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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Antiquated travel expolits of 007's creator,
By A Customer
This review is from: Thrilling Cities (Hardcover)
"Thrilling Cities," published almost 40 years ago, is the description of Ian Fleming's itinerary to some of the world's most exotic places. The keen senses which were employed to write gripping thrillers are evident; a detailed, descriptive work is the result. Fleming was given generous finances for his trip, and spares little in eating at the best restaurants, sleeping at posh hotels, and mingling with city officials. An ironic twist occurs towards the end of the book, in Naples. Ian Fleming, the suave, cunning man-about-town, the father of popular culture's most "cultured" personality, spends over two pages describing the activities of a dung beetle and his "wife." Hilarious.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The world of 007 at once,
By A Customer
This review is from: Thrilling Cities (Hardcover)
This is an excellent travel-diary written by one of the main entertainers of the 20th. century. Fleming was more than an author of novels, he was also a bright, accurate and detail-lover reporter who liked to travel and knew what to look and where to search. Taking us to faraway exotic places, picturing each location making the reader feel he's actually there with Fleming, this opus is a faithful yet ingenious and nearly poetic account of every city's food, costumes, people and very soul. It also includes the brief but mood interesting "007 Adventure In New York" for Bond fans and casual readers. A must for every person who wants to know this huge world a little better. No wonder one wants to travel and explore more after reading this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Settings Without Plots,
By
This review is from: Thrilling Cities (Hardcover)
If you love Ian Fleming's James Bond novels for more than being the launching pads of the movies, you may well feel as I do that Fleming was a decent spinner of yarns and a sensational describer of settings. "Thrilling Cities," published in the United States in 1963, is a collection of Sunday newspaper articles in which Fleming wrote about various cities he visited, cities that might well have been settings for Bond adventures.In this book, in fact, one is. "007 In New York" is a brief story included in this book's New York chapter that features Bond paying a visit to Central Park, but it is not clear whether Fleming wrote it to be canon or a lark. It's easily the lamest Bond story by Fleming, worse even than "Property Of A Lady," and serves only as an alternate means for describing New York. "007 In New York" is also the weakest part of what is otherwise a very sturdy collection of travel writing. Yes, Fleming made these trips over 45 years ago. Those prices he quotes probably are missing a few zeroes at the end, and most of the establishments he names were shuttered long ago. But Fleming's ability to transport you not only remains in ample evidence, it is now even more impressive as he moves you through space AND time, his appreciation for sensual delight balanced and buttressed by an ever-caustic wit. Viewing Hong Kong: "The streets of Hong Kong are evidence that neon lighting need not be hideous, and the crowded Chinese ideograms in pale violet and pink and green with a plentiful use of white are entrancing not only for their colors but also because one does not know what drab messages or exhortations they spell out." Sunbathers in Honolulu: "...these elderly ghouls looked even worse without their muumuus - huge, blue-veined, dimpled thighs, scrawny necks and sagging bosoms garlanded with leis, their broken-down, spavined spouses trailing behind carrying the coconut mats, the sun-tan oil, the bathrobes, and the Wall Street Journal." Italian drivers: "The amount of noise he can make with his vehicle, particularly via the exhaust pipe, has come in some obscure way to represent a virility symbol, and for the police to pray silence is as vain as to tell Italians not to lend grandeur and emphasis with their hands to the simplest of conversations." To say that Fleming had a jaundiced, borderline bigot's attitude about the people of the world is not to deny him his engaging tone or his occasional bulls-eyes. In Bond books, one sees this character peeking out in slow moments, like when Bond walks through a hotel lobby or goes fishing as a cover for his real work, discoursing on the uniqueness of wherever in the world Bond is. For many Fleming aficionados, this is what makes Bond books special, even more than the silly names of the heroines or the bizarre plots Bond must foil. Here, for the only real time, Fleming foregoes the plots and just bathes us in atmosphere, perhaps not a 100% accurate representation of the world as it is now or was then, but the world we imagine ourselves in when reading a Fleming Bond. It's a potent martini of a trip, neither shaken nor stirred, exactly, but very, very neat.
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