Bad Bond! Bad Bourne! Good Don?

I just finished a Bond novel by an Ian Fleming imitator --Sebastian Faulkes. It's called DEVIL MAY CARE. I guess I didn't realize before how very disagreeable Bond is--I found myself not caring whether he survived the bad guys or not. Constantly drinking, smoking, womanizing. When in foreign lands the only thing he thinks about is whether the hotel, cigarettes and booze are up to his standards. 

Or maybe it's just this author's "take" on Bond. Bad. 

This is the second book by an imitator I've read; the other was a followup on Robt. Ludlum's BOURNE series. It also wasn't very good for me because I didn't care about any of the characters, even Bourne himself. 

But why am I reading so much cheap fiction? Is it the need to escape from my own work? Which is, of course, deeply serious, great literature???