You all know how much I adore Bill Bryson, right? Well this book of his will not go down as one of my favorites; it is repetitive and boring. What!? I know! But, really, how many trains, walking trails and hotels can you use in one country and still keep it interesting? He passes through so many nondescript towns and feels he must comment at length on their nondescriptness - and that gets old quickly. In all fairness, though, this is one of his earliest travelogues. I can see glimpses of the irreverence and wit that I have come to love, but in
Notes From a Small Island it's no more than a few chuckles worth.
This would have been more enjoyable at half the length.
10 comments:
I find Bryson rather hit and miss myself. Some I like a lot, some are intolerable. The walk in the Woods I could. not. stand. and I haven't been able to finish his history of the world one....others though have been quite good. Odd.
I'm discovering the hit and miss thing too, which I guess is inevitable with prolific authors.
Funny though, A Walk in The Woods was one of my favorites! I lived many years in the area he's talking about . . .
I really enjoyed this one, but then I'm from the UK myself and so lots of the little things that made me laugh might not make people from another country laugh. If you know what I mean?
Yes I think familiarity on some level has a lot to do with one's enjoyment of a book.
I really enjoyed this, but I read it while I was abroad (in Paris) and my boyfriend at the time was in London, so it was almost perfect Eurostar reading.
Heh, that does sound enjoyable!
So this should not be my next Bryson read.Thanks:)
can I just hijack your post to ask how you got your shelfari to appear on your bog page I cant work it out.
Yup, no problem. Let me just go to the Shelfari site and check how to do it again - it's been a while.
thank you for taking time out to help me. Just playing about with it now,I have only just started blogging it new to me used to work with computers but it was all excel and word all this stuff is like learning a foreign language.
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