About Bondian
by Bryan Krofchok (updated 25 July 2021)

This site, like many of my projects, will always be a “work in progress”. It began life in the early 1990s as a Microsoft Word file, when I as a fresh-faced college student needed a way to keep track of a relatively small but growing collection of books and other materials by and about Ian Fleming and the James Bond series. It also lived for a short time as a Folio Views hypertext infobase.

One fateful day in late 1995, an acquaintance named Kimberly Last (then president of the official Pierce Brosnan fan club) invited me to visit her “website” — whatever that was. I soon purchased a copy of Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week by Laura Lemay, devoured it over the course of a weekend, and quickly became hooked.

Bond's Bookshelf was launched soon thereafter, featuring black text on a steel blue background, and navigation button images “borrowed” from the Folio Views interface. It was renamed The Bond Index for a period, prompting occasional messages from individuals seeking financial advice, before settling on Bondian.com in 1999.

The original site was actively maintained in various forms through the early 2000s, until other responsibilities and projects took priority. Though my collection of books and other items continued to grow, the catalog remained largely unchanged. Various attempts were made to revive the site, but it inevitably languished as an occasional “weekend” or “summer” project.

“Enemy action” was deemed necessary in 2020 when I caught myself inadvertently buying an unneeded second copy of a recently-released book for the third time. Rather than attempting to faithfully upgrade and expand the existing database, which had so-often caused previous attempts to stall, this new version of Bondian was started from scratch on the first of December 2020 — with a commitment to catalog ten books each day.

The site was relaunched in its present form on the last day of 2020, with 333 books spanning 171 distinct titles. As of late July 2021, there are just under 900 titles in the database, with publication details for 1034 books — and a further 2450 entries from the old database that still need to be processed. The current assemblage is admittedly a bit haphazard, and there are still some gaps when it comes to books published since the time of the later Pierce Brosnan films. (I own many of the books listed, but not all.)

Entries will continue to be added and revised over time, and the site adapted as necessary to keep everything as useful and organized as possible. I also have plans to make additional material available, which has not been included in any previous version of the site. The most recent addition is a collection of nearly 4500 references to Fleming- and Bond-related articles in printed magazines, journals and newspapers. These were gathered in the 1990s, and will offer more extensive cross-references in the near future.

This site is the result of countless hours of research over many years. If you find it useful in some small way, a note or credit is always appreciated.

Technology

The current site is hosted on a Mac mini running Homebrew versions of Apache, PostgreSQL, and Django. The clean but unremarkable graphic design is thanks to a stock download of Bootstrap. (This helps me focus on the content of the site, and keeps me away from designs featuring black text on a steel blue background or attempts to use “dark mode” before it was considered “cool”.)

Privacy Policy

I have no interest in tracking your use of or movement on this site. No identifying information is kept about you, apart from incidental data logged by the Apache HTTP server.

Disclaimer

This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the various James Bond copyright holders. Text is reproduced solely for the purpose of information; no copyright infringement is intended.

No advertising is solicited or included, apart from that which may be found in the jacket or cover blurb of a book. I do not sell any of the books listed on this site, or offer appraisals.

As the creator and maintainer of this site, I strive to ensure that all content is accurate, but can offer no guarantees. Your questions, comments, corrections, and suggestions are always welcome.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to everyone who has personally contributed to this site in various ways over the years: Kim Abra, Richard Ashton, Harry L. Barber, Nick Berbiers, Kees Boer, Mark Carey, John Cork, John Cox, Marcelo Dantas, Alex Frazer-Harrison, Anders Frejdh, Radostina Georgieva, Charles Helfenstein, William Herndon, Tim Hodgson, Kimberly Last, Donovan Louis Mayne-Nicholls, Russell MacKenzie, Ian Macklin, Craig Marciniak, Brian Martley, Michael McGinnes & Lesley Botten, Max Mynhier, Yoshi Nakayama, Vlad Pavlov, Joe Payne, David Reinhardt, Panos Sambrakos, Brian Sanders, Steven Savoca, Matt Sherman, Jon Stapinsky, Christian Stevenson, Bill Swan, Jan Urbanek, Michael L. VanBlaricum, Scott D. Ward, Matt West, Dave Williams, Stephen Zamboni, and others I've undoubtedly and inadvertently forgotten.