My journey through the James Bond chronology moved from the page to audiobooks this week, as I've been listening in acknowledged sequence on a cross-country drive from New York to California. I'm two days into my four day journey as I'm compiling my thoughts on a few of these, starting with Goldfinger as read by Hugh Bonneville. You may know Bonneville from various film and television roles, perhaps most notably Downton Abbey, Twenty Twelve and W1A. Interestingly, one of his first film roles was in a Bond film, where he had a few seconds of screen time in the not terribly good Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Bonneville is one of several British actors of note who tackled a Bond novel a few years ago, and he does a terrific job here of keeping the action rolling along, even through some of Ian Fleming's trademark slogs through technical tedium. Say that five times fast.

Goldfinger was first published in 1959, hitting the silver screen as the third - and for many, best - James Bond film five years later. It can be difficult when a film is so iconic to separate actors cast in certain roles from their description in the source material. Such is always the case with Bond himself, who I never picture as Fleming described, but sometimes an amalgamation of various actors who've played him in movies. Gert Fröbe, who played Auric Goldfinger in the film adaptation, is perhaps a foot taller than the character as described by Fleming, but fuck it; Fröbe is who I pictured.

Quite a lot of the book made it into the movie, though thankfully most of Fleming's renowned racism did not. In the book, Koreans are described as animals, confused with people from other Asian countries, and are generally made to look inferior to straight white men.

In previous books, Fleming has also used Bond and other characters to espouse his ridiculous theories about both women and homosexuals. Here, he gets uglier still...

"Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and ‘sex equality’. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits – barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them."

God, what a fucking dick. It's like the Trump platform minus all the jingoism, racism and paranoia.

One notable area where the book differs significantly from the film is in the depiction of Pussy Galore, who here is a leader of a lesbian gang of cat burglars rather than the leader of a female flying circus. She's a more compelling character in the film, mostly because Fleming can't possibly introduce an attractive woman who doesn't succumb to Bond's manly charms, even if she is a lesbian. Tilly Masterson is also revealed to be a lesbian, and while she doesn't succumb to Bond's manly charms, it may only be due to her dying on a train platform; plus Bond was already turning Pussy Galore.

The book also stays away from Kentucky until the raid on Fort Knox, which is unfortunate because the scenes in the film on Goldfinger's horse farm are pretty neat.

I love the film, and I'd give it just shy of five stars. The book is docked a full star for Fleming's consistently ignorant bigotry, misogyny and homophobia.