Status Updates From James Bond: The Authorised ...

The ups and downs of Bond's relationship with M is pretty interesting. M is a pretty hard, unsympathetic boss but even when they clash Bond usually later agrees that M's harshness was called for. Earlier, the book notes that in his relationships with women, he was irritated by any kind of demand; now we learn that with M he seems to crave that structure.

"He was genuinely shocked when his women were revealed as human beings." is a crazily succinct statement about misogyny coming from a dude in the 70s.

The last 10 pages have been entirely about a mission where James Bond had to hide on a freezing cold island and note German U-boat and ship movements so he can radio them back to London. He was miserable the whole time, got discovered really quickly, and didn't even get the most vital information back in time.
I'm really enjoying it.

I bought this out of curiosity but wasn't really expecting it to be good; with Bond's enduring status as a cultural power fantasy, it felt guaranteed to be one of those biographies where the writer is clearly too enamored with their subject to write about them objectively.
But he's somehow crushing it so far? 24 pages in and we are discussing how Bond's mommy issues manifested in the poor ways he treated women?