As I mentioned, we went to see Goldfinger at our local cheap theatre a while back, which inspired me to re-read the book. I was a pretty serious James Bond fan as a kid and read all the novels, despite not really liking them much. I was sort of interested to see how they read as an adult, and, since I still have them all lying around the house, I figured I might as well start with Goldfinger.

I think I’ll also be stopping with Goldfinger, since it’s a pretty horrible book. It took me weeks to finish it, as I couldn’t make it more than a chapter before being too overwhelmed by the casual racism, misogyny, and homophobia to proceed further. It opens well enough, but, by the time Oddjob shows up and Bond starts referring to him as an ape (and to the Korean language as barking and growls), it’s pretty hard to take. By the end, we’ve not only got the constant anti-Korean sentiment, but also the evil lesbian who is turned good by Bond’s manliness (since she was only a lesbian because of a childhood incestuous rape – a common occurrence in the American South, the book informs us).

All that aside, there’s also the issue that Bond is a terrible spy. I can’t quite tell if that’s deliberate, but he pretty much succeeds in this book through no fault of his own. He should have died about halfway through the book (and, incidentally, the scene in which he wakes up, thinking he’s dead, is the best thing in the book, by far. His main concern is how to introduce dead ex-girlfriends to each other in heaven, then decides that heaven is probably okay with polyamory and is, in all likelihood, a non-stop orgy), and the big plot is pretty much foiled by other people. He’s generally kind of a bumbler and utterly unsuccessful at convincing anyone of his cover story. It really doesn’t seem intended, but it’s hard to tell.

Sort of an odd format for a book. Horowitz decides he needs to learn more about the interval between the arrival of Columbus and the arrival of the Pilgrims, so sets off on a series of trips. The book reads somewhat like a travelogue and somewhat like a history text, which is a little odd, but makes for a fairly enjoyable light read. I’m not sure I really learned a whole lot, and I occasionally got frustrated by the digressions (is a detailed description of time in a sweat lodge in Newfoundland really pertinent?), but enjoyable enough. Plus it devotes quite a lot of pages to Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who may be an ancestor of mine, so that’s always good.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I tend to give any book Cory Doctorow recommends a shot. I’m pretty sure I tried something else by Schroeder before, but failed to get into it before the library wanted it back. I made a better effort here, but I’m not really sure it was worth it. Schroeder clearly has a detailed idea of how things are set up in his head, but he has no particular ability to convey any of that. There were some pretty basic issues with just explaining what is going on that Schroeder didn’t quite convey.

The protagonist was also ludicrously capable at pretty much anything she tried and things tended to work out to her advantage a little too often. It made the whole thing feel like bad fan-fiction. I will not be reading another one of his books, no matter how much Doctorow raves.