I'm a Stranger Here Myself

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

by Bill Bryson

★★★★

I love reading Bryson when I’m traveling. His dry wit and thoughts on travel always seem to hit the spot. This book is a compilation of columns he wrote for a British publication when he returned to live in America with his British wife and kids after years in England. He talks about a wide variety of subjects in America, from the postal service to the abundance of great snack food to the lack of sidewalks. Yes he can be condescending, that’s kind of this thing. It was fun to see how our country looks when explained to another culture.

Bryson has written about everything from entomology to Australia in his books and he always makes his subject matter interesting. No matter what random topic he chose for each column, it still worked well because it contained his trademark blend of sarcasm and genuine enthusiasm.

The book was published in 1999 and I’m guessing most of the columns ran in the years preceding that. Because of this, some things are obviously dated. He talks about new technology like computers as if they are brand new. Those dated elements don’t take anything away from the overall book though.

BOTTOM LINE: My favorite Bryson books remain In aSunburned Country and A Walk in the Woods, but this one was a fun addition. It’s easy to dip into because each chapter stands alone.

The Origin of Species

The Origin of Species

by Charles Darwin

★ 

In the past month I read three books that specifically mention Origin of the Species (including At Home and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.) I felt like I was being strongly nudged to check it out even though it’s a bit intimidating. 

I like reading classics that are influential pieces of our culture. I want to understand the background of books that are constantly being referenced and I want to have a working knowledge of them. So for those reason I'm glad I read it, but Darwin was no Mary Roach or Bill Bryson. He is a scientist, but writing an enthralling account of his research is not in his wheelhouse.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been so bored reading a book before in my life. I’m talking mind-numbingly bored. Maybe that’s not fair, this isn’t a detective novel that’s supposed to speed along, but honestly I could hardly stand it. I listened to an audio version, which was read by David Case and that might have been part of the problem. I can’t stand his narration and he already ruined The Hunchback of Notre Dame for me.  

I do understand that this isn't a novel and it wasn't written to be entertaining, but I've read so many other nonfiction books that I loved. I'm not talking about the points he makes or what he's trying to prove, I'm talking only about the readability of the material. It was really hard for me to stay interested. 

BOTTOM LINE: Science is not my passion and I will never claim to be an expert in biology, but regardless this one was just not for me. It was like reading the driest of lab reports. I’m glad I read the work that is said to be the basis for evolutionary theory, but unless you love that subject I can’t say I’d recommend it. 

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” 

**Funny side note, I listened to this as an audiobook on CDs. In the middle of the 10th disc the narrator said, “This is the end of side A, please turn the cassette over and continue listening on side B.” Then a few second later, “This is side B of cassette 9.” That’s the one and only moment in the book that made me laugh.

At Home

At Home

by Bill Bryson

★★★★☆

Did you know the word vicar comes from the word vicarious? Or that the reverend who wrote the hymn “Onward Christian Soldier” also wrote the first novel featuring a werewolf? What about the phrase room and board, any idea where that came from? After reading At Home you’ll brain will be packed full of trivia about houses and everything connected to them.

Bill Bryson has an incredible skill for taking the most random and mundane topics and making them enthralling. This is technically a “history of private lives” but that covers a lot of ground.

“If you had to summarize it in a sentence, you could say that the history of private life is a history of getting comfortable slowly.”

From the bathroom to the living room, we make our way through modern rooms learning why salt and pepper are the most common spices and that women had a really hard time getting care from doctors in the past. Also, make sure your wallpaper isn’t colored by arsenic!

This book covers so much more than the “home.” It explores how humanity has changed over the centuries, adjusting our domiciles as we change our habits. It shows how we use those homes to interact with the world and to retreat from it.

Bryson goes on to details the world of furniture and meals and social interactions in a way that is surprisingly engrossing. I honestly wondered how he could get a whole book out of life “at home” but he delves into the details of our endless search for comfort with such infectious enthusiasm. I found myself laughing out loud as I listened to it. I would definitely suggest getting your hands on the audiobook, which he reads himself. His dry sense of humor is best translated when you hear it from his own lips.

BOTTOM LINE: One of my favorite Bryson books! I felt like I learned so much and just when a topic started to get the tiniest bit tired he moved on to the next subject. If you’re a fan of nonfiction with a touch of humor and sarcasm (think Mary Roach or Sarah Vowell) I would highly recommend.

Wordless Wednesday: Golden Gate Bridge

Foggy Golden Gate Bridge

More Wordless Wednesday here.

*Also, I'm over here today talking about Bill Bryson 

for Alyce's Best and Worst feature. 

I hope you'll stop by! 

Photo by moi.

In a Sunburned Country

In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson
★★★★☆

I’ve been having a one-sided love affair with Australia for as long as I can remember. After years of planning and saving I still haven’t made it to the great Down Under. But until I can plan a trip there, I can console myself with Bryson’s wonderful book.

The hilarious travel writer has been a favorite author of mine for a long time now. Between his stories of growing up in Iowa (The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid), his time living in England (Notes from a Small Island) and even his books on the English language (Mother Tongue), I’ve grown to appreciate his work. A few of his have been misses for me, but I usually love his dry sense of humor and cynical view of travel. This one definitely makes it into the top three favorites list of his books for me.

He writes about everything in Australia from the Great Barrier Reef to the tiny towns in the far west. He covers the history of the Aborigines and the exile of convicts to the continent from England. I love the way he weaves all of this together, adds a big dollop of local beer drinking and meandering through small museums to create an entertaining book. He pairs good information with rye comments on the state of local hotels and supposed “attractions.”

One of my favorite bits was his description of his narrow escape from wild dogs. He told the whole thing from the point of view of the woman whose back yard he stumbles into. I couldn’t stop laughing for about 10 minutes.

Yet despite his teasing, he never looses his ability to gush about the natural beauty of an incredible place. Even when he’s joking about the names of the towns or crazy political systems his love of the place is still obvious. It’s like he’s talking about a relative, he can criticize them a bit, but you know he would defend them to someone else in a heartbeat.

BOTTOM LINE: Do you love travel memoirs or Australia? If yes, then this one is a must. I think it’s also a great introduction to Bryson’s work if you’re curious about him and want to try one of his books. A Walk in the Woods is another great one to start with.

**The audiobook is read by the author and it’s just fantastic!

Top Ten Favorite Non-Fiction Authors

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for your Top Ten Favorite Authors in any Genre. I talk a lot about my favorite modern authors and Victorian authors, but I also read a lot of non-fiction, so I decided to list my 10 favorite non-fiction authors and give you one book I’d recommend from each author. There are dozens more I love, but these are authors that I’ve read multiple non-fiction books from.

1) Ernie Pyle – Brave Men

2) Sarah Vowell – -Assassination Vacation

3) Mary Roach – Stiff

4) Erik Larson – Isaac’s Storm

5) Nick Hornby – The Polysyllabic Spree

6) Sebastian Junger – The Perfect Storm

7) Bill Bryson – In a Sunburned Country

8) David Sedaris – Me Talk Pretty One Day

9) Helene Hanff – 84, Charing Cross Road

10) Jeannette Walls – Half Broke Horses

Image from here.

Top Ten Authors I'd like to See on a Reality Show

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for the Top Ten Authors I'd like to See on a Reality Show (and which reality show). To be honest, I kind of hate reality TV… a lot. But I looked up a giant list of shows and played along for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. So I probably haven’t seen most of the shows I mention in this post, but I get the basic idea.

1) Neil Gaiman: Cribs – I don’t know if this show is still around, but I’ve seen photos of his amazing library and I would love to see more of it!

2) Bill Bryson: Survivor – The man is a travel writer, so he should be used to uncomfortable locations and situations… right? Nope, his version of uncomfortable usually includes a pair of shows that aren’t broken in right or a subpar cup of tea. I don’t think he would last long on Survivor.

3) David Mitchell: Jersey Shore – Because after reading Cloud Atlas, I’d like to see this author interact with Snooki and the gang and then watch their little brains implode.

4) John Green: Dirty Jobs – Let’s face it, Green would be great on anything! I think he would make this show both entertaining and educational.

5) Anthony Bourdain: Hell’s Kitchen – I think he and Gordon Ramsay would have a massive show down.

6) Jonathan Franzen: Wipe Out – I’m just not a fan of his and I’d like to see him taken down a notch.

7) Garrison Keillor: American Pickers – Can't you just imagine him talking about each thing they find and its signinficance in American culture as they dig through dilapidated barns and old sheds looking for antiques.

8) Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss: Man, Woman, Wild – This married pair of authors probably wouldn’t fare as well as the married couple on the show, but it would be entertaining.

9) David Sedaris: The Osbournes – I’m sorry, but just picture that for a second. Imagine him trying to have a conversation with Ozzy Osborne. Bahaha.

10) George R. R. Martin: So You Think You Can Dance – He doesn’t strike me as very fleet of foot, so this would be hilarious.

Image from here.

Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for my Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books.

1) “Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life…And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” — A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2) "You must never feel badly about making mistakes, as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong than you do by being right for the wrong reasons." — The Phantom Tollbooth

3) “I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all.” — Half Broke Horses

4) "The world is a great book...they who never stir from home read only a page." — St. Augustine

5) "What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.” — The Uncommon Reader

6) “But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generations, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belong to an older day.” — Dubliners

7) “By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourself of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip into the stream." — A Room of One’s Own

8) “Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.” — I Capture the Castle

9) “It could be said that they are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already read books and do not think of the library as a working tool.” — A Passion for Books

10) "I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago." – Notes From a Small Island

BONUS QUOTES:
“America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn’t have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature.” — The Lost Continent

"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence Voldemort knows and understands nothing." – Harry Potter Book 7

“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time – he can never return to simplicity.” — Sweet Thursday


“The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?” — Dorothy Parker

Image from here .

The Lost Continent

The Lost Continent
by Bill Bryson
★★★

Shortly after the death of his father, Bryson embarks on a cross-country road trip, visiting small towns throughout America. He’s an Iowa native, but after living in England for decades he wanted to reacquaint himself with the USA.

I’ve enjoyed most of Bryson’s other books more than this one. It still retains his acidic sense of humor and conversational writing style, but it’s much more cynical. With some of his other work he is simply observing a place, whether it’s the Appalachian Trail or a foreign country, for the first time. In this one, he’s re-visiting places he vacationed as a child. I think it’s unlikely any place could live up to his sepia-toned memories and he’s incredibly disappointed by how boring or dirty the cities have become.

Barring a few exceptions (like the universally revered Grand Canyon); he is completely disenchanted with America. It didn’t take long to tire of his routine in each new town: see touristy museum or park, check into cheap hotel, get dinner at cheap local diner, drink beers in hotel room while watching Mr. Ed, and repeat the following day. I wanted him to talk to people or at least make an effort to see more than one cheesy tourist trap. Don’t get me wrong, there are some funny bits, but it’s no where near his normal level of hilarity.

I will definitely keep reading Bryson’s books in the future, because he normally cracks me up. I’ll chalk this one up to an off-day for the writer and instead I’d recommend you read Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley for a similar premise with a much better result.

“That is the great, seductive thing about America – the people always get what they want, right now, whether it is good for them or not. There is something deeply worrying, and awesomely irresponsible, about this endless self-gratification.”

“America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn’t have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature.”