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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
I so wish I could award this book more than five stars...I also wish I had a photographic memory so I could forever recall every fascinating fact and detail "At Home" shares about the history of domestic life, mostly in the UK and the US, but in general terms as well. Bill Bryson is an amazing storyteller and an extremely gifted (and often hilarious) writer. I highly, highly, highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone!
I absolutely adored this book. So many interesting little anecdotes and tangents. The amount of work that must have gone into researching it is absolutely incredible.
If you don't have a broad base of interests I could see certain chapters being boring, but for me I utterly loved learning about everything from the engineer behind Crystal Palace, to the London slums, trade wars and colonisation and illness and agriculture. Absolutely fascinating from start to finish. There's so much in there I'll definitely read again.
If you don't have a broad base of interests I could see certain chapters being boring, but for me I utterly loved learning about everything from the engineer behind Crystal Palace, to the London slums, trade wars and colonisation and illness and agriculture. Absolutely fascinating from start to finish. There's so much in there I'll definitely read again.
Loved this book. Listened to it in the car and wished I had a hard copy to go back to re-read certain parts. Great history on how our current domiciles got to be the way they are. Fascinating history of everyday life.
Not my favourite Bill Bryson book. While it is informative it is lacking the usual humour, occasionally raising a smile but never laugh out loud funny. The only reason I've marked this as a keeper is that I've kept all my other Bill Bryson books so I'll keep this one as well.
Lots of interesting stories about historical everyday life in the US and Britain, mostly from the 1800s.
This is a low 4 (on occasion a high 3) because it was a slower read than expected. Not as humorous as Bryson usually is, but filled with interesting tidbits anyway.
At Home, a perfect read for history and/or trivia geeks like me, is marred by two small things: the sometimes haphazard organization (Just because a chapter is titled "The Attic" doesn't mean the stories therein will be about the history of that room. As a writer, why use this device at all if you can't find the connections?) and a short speech about climate change at the end that feels, despite Bryson's passion about the subject (on display in African Diary), obligatory and ungraceful.
Your home contains the whole world and its history, and Bryson is the tour guide to walk you through it. There's a lot to cover here, and sometimes I wanted Bryson to really sit with a given object or person, but overall it's a pleasant and eye-opening journey through the indispensable items and structures we now take for granted.
Bryson uses a house floorplan as a frame to give a history of domestic (western) life. (For example, in "Bedroom" he not only gives a history of the room and its furniture, but also a lesson on how sexual relationships in Europe and America have evolved over the past several hundred years.) Perfect for someone who loved [b:A Short History of Nearly Everything|21|A Short History of Nearly Everything|Bill Bryson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433086293s/21.jpg|2305997] and is hankering for more of Bryson's blend of humor and an almost overwhelming number of facts.
informative
reflective
medium-paced