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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
The only reason it didn't get 1 star was because there were a couple of interesting tidbits that I actually read. A couple. Otherwise it was extremely dry and rambling.
Not as laugh out loud funny as previous Bryson books but still a great read. I enjoy his witty banter while teaching about the history of the home.
This book goes room by room in an English country house and describes the history behind each room and the objects inside. The book also dived into historical anecdotes and interesting people related to the history of each room.
Fun and entertaining read
Fun and entertaining read
I just love the way this book meandered through history. Bryson has a way of writing that just sucks you in and keeps you reading happily along. The history of the home was without a doubt far more interesting than I expected it to be. Another great book from this writer.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
slow-paced
ed. 2013: I come back to this book so often, there's no way this isn't five stars.
---
The funny thing about reading books for me is that I almost never read them at home. When I was little, it was summer vacations of 24/7 library books on the sofa, but now all my time at home is spent on things particular to home. I read on the subway, mainly. And down moments of waiting, out in the world. There is a lot more of time like that, now.
With this book I upped the irony even higher by starting it on vacation. On a plane, even, and then reading it in a long series of friends' houses, Amtrak trains, cafes. I helped my boyfriend move from one city to another in the middle of it. It made me realize how much a book does with me outside of where my books are kept.
Anyway. I just loved this book. I can see someone getting annoyed with it, though. There is really no excuse for it: it pretends to be on topic, but almost never is. If that kind of thing bothers you, you could go crazy. (Like the way stories on This American Life sometimes make me feel as if they pick their themes like fortune-tellers, so general that anything fits. And then I get mad, of course I do. "You call THIS a story about FIDELITY??") Here, Bryson says that he's writing a book about his own house, but he mentions it kinda-sorta, now & then. He says that each chapter is about the history of a certain type of room, which isn't untrue, but they also are the brief histories of dozens of other short subjects vaguely maybe related sort of if you lean and squint. It could annoy you. It didn't annoy me.
I admit I have a bit of a low bar for nonfiction -- if it's fun to read at all, I approve -- but I enjoy that particular kind of history, too. You're not going to come out of this book profoundly educated, but you are going to learn a ton of things. I learned a ton of things! It feels great. The point of the book -- history of everyday things -- means that the things you read about will leap to you from your walls. Whatever in this book interests you most will find you outside of it.
Evan knew I'd like this book because I have a hobby of visiting historic houses. It fits, it fits. And really, the reason I like touring those places is the same reason I like what's in this book. They're both chances to hear a story about a person you didn't know existed (even at the home of a famous person), see a use for something you didn't know people needed, get knocked in the chest thinking how someone looked out the window of this place in a different century. All true stories are strange.
There is a something-for-everyone vibe to the chapters here, but what got me excited was when something I wouldn't have expected to be amazing was written in the most amazing way. For me one of the most exciting sections happened to be the very, very beginning. First of all, there is an excellent opening about 18th and 19th-century British clergy and also the Crystal Palace. I really enjoyed it, and, it serves a pretty good litmus test for whether this book will annoy you, because the reasons the book opens with subjects like these are few.
Strangely, one of the most hair-raisingly exciting subjects for me was his writing in the early chapters about Stone Age civilization (i.e. Skara Brae) as well as the first half of the last millennium. This was only strange because: I had no idea I gave a crap about those things. But I really did. My jaw dropped, and it was like, FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE STAAAAAAARS. I just loved it. I think it's because in some ways it was a lens to ask big questions of the type that stop my heart a beat. Tell me about how no one really understands how humans invented farming -- how did they know, how did they know? -- and I get goosebumps, I do.
When Bryson picks up a subject, whether for a paragraph or a few pages, he looks at it firmly enough to characterize what it's likely that people felt while these things were going on -- and sometimes, what it was likely historians felt when they later learned about it. It's both sympathetic and merciless -- he has a taste for seeing a person's story through to the bitter end dunked in an icy tank of water in an insane asylum (or... whatever.) Or that this person's brother had nothing to do with this story, but here is a story about him anyway. Which is something I like a lot too. You see a lot when you open the door to a person's house. People's lives have a lot of downbeats, even if they're people of great achievement. I find those wonderful, and I want to know them.
He also has a gift for tying together things that you already know about but can make more sense of than ever if he lays them out like so. It might make me sound stupid to say it, but his chapter on electricity is the first time I've read about the invention of the lightbulb and really felt something, really understood the context of this contribution to human life. I also felt really thwacked by his telling of another elementary history lesson -- Whitney and the cotton gin -- that holds its ingenuity partly responsible for U.S. slavery, Civil War, and child labor. It's the kind of thing that sounds crazy, but is often the way history actually works. And that's so weird.
In particular I enjoyed the chapters about farming, servitude, light, epidemics, and children. I winced my way through the chapters about surgery and vermin. (I am one of those people whose religion is in the not thinking about dust mites or things that live in my eyelashes.) And I did confirm that I unfortunately am not very interested in reading about architecture or other domestic design, of which there's a lot here. (Though sometimes reading about the designers is good.) And I'm pretty sure that the chapter on "The Stairs" is a prank one of Bryson's kids played on their dad, slipping a bunch of statistics out of Wikipedia into the manuscript, and making up some quotes from stair experts on how not to fall down them. I, er. Ugh. (P.S. It is not a jinx!)
Another thing is that in setting, this book's scope is small, and I think that eventually pulled me away from it sometimes. The details of daily life in Victorian England (and some of its temporal environs) are plenty interesting, but obviously there's much, much more to hear about how people have learned to live. Bryson certainly can't be blamed for that, but I know I would have enjoyed it all, it all, if his scope were even more ambitious. (And yes, I'm aware he did already write a book about "everything." I will try it.)
Also I just can't believe that nothing in 19th-century London was painted black. JUST SAYING. Perhaps my favorite mind-blowing factoid. (Hasn't it seen any illustrations of itself? I guess the coal overcompensated.)
I happened to finish reading this on a day I was spending at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and my advice to any readers of this book is that if you have the chance to do something like that, do that. It seemed like every exhibit, painting, frieze, artifact, reminded me of something I'd read about here, and I felt so deeply connected. Even better was discovering that one of my favorite permanent features at this museum, the rooms transplanted whole out of beautiful historic estates (and the key to From the Mixed-Up Files...), involved NAMES I NOW RECOGNIZED -- particularly Dining Room From Lansdowne House (designed by Robert Adam) and Tapestry Room From Croome Court (ditto; building by "Capability" Brown). Felt like a PAT ON THE BACK.
4.5, for the conservative.
---
The funny thing about reading books for me is that I almost never read them at home. When I was little, it was summer vacations of 24/7 library books on the sofa, but now all my time at home is spent on things particular to home. I read on the subway, mainly. And down moments of waiting, out in the world. There is a lot more of time like that, now.
With this book I upped the irony even higher by starting it on vacation. On a plane, even, and then reading it in a long series of friends' houses, Amtrak trains, cafes. I helped my boyfriend move from one city to another in the middle of it. It made me realize how much a book does with me outside of where my books are kept.
Anyway. I just loved this book. I can see someone getting annoyed with it, though. There is really no excuse for it: it pretends to be on topic, but almost never is. If that kind of thing bothers you, you could go crazy. (Like the way stories on This American Life sometimes make me feel as if they pick their themes like fortune-tellers, so general that anything fits. And then I get mad, of course I do. "You call THIS a story about FIDELITY??") Here, Bryson says that he's writing a book about his own house, but he mentions it kinda-sorta, now & then. He says that each chapter is about the history of a certain type of room, which isn't untrue, but they also are the brief histories of dozens of other short subjects vaguely maybe related sort of if you lean and squint. It could annoy you. It didn't annoy me.
I admit I have a bit of a low bar for nonfiction -- if it's fun to read at all, I approve -- but I enjoy that particular kind of history, too. You're not going to come out of this book profoundly educated, but you are going to learn a ton of things. I learned a ton of things! It feels great. The point of the book -- history of everyday things -- means that the things you read about will leap to you from your walls. Whatever in this book interests you most will find you outside of it.
Evan knew I'd like this book because I have a hobby of visiting historic houses. It fits, it fits. And really, the reason I like touring those places is the same reason I like what's in this book. They're both chances to hear a story about a person you didn't know existed (even at the home of a famous person), see a use for something you didn't know people needed, get knocked in the chest thinking how someone looked out the window of this place in a different century. All true stories are strange.
There is a something-for-everyone vibe to the chapters here, but what got me excited was when something I wouldn't have expected to be amazing was written in the most amazing way. For me one of the most exciting sections happened to be the very, very beginning. First of all, there is an excellent opening about 18th and 19th-century British clergy and also the Crystal Palace. I really enjoyed it, and, it serves a pretty good litmus test for whether this book will annoy you, because the reasons the book opens with subjects like these are few.
Strangely, one of the most hair-raisingly exciting subjects for me was his writing in the early chapters about Stone Age civilization (i.e. Skara Brae) as well as the first half of the last millennium. This was only strange because: I had no idea I gave a crap about those things. But I really did. My jaw dropped, and it was like, FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE STAAAAAAARS. I just loved it. I think it's because in some ways it was a lens to ask big questions of the type that stop my heart a beat. Tell me about how no one really understands how humans invented farming -- how did they know, how did they know? -- and I get goosebumps, I do.
When Bryson picks up a subject, whether for a paragraph or a few pages, he looks at it firmly enough to characterize what it's likely that people felt while these things were going on -- and sometimes, what it was likely historians felt when they later learned about it. It's both sympathetic and merciless -- he has a taste for seeing a person's story through to the bitter end dunked in an icy tank of water in an insane asylum (or... whatever.) Or that this person's brother had nothing to do with this story, but here is a story about him anyway. Which is something I like a lot too. You see a lot when you open the door to a person's house. People's lives have a lot of downbeats, even if they're people of great achievement. I find those wonderful, and I want to know them.
He also has a gift for tying together things that you already know about but can make more sense of than ever if he lays them out like so. It might make me sound stupid to say it, but his chapter on electricity is the first time I've read about the invention of the lightbulb and really felt something, really understood the context of this contribution to human life. I also felt really thwacked by his telling of another elementary history lesson -- Whitney and the cotton gin -- that holds its ingenuity partly responsible for U.S. slavery, Civil War, and child labor. It's the kind of thing that sounds crazy, but is often the way history actually works. And that's so weird.
In particular I enjoyed the chapters about farming, servitude, light, epidemics, and children. I winced my way through the chapters about surgery and vermin. (I am one of those people whose religion is in the not thinking about dust mites or things that live in my eyelashes.) And I did confirm that I unfortunately am not very interested in reading about architecture or other domestic design, of which there's a lot here. (Though sometimes reading about the designers is good.) And I'm pretty sure that the chapter on "The Stairs" is a prank one of Bryson's kids played on their dad, slipping a bunch of statistics out of Wikipedia into the manuscript, and making up some quotes from stair experts on how not to fall down them. I, er. Ugh. (P.S. It is not a jinx!)
Another thing is that in setting, this book's scope is small, and I think that eventually pulled me away from it sometimes. The details of daily life in Victorian England (and some of its temporal environs) are plenty interesting, but obviously there's much, much more to hear about how people have learned to live. Bryson certainly can't be blamed for that, but I know I would have enjoyed it all, it all, if his scope were even more ambitious. (And yes, I'm aware he did already write a book about "everything." I will try it.)
Also I just can't believe that nothing in 19th-century London was painted black. JUST SAYING. Perhaps my favorite mind-blowing factoid. (Hasn't it seen any illustrations of itself? I guess the coal overcompensated.)
I happened to finish reading this on a day I was spending at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and my advice to any readers of this book is that if you have the chance to do something like that, do that. It seemed like every exhibit, painting, frieze, artifact, reminded me of something I'd read about here, and I felt so deeply connected. Even better was discovering that one of my favorite permanent features at this museum, the rooms transplanted whole out of beautiful historic estates (and the key to From the Mixed-Up Files...), involved NAMES I NOW RECOGNIZED -- particularly Dining Room From Lansdowne House (designed by Robert Adam) and Tapestry Room From Croome Court (ditto; building by "Capability" Brown). Felt like a PAT ON THE BACK.
4.5, for the conservative.
Learned a lot and wowww have our daily lives changed. Didnt realize just how expensive and laborly so many common things used to be
Finally had to give up listening to this one in order to get through it. I resorted to reading instead and it still took a lot of time to chew through the whole book. I enjoyed it but it was a bit rambling, much like the country parsonage in which Bryson lives, which provides the structure for the book each chapter is supposed to be about a different room: the hall, the pantry, the drawing room and so on. But the conceit of using the rooms of this house as a structure often seems a bit belabored, an excuse for slinging in bits of interesting history that Bryson wants to include. For example there is no explanation of why the last chapter, Attic, starts with a history of Darwin's discovery and his strangely roundabout route to promoting his celebrated theory of evolution. I actually really enjoyed all of Bryson's digressions and ramblings and felt I learned a lot from him that fit into other bits of history I already knew (for example, I never knew that the infamous Enclosure Acts that deprived the English peasantry of their common land so that aristocrats could use it to raise sheep for the wool trade had been prompted by agricultural improvements such as planting nitrogen-rich crops instead of leaving lands fallow as well as the breeding of fluffier, plumper sheep.) But it was hard to follow such a convoluted progression when I was listening, especially since there were many interruptions as there always are. I would lose my place and wonder how I wound up in the development of child labor laws or the origins and eventual replacement of spermaceti candles. Generally, reading the book was rather like sitting with Bryson and listening to him talk. Still I will read more of his work soon, I'm sure.
informative
reflective
fast-paced