James Bond in Print

I'm in the generation that grew up with James Bond the movie star, not James Bond the literary action hero. I didn't even know that the movies were based on books until I was in high school. I was talking about going to see the new Bond movie, and my co-worker Rusty mentioned that they have nothing to base the new movies on since they ran out of books. Then he went on a tirade about how much better the books were. This is something you often hear people complain about. "The book was so much better than the movie." I would argue that books and movies are such different mediums that it's not fair to compare them. Everything is internalized with a book; it's all imagined. With movies there's only one way to see it. That said, I think the Bond movies were way better than the books. I expected the books to be all action, but most of it was spent describing the various hair care products used by our hero. In the case of James Bond, I think your preference is simply be based on what you grew up with.