Bought Solo today at the same time as my morning newspaper, over the counter at W H Smith's - just 'round the corner from where I work. I am looking forward to starting it this evening.



#136 zencat

zencat

    Commander GCMG

  • Commanding Officers
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 25814 posts
  • Location:Studio City, CA

Posted 26 September 2013 - 06:52 PM

So much for the modest promotional campaign. :)

 

http://www.thebookbo...s-revealed.html

And now photos and details of the 7 signed copies of SOLO arriving at their 7 thrilling cities.

 

http://www.thebookbo...ound-world.html



#137 sharpshooter

sharpshooter

    Commander

  • Executive Officers
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 8996 posts

Posted 27 September 2013 - 07:37 AM

Bought Solo today at the same time as my morning newspaper, over the counter at W H Smith's - just 'round the corner from where I work. I am looking forward to starting it this evening.

Well done. I'm going on a flight tonight and hope to see a copy of Solo in a bookstore - and have a read on board. Fingers crossed.



#138 saint mark

saint mark

    Sub-Lieutenant

  • Crew
  • Pip
  • 146 posts

Posted 27 September 2013 - 07:53 PM

Have a nice and save flight and much reading pleasure.



#139 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 27 September 2013 - 09:25 PM

James Bond is really just a gent and a romantic standard 27 September 2013

Should Bond girls be referred to as Bond women? The issue was raised by William Boyd at this week’s launch at the Dorchester of his novel, Solo, the latest “continuation” product commissioned by Ian Fleming’s estate to zap yet more lucrative life into 007. “It seems to me that he wants a relationship, not just casual sex,” Boyd opined, although he inexplicably fails to include a scene in Solo where Bond gives a woman a foot massage, listens to her talk about her dreams, or helps her decide which dress to wear to a party.

The author makes a fair point, though. The Bond of Fleming’s books falls sincerely in love at least three times by my reckoning, with Vesper Lynd, Tiffany Case and Tracy Vincenzo. You could make a plausible argument to include a fourth girl — sorry, woman — in that line-up: Kissy Suzuki, with whom Bond settles into a life of happy domesticity and who he eventually impregnates, albeit thanks in large part to a severe head trauma.

In the novel Dr No he is a model of decorum with Honeychile Ryder — who would become the prototype for the cinematic Bond girl — until she bosses him into bed on the last page. In From Russia with Love he is deeply troubled to find himself effectively cast as a gigolo with Tatiana Romanova. Bond would probably regard himself as an old-fashioned romantic and a gentleman, even though he muses — repellently, for contemporary readers — that sex with Vesper would always have “the sweet tang of rape”, effectively buys his bleak first night with Tracy by paying off her gambling debts, and views a lesbian as a challenge.

By contrast to the films, the women in the Bond books tend to be resourceful, independent and strong, often having overcome some sort of sexual trauma — a reflection of the formidable females Fleming knew in both war and peace, with a measure of his dodgy sadomasochistic fantasies stirred in. Fleming’s Bond may be a hyper-heterosexual ogre but his relationships are more complicated and nuanced than mere rutting. Female characters in the films include an astronaut and a nuclear physicist but they’re afforded less respect and personality than the dippy Solitaire in the novel of Live and Let Die.

So Boyd hit the nail on the head. James Bond’s women were always women until the films infantilised them. It’s slightly ironic that the females in Solo are so lame. But as the journalist Giles Coren pointed out, Bond’s love interests in Skyfall — the most successful British film ever — are a former teenage prostitute who is killed immediately after Bond shags her, and a fellow-agent who can’t shoot straight and decides that she’s better off as his secretary. Sorry, girls.



#140 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 28 September 2013 - 04:05 PM

William Boyd Q&A with James Bond http://www.theguardi...-q-a-james-bond

#141 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 28 September 2013 - 09:55 PM

William Boyd on writing his first James Bond novel http://www.scotsman....novel-1-3115998

#142 hcmv007

hcmv007

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 2310 posts
  • Location:United States, Baton Rouge, LA

Posted 29 September 2013 - 03:41 PM

I like the title, and the story seems like a good one, but here is why Im passing on this one: I don't want to read a story set in the Cold War. While I don't plan on buying it I would check it out from a library.



#143 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 29 September 2013 - 10:27 PM

Aah, Mr Bond... we've been expositioning you! http://www.independe...ou-8846462.html

#144 quantumofsolace

quantumofsolace

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 1563 posts

Posted 04 October 2013 - 08:48 PM

http://www.classicca...test-adventure/



#145 glidrose

glidrose

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 2469 posts

Posted 05 October 2013 - 05:33 PM

Boyd interview. While discussing the novel and the films he mentions that his favorite Bond novels are FRWL, LALD and TMWTGG(!).

 

http://www.livemint....lliam-Boyd.html

 

Another Boyd interview. Discusses what spies and novelists have in common.

 

http://www.npr.org/2...new-bond-author



#146 S K Y F A L L

S K Y F A L L

    Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 6889 posts
  • Location:CANADA

Posted 05 October 2013 - 06:09 PM

William Boyd is much older then I was expecting. 



#147 glidrose

glidrose

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 2469 posts

Posted 07 October 2013 - 06:51 PM

Barry Norman interviews Boyd.

 

http://www.radiotime...or-william-boyd

 

Interesting observation... Bond will be 100 next year.



#148 glidrose

glidrose

    Lt. Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPip
  • 2469 posts

Posted 10 October 2013 - 12:33 AM

Boyd on CBS morning television.

 

http://www.cbsnews.c...osen-by-estate/



#149 Matt_13

Matt_13

    Commander

  • Veterans
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 5969 posts
  • Location:USA

Posted 10 October 2013 - 07:25 PM

I'm about 50 pages in and what's striking is how refreshingly simple and clear Boyd's writing is. So far he's sweeping the floor with Devil May Care. He seems to have genuine control of Bond's voice. Plotwise, I'm not quite sure why Bond would be dispatched on such a vague mission that seems to pose no immediate threat to his country, but maybe that will be made clearer as things progress. All in all, so far so good.

#150 sharpshooter

sharpshooter

    Commander

  • Executive Officers
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 8996 posts

Posted 12 October 2013 - 01:10 AM

I'm about 50 pages in and what's striking is how refreshingly simple and clear Boyd's writing is. So far he's sweeping the floor with Devil May Care. He seems to have genuine control of Bond's voice. Plotwise, I'm not quite sure why Bond would be dispatched on such a vague mission that seems to pose no immediate threat to his country, but maybe that will be made clearer as things progress. All in all, so far so good.

It sounds like we're at the same part of the reading process. As it turns out I only got my hands on a copy yesterday. In the first little segment leading up to Bond's briefing from M - Boyd has done marvellously. Really enjoyed his opening stanza with Bond's birthday, testing out a new car and his interest in this woman who keeps popping up. I think that would work very well in a movie. Not sure how I'm feeling about Zanzarim and reading about its long history and such. Could become a bit dull, and it's hardly an exotic location. Anyway, I'll keep reading. Much better than DMC and Carte Blanche so far.


Edited by sharpshooter, 12 October 2013 - 01:11 AM.