Customer Reviews

The Risks of Sunbathing Topless: And Other Funny Stories from the Road

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If you like your travel with a healthy dash of comedy, don't miss The Risks Of Sunbathing Topless And Other Funny Stories From The Road, a funny survey of how even the best-laid plans of women can go awry. From a horror story of being trapped with Frog Man to a trip with a dog unfortunately not as nice as Lassie, The Risks Of Sunbathing Topless is for perfect leisure laughs.

As an adventure-averse person, I howled at these stories of being on vacation and trapped in a situation: in Judith Levin's case, being unable to "make caca"...in Ayun Halliday's, climbing a big mountain with unsupportive teammates, etc. So I assumed this book was just for people (like me) who like to feel superior to those crazy traveler-types. But then I bought the book for my friend who is a committed world-traveler, and she, too, laughed out loud with recognition. Great summer read.

The dirty little secret of travel writing is that in order for a story to be funny something bad has to happen. Editor Kate Chynoweth is well aware of this fact and has selected tales with terrible twists written with wit and charm that demonstrate the point. The writing in this collection is a cut above the average collection of women's travel tales that I have read. However, not all of these tales are amusing. I was horrified by the Erica J. Green's story about an ant phobia brought to life in Africa. But, most are quite lighthearted. I found some of the one-liners in A Useful and Comprehensive Travel Dictionary for Girls by Buzzy Jackson laugh out loud funny.
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In a series full of not so great books (Whose Panties are These, Not so Funny When It Happened) this one actually wasn't half bad. It had some decent stories in it and for once they actually seemed to involve travel and were interesting. After being disappointed by so many others, it was kind of nice to finally get this one.

The Risks of Sunbathing Topless is a collection of short stories (although these were longer short stories than usual, if that makes sense) that involve travel and humor, and in this case, were written by women. They range from the Greek Islands, to Mexico, to even the United States and incorporate all sorts of different travel methods from plane, train to automobile. Some of the stories involved a mom and her teenage daughters living it up on parties during their cruise, another smuggling champagne into a dry country. One of my favorites was actually a dictionary of sorts of things people need to know when traveling. Unfortunately this was tempered by the less interesting story of someone having a one night stand in Mexico. I just really couldn't get into that one.

I'd never heard of any of the authors before so no one really stood out. The writing styles were all surprisingly the same too so it makes me wonder if the editor just didn't have a certain taste in writing and stuck to that. Most were well written though and while they may not all have been humorous, they at least kept my attention. With the exception of a few that is. Just because something bad or lewd happens, doesn't necessarily make the story funny. Something that this book just didn't seem to figure out with before mentioned one night stand story and a few others. But honestly, even the lewd wasn't that terrible and it was a pretty tame book considering it dealt with underwear and sex and other unfortunate happenstances.

The best of the series, although that doesn't say much. This one I actually would probably recommend for some light travel reading.

The Risks of Sunbathing Topless
Copyright 2005
280 pages

Review by M. Reynard 2011

This book was just OK. I had higher expectations then what I received from the book. It's a compilation of short travel mishap essays. It seemed like it was going to a hoot but ended but being dull. I didn't even get through the book.