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goldfishtish 's review for:
The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island
by Bill Bryson
I have struggled to reconcile my vague memory of ‘Walk In The Woods’ as warm and funny and my recent experience deeply despising ‘Neither here Nor there’, so I listened to this as a tie break. It turns out Bill Bryson is not for me. Yes, this is more informative, more positive, less sleazy, and—since this trip is safely limited to the UK—less xenophobic than ‘Neither here Nor there’. I even enjoyed or agreed with some (some) of his theses, and felt quite moved by some of Bryson’s positive tracts. But he’s just so whiny! Even when an individual rant is amusing or well reasoned, the cumulative effect is deadening.
What really depressed me as the book went on is just how much he dislikes almost every person he meets: the young, people who use hair gel, Japanese people (I said less xenophobic, not not xenophobic), people who wear baggy jeans, men with ponytails, but most of all… waiters and shopkeepers, or indeed anyone who charges him for goods or services. If they don’t immediately smile at him like he’s the second coming and pretend that they’re having a thrilling, fulfilling time manning a counter he starts fantasising about murdering them. Somehow, all through transcribing a mind-bogglingly large number of encounters with people in customer service who he berates and secretly loathes, he never wonders how he comes across to them, never considers that he is the common denominator in every interaction with a person he judges as lazy, stupid, or rude. It feels like there is a consensus that Bryson has got more old-man-yells-at-clouds as his career progressed, but I think maybe the key to Walk In The Woods being a more enjoyable read is the relative lack of cafes and shops.
I wanted to give this one star, but ‘Neither here Nor there’ is so much worse that I couldn't bear to give them the same rating. (Glad to have now moved to story graph so I can mark this down...)
What really depressed me as the book went on is just how much he dislikes almost every person he meets: the young, people who use hair gel, Japanese people (I said less xenophobic, not not xenophobic), people who wear baggy jeans, men with ponytails, but most of all… waiters and shopkeepers, or indeed anyone who charges him for goods or services. If they don’t immediately smile at him like he’s the second coming and pretend that they’re having a thrilling, fulfilling time manning a counter he starts fantasising about murdering them. Somehow, all through transcribing a mind-bogglingly large number of encounters with people in customer service who he berates and secretly loathes, he never wonders how he comes across to them, never considers that he is the common denominator in every interaction with a person he judges as lazy, stupid, or rude. It feels like there is a consensus that Bryson has got more old-man-yells-at-clouds as his career progressed, but I think maybe the key to Walk In The Woods being a more enjoyable read is the relative lack of cafes and shops.
I wanted to give this one star, but ‘Neither here Nor there’ is so much worse that I couldn't bear to give them the same rating. (Glad to have now moved to story graph so I can mark this down...)