You Only Live Twice
Bond, a shattered man after the death of his wife at the hands of SPECTRE founder Ernst Stavro Blofeld, has gone to pieces as an agent, endangering himself and his fellow operatives. M, unwilling to accept the loss of one of his best men, sends 007 to Japan for one last, near-impossible mission with the hopes of bolstering his spirits. But Japan proves to be Bond's downfall, leading him to a mysterious residence known as the "Castle of Death," where he encounters an old enemy revitalized. All the omens suggest that this is the end for the British agent and, for once, Bond himself seems unable to disagree.
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2021–2025years
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I read 52 books this year:
- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
- The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
- The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
- When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté
- Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer
- Standing Strong by John MacArthur
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
- We Who Wrestle with God by Jordan B. Peterson
- I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek
- The Holy Bible
- Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef
- I Am Giorgia by Giorgia Meloni
- 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
- The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren
- The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray
- The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray
- The War on the West by Douglas Murray
- Porn Generation by Ben Shapiro
- The Authoritarian Moment by Ben Shapiro
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen
- Darkest Hour by Anthony McCarten
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
- Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming
- Moonraker by Ian Fleming
- Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming
- From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming
- Dr No by Ian Fleming
- Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
- For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming
- Thunderball by Ian Fleming
- The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming
- You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
- The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Next year I will read more books of the Russian writers on this list. I enjoyed those books very much.
After seeing this list, what books do you recommend for me?
- I haven't read James Fleming's book but would like to. I'm glad that the review does not explicitly claim that James Bond fights the Communists, something so often asserted by people who don't know what they're talking about. Ian Fleming created SPECTRE because he thought that the Cold War might end soon, and so wanted a nonpolitical opponent for Bond.
In the films, the USSR is Bond's opponent only in For Your Eyes Only. Red China is the silent backer in Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice, but Auric Goldfinger and SPECTRE are the real enemies, and Thunderball establishes that SPECTRE is willing to work for anyone (including Western powers). Max Zorin in A View to a Kill, General Orlov in Octopussy, and Gustav Graves in Die Another Day are explicitly rogue agents.
