I saw this book on Amazon about the Bond movies.
It’s written by Nick Setchfield, who is apparently a writer for magazines like SFX and Total Film and also wrote a couple of novels.
So maybe it’s a good read. Anyone who knows this book, or read it?
Independently published (8 April 2020), 214 pages.
Received this book last week from Amazon.
This book is not highly recommended:
it looks and reads as it was written in a couple of days, the text has large lettering and there is nothing new or interesting what you don’t already know.
The so-called facts in this book are all known facts every Bond fan has heard a thousand times before.
In fact I got the feeling that the writer first watched all the docu’s from the dvd’s/blu ray’s and got all his information from there, because all the stuff he’s talking about I already knew from those same docu’s and there was not a lot more.
So this is realy not a book you have to have.
That and the cover was full of stains, so I will send it back anyway.
Thanks for the short review, @jamesb007nd.
In all fairness though, there is perhaps not a lot a seasoned fan with decades of Internet connections and discussions can learn from a relatively short book - while a new fan who may not even have watched all films or read other books on the topic, may actually find such a brief overview interesting and inspiring. It depends what one is looking for and what kind of basic knowledge there is already. Really new angles, new information are rare these days - though they do happen to pop up in the weirdest fashion time and again…
Yes, ofcourse you’re right, but… other books, the good ones, while reading you don’t get the feeling it was written in a couple of days. There was nothing the writer had done to make it more interesting, no real research, no exclusive interviews, not obtaining the rights to publish photo’s etc. He didn’t do anything to make it special, or to make it above average.
Thanks for your comments on my book, @jamesb007nd. Obviously I’m sorry to hear that it disappointed you but feedback is always valuable. As @Dustin guessed, it’s primarily targeting a mainstream readership - in fact it’s an updated collection of weekly retrospectives originally written for the SFX magazine website in 2012, celebrating the 50th anniversary. They seemed to go down well and over the years people have asked me to collect them in a permanent format, so I decided to self-publish.
I’m in awe of such brilliant books as Some Kind Of Hero and certainly wasn’t aiming to compete with them when it came to new research and interviews. Mission Statements is very much a primer by comparison but also a critique, examining how the Bond movies have adapted to changing pop-culture. Hopefully there’s still something of interest there for diehard fans, but I appreciate it’s not what you were looking for. I shall take your comments on the chin.
Best,
Nick