Where the description of this audiobook should sit, somebody has left a secondhand bookseller's condition report. Paperback. Wear to cover. No loose pages. SEE PHOTOS. That is the whole of the synopsis field for a nine-hour recording of Ian Fleming read by Barnaby Edwards, and it is far from the only field here that belongs to some other object. The publisher line names a print imprint and a 2013 edition date. The language line says Middle English. The release date is blank. Very little on this page describes what is actually for sale, and the parts that do are heavily outnumbered by the parts that do not.
Nine Hours of Fleming No Review Acknowledges
Vintage Classics, edition 2013-04-04, is what the publisher field reads, and it carries an invisible left-to-right mark at the head of the string, the kind of artifact that turns up when data gets scraped from one page and pasted into another without cleaning. That single character is the tell. Somebody copied a print product record onto an audio listing and moved on to the next one. The language field got identical treatment, which is how a twentieth-century travel book ends up claiming to have been recorded in Middle English.
An audiobook does exist behind all of this. Nine hours and seven minutes of it, credited to Barnaby Edwards, with the runtime written in an abbreviated form, hrs and mins, while every other field either spells nothing out or spells out the wrong thing. That figure is the most reliable piece of information available, and it is the one thing not a single reviewer has responded to. The three written entries here describe a hardback, a shipping experience, and a set of magazine pieces from another era. Take those three together and you have a listing that has never once acknowledged its own format.
Barnaby Edwards is the only credit on this listing that unambiguously belongs to a recording, which loads an unusual amount of weight onto it. Fleming's travel writing is first-person, opinionated and thick with place names and period detail, and nine hours of that needs a reader who can carry a distinct authorial voice without sliding into impression. What it actually sounds like goes unrecorded here. The review column was not listening either, and two of its three entries never touch the text.
A Travelogue the Reviewers Can't Agree On
Nine hours and seven minutes, then, of Ian Fleming abroad. The reviewers cannot agree on when that abroad existed. The entry filed from Japan places the writing in the 1950s and finds the result boring and laughable nowadays. J. Dando, writing in December 2009, describes hunting down a forty-five year old book, which points a decade or so later. Both numbers are readers' recollections and not record data, and this listing offers nothing whatever to settle it.
One of the three reviews is not about a book in any sense. Its complete text, under a headline reading Five Stars, is this: as described, fast shipping. A courier taking top marks where a narrator's work ought to be graded, and a full third of the written evidence available to anybody deciding whether to buy. The other positive entry comes from J. Dando at four stars, pleased with a clean hardback copy in good condition, bought secondhand, whose cover had not survived entirely intact.
Fleming's own name is doing all the selling here, because the record supplies no account of the contents whatsoever. What the reviews reveal between them is a travelogue about destinations around the world, referred to by one reader as an article and dated to the 1950s, old enough that a listener in 2022 called it outmoded. The tag on this listing says Essays, which fits. The genres say literature and fiction alongside travel and tourism, which contradict each other about whether any of it was invented.
Travel Writing That Ages in Public
Between literature-fiction and travel-tourism, this record has managed to file a nonfiction travel book under fiction and under travel at the same time, while the Essays tag proposes a third answer. None of that affects the recording. All of it affects whether you find the recording, and whether what turns up matches what you were looking for. A listing this confused about category is a listing where the star average has simply aggregated whatever it was handed, across however many formats happened to share an identifier.
Essays, hardbacks, shipping speed and a 2013 print edition. Set every one of those aside and what remains is a nine-hour reading of Fleming's travel pieces, which is a genuinely appealing object for the right listener. The pleasure on offer is watching a writer with a very particular eye turn that eye on actual places, one city at a time. This record refuses to tell you which places, or how many of them, or in what order they arrive.
Travel writing ages in public, which is both the honest case against this one and the honest case for it. The entry from Japan is right that a mid-century account of world destinations reads as dated now. That is also the reason to listen. A travelogue that stops being useful turns into evidence about the person who wrote it and the era that produced it. Nine hours is a substantial commitment to that proposition, on a page that will not confirm the proposition holds.
Fleming Completists Who Read for Tone
Anybody who reads mid-century travel writing for its tone instead of its recommendations will recognize the appeal immediately, and Barnaby Edwards is a credit worth having on material like this. Fleming completists get a side of the writing that is not fiction and does not pretend to be. Listeners who like the essay form should note that the Essays tag is the single most accurate label anywhere on this page, which is a low bar and still true. Nobody browsing by category is going to stumble across this by accident, so treat the ASIN as the safer route in.
Save your credit when what you need is a current guide to anywhere, because one reviewer has already reported the material outmoded and no field here contradicts that. Save it too if you want certainty about the object before you commit to it, since the description, the language field, the publisher line and the release date are variously wrong, blank or lifted from a print record. Nine hours of Fleming abroad may well be worth the money; this page cannot tell you so.
Good to Know
What is the description on this Thrilling Cities audiobook page describing?
A used paperback, by the look of it. The synopsis field notes wear to the cover, confirms that no pages are loose, and tells you to look at the photographs. That is seller copy for a physical secondhand item, sitting where an account of a nine-hour recording ought to be.
Why does this audiobook say the language is Middle English?
Almost certainly a data error. The field carries an invisible formatting character at its head, the same one sitting on the publisher line, which points to a print record copied across without cleaning. Barnaby Edwards is credited as the reader, and every review is in modern English. Treat that field as noise.
When was Thrilling Cities originally written?
The record does not say and the reviewers disagree. One entry dates the writing to the 1950s and finds it outmoded now. Another, filed in December 2009, describes tracking down a forty-five year old copy, which points roughly a decade later than that. The release date field on this listing sits empty.
Are the reviews here about the audiobook at all?
No. One of the three consists of the words as described, fast shipping. Another describes buying a clean hardback copy secondhand and being satisfied with the state of its cover. The third assesses the writing itself and calls it an outmoded travelogue. Not one mentions the narration, the runtime or the recording.
