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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
I love Bill Bryson, but I was not loving this book. It is outdated and it felt mean spirited. Not a good one!
This was okay. Bill Bryson can be witty though is is also quite full of himself. The back and forth between his first trip around the country was a little disjointed. Amusing, nonetheless.
In summary: Bill Bryson unnecessarily complaining as he makes a few funny quips.
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
informative
Very much dated. The attitudes of the writer are those of the 90s and wouldn’t be acceptable now.
A mostly delightful, highly neurotic trip down Nostalgia Lane! Hard to pin down exactly what he’s nostalgic for at times. Every British town is “the same set of cards reshuffled,” but if any of them commits the crime of putting up building after about 1910, they’re destroying history. Bryson laments the postwar socialism that was already fading when he moved to the UK in the ‘70s while also romanticizing a sort of ill-defined Victorian industrialist fantasy, with Factories that used to Make Things. Has Britain lost something it can never get back, or does it have a unique and undying character that will always charm Americans in cargo shorts? In 1997, I guess the answer was both! In 2023, this is a mostly pleasant, sometimes very funny little time capsule of a travelogue. An ideal airport bookstore paperback.
bill bryson is a great travel writer. i found "i'm a stranger here myself" much more to my liking though because it is a collection of columns he wrote about his return to the united states. this book is about his travels around britain. it didn't grab me and make me laugh as much because, well, i'm not british. i appreciate the mental imagery of all the obscure villages throughout great britain, but i think i'll pass on the book he wrote about australia.
Actually I didn't finish it. I tried very hard, but it was so boring and full of stereotypes and humor that couldn't make me laugh. Sorry!
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced