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A review by nicolewalks_
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
informative
slow-paced
3.0
I certainly learned a lot reading this book and now have a repertoire of what I would classify as fun facts to share; however, the denseness of content made reading this difficult.
Following Bryson around the rectory he lived in for a time, he goes room to room analyzing the uses and history of each. While some topics made sense to me (ie the nursery depicts Victorian childhood and the kitchen discusses food), sometimes there were tangents so far off the room in the house that I felt like I was reading a hodgepodge of facts. And they are interesting facts! Centrally and thematically though, I was lost and struggled to follow his train of thought.
The rooms weren’t quite the focus of any of the chapters, which I found disappointing. I thought there would be more obscure information about the home and rooms themselves. Also, the paths that Bryson went through included uncomfortable topics and depictions, which I was not ready for necessarily.
His writing style is easy to digest though. He gives off the tone of a quirky historian, where his section endings felt like him giving a shrug and essentially saying, “it is what it is.”
Following Bryson around the rectory he lived in for a time, he goes room to room analyzing the uses and history of each. While some topics made sense to me (ie the nursery depicts Victorian childhood and the kitchen discusses food), sometimes there were tangents so far off the room in the house that I felt like I was reading a hodgepodge of facts. And they are interesting facts! Centrally and thematically though, I was lost and struggled to follow his train of thought.
The rooms weren’t quite the focus of any of the chapters, which I found disappointing. I thought there would be more obscure information about the home and rooms themselves. Also, the paths that Bryson went through included uncomfortable topics and depictions, which I was not ready for necessarily.
His writing style is easy to digest though. He gives off the tone of a quirky historian, where his section endings felt like him giving a shrug and essentially saying, “it is what it is.”