Most James Bond aficionados not only have several shelves crammed with books devoted to the realm of Her Majesty's most famous secret servant, they have fair to middling sized libraries on the subject. There are numerous coffee-table photo-fests covering the films; there are plenty of histories and biographies of the phenomena and its principal players, and there are full texts devoted to specific movies such as Thunderball, not to mention scholarly studies, trivia books, and anthologies of essays devoted to critiquing a very wide vista of fact and fiction. In addition, there are the Ian Fleming novels, the continuation novels, parodies, soundtracks, and games. This doesn't count the exhaustive and often extremely credible websites assembled by international experts. So, if you're one of those with such a library, are you going to want to add Tom DeMichael's James Bond FAQ to your collection?
Probably not.
On the other hand, there are many casual 007 fans who might like a single-volume overview of the movies we've seen over the past 50 years. There are younger fans who may not own a single Bond book at all. For example, I have a grandson who saw Casino Royale last year and then fell in love with Skyfall. For him, Daniel Craig is Bond and all others are imposters. When I showed him The Spy Who Loved me, he complained "That's not James Bond!" I had to smile with the ironic thought that many viewers have been saying that for decades. That's a debate for another place—the point here is, would younger readers and less serious fans benefit from James Bond FAQ?
Some yes, some no.
Admittedly, trying to delve into the canon of 23 EON productions as well as some "unofficial" releases is a daunting task. Choosing what must be covered and what can't possibly be included in one book limits what a reader can be offered. And, after all these years, what can readers get they can't find elsewhere beyond the obvious updating of material on Skyfall?







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