I pick FRWL, DN and TB. Get in there, TLD, you belong there too. May toss in FYEO (story, not the collection).
Edited by glidrose, 07 February 2012 - 01:51 AM.
Posted 07 February 2012 - 01:50 AM
Edited by glidrose, 07 February 2012 - 01:51 AM.
Posted 07 February 2012 - 02:45 AM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 10:30 AM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 11:21 AM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 11:36 AM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 05:13 PM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 05:39 PM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 06:10 PM
Posted 07 February 2012 - 08:06 PM
Edited by Dustin, 07 February 2012 - 08:07 PM.
Posted 07 February 2012 - 10:33 PM
Edited by Revelator, 07 February 2012 - 10:35 PM.
Posted 08 February 2012 - 01:38 AM
I found THE HILDEBRAND RARITY to be stuffy & tedious. It was more of a memoir than a short story & moved with the speed of a glacier.
The proper answer would be none, because Ian Fleming is still a criminally underrated writer. That said, Goldfinger is one of the most famous of the novels, and was even selected by Anthony Burgess as one of the 50 best novels in English published after 1939. But it's one of the few Bond books that's inferior to the movie.
Well, for my two pence.
"overrated" is sort of the 'eye of the beholder'.
I think the novels and stories all hold something different to all. Sure I have my favorites, but I guess it comes down to what you like. I've never suggested that any of them are a must read but suggest that that you try whatever title grabs you. If you should, I'll offer an opinion on it without any spoilers.
<long snip where you misunderstand this thread and list your favorite Fleming books>
So, as to rating or over rating Bond, I guess I just never took any of the hype from others.
Edited by glidrose, 08 February 2012 - 01:39 AM.
Posted 08 February 2012 - 05:37 AM
<long snip where you misunderstand this thread and list your favorite Fleming books>
Posted 08 February 2012 - 07:58 AM
Well, I think everyone agrees that plotting was never a strong suit of the Bond novels, and almost all of them are weak in that area. But Winder--whose condescending book received a massively overrated critical response--is almost wholly misguided. Lots of authors, god and bad, work by clockwork mechanical schedules--probably because writing requires discipline and routine. Winder's complaints about Dr. No are piffling (and I don't trust his attention span). The awesome giant squid battle (and the torture obstacle course that precedes it) are examples of Fleming writing at his best, with a sensual immediacy that induces vicarious physical pain and terror in the armchair-seated reader. And who would call Dr. No's rationales for his wickedness--his rip-snorting tale about randy German missionaries, Tong warfare, hearts on the wrong side of the body, and so on--anemic and under-realized? It's Fleming at his most imaginative.
Pace and bizarre imagination are Fleming's great strengths, and they're directly tied to his working method--to how he sat down and wrote whatever was in his head each day without looking back. It gives his books the vividness, force and drive of dreams, and Fleming was always better at dream logic than plot logic. I agree with you that many of the plot deficiencies would have been solved by extensive rewrites. But I get the feeling that once Fleming had dreamed one book onto paper, he was creatively done with it (in the way that one cannot will a past dream into being). Had he been a more plot-minded writer, he might have been a less imaginative one.
Posted 10 February 2012 - 03:16 PM
Posted 10 February 2012 - 05:06 PM
Posted 10 February 2012 - 05:08 PM
Posted 10 February 2012 - 07:08 PM
OK, this is the part where I get crucified! To me, YOLT is... er... how should I put it mildly? Crap. The first half is Bond/Fleming vomiting on Japan, the second half is a LSD-induced trip into WTF-land. Really, nothing remotely bondian, interesting or enjoyable there. Even the plot is nonexistent.
Posted 09 May 2012 - 02:29 PM
OK, this is the part where I get crucified! To me, YOLT is... er... how should I put it mildly? Crap. The first half is Bond/Fleming vomiting on Japan, the second half is a LSD-induced trip into WTF-land. Really, nothing remotely bondian, interesting or enjoyable there. Even the plot is nonexistent.
I got the feeling that Bond was quite entranced with Japan in the first half. (He certainly likes the Japanese more than the Koreans!) The second half is reminsicent of Dr. No, with Bond traveling into the isolated, death-trapped realm of an evil madman, and the Garden of Death is very Flemingian in its grotesqueness. And there's certainly something Bondian in 007 getting revenge against Blofeld for the death of Tracy. The rest of the novel lives up to his name--Bond dies, is reborn, and truly lives twice.
Posted 09 May 2012 - 02:31 PM
Posted 09 May 2012 - 02:40 PM
Posted 09 May 2012 - 07:36 PM
OK, this is the part where I get crucified! To me, YOLT is... er... how should I put it mildly? Crap. The first half is Bond/Fleming vomiting on Japan, the second half is a LSD-induced trip into WTF-land. Really, nothing remotely bondian, interesting or enjoyable there. Even the plot is nonexistent.
I got the feeling that Bond was quite entranced with Japan in the first half. (He certainly likes the Japanese more than the Koreans!) The second half is reminsicent of Dr. No, with Bond traveling into the isolated, death-trapped realm of an evil madman, and the Garden of Death is very Flemingian in its grotesqueness. And there's certainly something Bondian in 007 getting revenge against Blofeld for the death of Tracy. The rest of the novel lives up to his name--Bond dies, is reborn, and truly lives twice.
Gosh, I'm going through YOLT again and it's truly a slog. The worst part is I feel obligated because I just read TB and OHMSS. I suspect my adverseness to it comes from never experiencing Japanese culture, especially culture post WWII. Fleming's descriptions, while vivid in the novel, are at times difficult to swallow. Tanaka's passion for Japan and his constant insistence on comparing West and East is actually quite annoying to the reader. Instead of immersing like Fleming does so well, I feel like half the time Fleming is using Tanaka to remind me that I'm in some new foreign land. I feel it often belittles Bond and the reader. It's going to be hard to finish.
Posted 19 May 2012 - 05:27 PM
The proper answer would be none, because Ian Fleming is still a criminally underrated writer. That said, Goldfinger is one of the most famous of the novels, and was even selected by Anthony Burgess as one of the 50 best novels in English published after 1939. But it's one of the few Bond books that's inferior to the movie.
Posted 18 June 2012 - 10:02 PM
Posted 19 June 2012 - 02:29 AM