The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

By Bill Bryson

Bryson returns to the United States after living in the UK. Feeling a bit nostalgic, he takes off on a road trip to visit some of same places he visited with his parents as a kid and to visit places that he had always wanted to visit but never had.
Bryson is usually quite amusing and this book lives up that in being a humorous read. But he must have been in a bad mood when he wrote it because he really beats up on America, only rarely finding a good thing to say beyond praising the scenery occasionally.

I did enjoy the book, but I wish he could have been a little less snarky about his homeland.

See the New York Times book review from 1989.

Notes From a Small Island

By Bill Bryson

Bryson, originally from Iowa, lived (and maybe still lives) in Great Britain for many years. One of the things he enjoyed/enjoys doing is traveling around Britain and seeing the sights and hiking the trails and footpaths and viewing Britain from an American perspective.
Only a few pages into the book, Bryson describes how he spent his first night in Britain on a bench outdoors because he couldn't afford the rates at the only hotel open at that time of night. He got so cold he put on all his warmest clothes and even put a pair of flannel boxers on his head. Early the next morning, he got up and asked a local man if he knew of a restaurant that might be open. He did and directed Bryson to it, saying it was where the truck drivers ate and so would have good food. He then recommend to Bryson that, "You might want to take them pants off your head before you go in."
Bryson was smitten by British place names. He listed as "endearingly insane" towns such as Chew Magna, Prittlewell, Little Rollright, Titsey, Woodstock Slop, and Nether Wallop.
This book is a lot of fun. Bryson always amuses and he still manages to make parts of Britain sound appealing, even in the pouring rain. One of the best things about Bryson's travel tales is his great sense of humor and his ability to laugh at himself.

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/bill-bryson/notes-from-a-small-island/.

In a Sunburned Country

By Bill Bryson

Australia: perhaps the most exotic place in the world. Full of flora and fauna found nowhere else on our planet, some of which is dangerous and/or toxic. Much of it is inhospitable, uninhabited and pretty much unexplored. Parts of the interior have never been closely surveyed and may possibly contain unknown  reserves of mineral wealth.
Australia is nearly the same size as the continental United States but sparsely populated, with most of the people living in cities on the  southern and eastern coasts.  The coasts have the best climate, with lush forests and land suitable to grow crops. The interior is desert of the harshest, most deadly kind.
Bill Bryson has a love affair with Australia, despite its much touted dangers. He set off on a tour of the civilized places, visiting some of Australia's most outstanding and amazing attractions. Throughout his trip he finds the people welcoming and helpful and the natural wonders simply amazing. He rarely has a harsh word to say and is looking forward to returning in the future.

I enjoyed the book a lot. Bryson has a lovely sense of humor and doesn't mind poking fun of himself. I laughed out loud several times as Bryson describes some of the predicaments he gets himself into.
But besides the humor, Bryson's descriptions made me long to visit Australia some day. If I could, I would go there without hesitating, eager to see all the sights that Bryson does such an excellent job describing.

For another review, see https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7679-0385-1.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

By Bill Bryson

After living in England for a long time, Bryson decided it was time to move back home to the United States with his wife and children. They settled into a college town in New England.
Moving to England had required some adjustments to the English way of doing things. And moving back home also required some adjustments.
This book is some of Bryson's newspaper columns he wrote while living in America. He enjoyed the contrasts between here and there. He also enjoyed pointing out each country's foibles. Even though he is not really a foreigner, he had been gone long enough to see things through a different eye.
His columns are amusing and also thought-provoking. A very nice read.

The Road to Little Dribbling

By Bill Bryson

Some twenty years ago, Bill Bryson traveled throughout Britain and recorded his experiences in a book, Notes from a Small Island. He decided to repeat the experience, and the resulting book is The Road to Little Dribbling.
Bryson compares his memory of his trip from twenty years ago to the current situation and often finds things have changed for the worse. Places he wanted to revisit are gone or so changed as to bear little resemblance from what they were the first time. However some are much improved, among them being Stonehenge. He also finds little museums chock full of interesting trivia and engaging displays. But he also finds that Britain is awash in trash and litter and wonders how a country with such beautiful, gracious landscapes can be so indifferent to littering.  On the other hand, he enjoys how much British cuisine has improved since his first trip, as he eats and drinks his way across the land.
Bryson obviously loves his adopted land, warts and all, and finds Britain and it people endlessly fascinating, even when he feeling rather snarky and disagreeable, which is a lot of the time.
Twenty years later, Bryson seems a bit crankier than before but his sense of humor remains firmly intact as he laughs at himself and at the quirky British people.

I enjoyed the book, for the most part, although I did lose interest in it towards the end and let it sit unread for several weeks.  Since I never get to travel and probably never will, this is the closest I can come to going to Britain myself. It was a fun and entertaining read for this "armchair traveler".
For more see The New York Times review at  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/bill-bryson-the-road-to-little-dribbling-review.html?_r=0.

A Walk in the Woods

By Bill Bryson

In his middle age, Bill Bryson developed the urge to hike the Appalachian Trail. The Trail runs from Georgia to Maine through the hills and mountains along the East Coast of the USA. It is more than 2000 miles long. In some places it is well maintained and in others, not so much. Most of it is up and down and, although many start out, few complete the whole trail in one trip.
Bryson hiked quite a bit when he lived in England. But the Appalachian Trail is not a pleasant stroll through settled and tamed countryside. It goes through rugged wilderness, with amenities few and far between.
Not wanting to tackle this wilderness alone, Bryson searched in vain for a friend to accompany him. He failed to find anyone until a very old friend from back home in Iowa got in touch with him. Stephen Katz needed to get away from troubles at home and offered to go with Bryson on his hike. Bryson had his doubts as Katz was known to be a drinker and he didn't think Katz was up to it. But Katz was the only one who was willing and so they started out down in Georgia.
Hiking with a loaded pack on steep grades is a real challenge. Both of the men were suffering the first few days, Katz especially. Bryson would often sit alongside the trail, waiting for Katz to catch up. They were frequently passed by younger, fitter hikers but they kept on. They kept on through the rain, through the snow, through the mud and dirt and later on, the clouds of annoying bugs. But at the end of their hike, they asked themselves, "Why?' And that's when they couldn't come up with a good enough answer and went home.
Altogether, Bryson walked about 800 miles, Katz somewhat less. And although they didn't do the whole distance, they still felt like they had accomplished something: they hiked the Appalachian Trail.

This was a fun read. Bryson has a great sense of humor and doesn't mind laughing at himself and the world around him. He also gives the reader a real sense of what it is like to be on the trail and the struggles associated with such a grand undertaking. He gives a bit of history of the Trail and the locale and how development has or hasn't affected not only the Trail but the surrounding area. Particularly interesting is the story of Centralia, Pennsylvania, the town that is perpetually on fire. Bryson has wide ranging interests and is a very intelligent man and his books are always informative without being stuffy and are seasoned nicely with humor.
For another review, see  https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/31/reviews/980531.31garner.html

One Summer

By Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson takes a look at the summer of 1927 and with brief and illuminating discussions of  the antecedents of the events of that summer. Charles Lindbergh, record floods in the Mississippi basin, flagpole sitting, Clara Bow, talkies, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Al Capone, Sacco and Vanzetti, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth  and more are all featured in this entertaining and fascinating look at what our ancestors were up to almost a ninety years ago. I am not a fan of baseball but even the stuff about Babe Ruth was pretty interesting.  Bill Bryson has a real gift for making history come alive by telling the human story not just a bunch of dry facts. He knows how to get personal with his subject matter and doesn't shy away from the unsavory aspects of the story. It was a pleasure to read this entertaining and informative book.  

A Short History of Nearly Everything

By Bill Bryson

This book isn't about your classic history, like when Columbus discovered America or the signing of the Magna Carta or the fall of the Roman Empire. The history it delves into is scientific history and it starts with physics and chemistry, then geology, and evolution. Bryson brings forward the unsung and overlooked heroes of science, people who made massive contributions to our collective knowledge that were somehow forgotten for the most part in the course of time. His explanations of science and scientific discoveries are very readable and clear. He cuts out the technical jargon and lays out theories in a straightforward, uncomplicated way.

Bryson starts off with the origins of the universe and physics and I have to admit I found it pretty dry going. I put the book down for several weeks as reading it was making me sleepy. But eventually, I was able to get through the physics and chemistry and into geology and the history of life on our planet and I found that a lot more interesting. I can't say that a lot of the information stuck with me, but my overall impression of its contents are: human beings are damn lucky to exist at all and that we are walking a tight rope, teetering on the brink of disaster. His book is a list of all the terrible things that have happened, can happen and may likely happen in the near future. Let me see if I can remember some of it. Solar rays, if the sun has a really big solar flare, if it is big enough it will destroy the Earth's protective magnetic fields and fry all life on the planet. Or a giant meteor could strike the Earth and fry all life on the planet. Or a huge volcano could blow up and fry all life on the planet. Apparently Yellowstone National Park is just a huge volcano that erupts every 600,000 years and, guess what? It's been 600,000 years since its last eruption. And when it does blow, not only will it wipe out the whole Midwestern United States, but the ash cloud will plunge the world into cold and darkness for years resulting in crop failures and starvation for every living thing on the planet. Or the Earth's magnetic field could reverse and mess up the ocean currents which moderate climate with catastrophic results. Also, the Earth is about due for another Ice Age with glaciers creeping across most of Europe and North America. Or we could all die from some horrible new pandemic, some innocuous virus that suddenly mutates into a killer germ. Life on this old planet is a history of disasters and mass extinctions. But the good news is that you and I have 60 percent of the same genes as a banana. I like that.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbold Kid

By Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson grew up in Des Moines, Iowa in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. He revisits his childhood in this interesting and often very funny memoir. Finding lots of material in his own family, his friends and neighbors and his school, Bryson paints a picture that is both charming and amusing, visiting a time in American culture that is now consigned to history.
He also paints a very beguiling picture of the city of Des Moines, describing tree-shaded hills, graceful family homes and vanished restaurants and stores. He takes us back to a time when downtown was the place to shop and to eat, before fast food joints and national chains and malls changed the urban landscape into the sprawl of today. I enjoyed this part too, but I think it would probably be more appealing to those who have been there and seen that.
He also visits the national preoccupations of the time ranging from the atomic bomb to anti-communist hysteria to teenage delinquents. Although he is quick to say that the majority of America's youth were law-abiding and conservative, some of his funniest stories concern the antics of his friends who plot and scheme to steal beer, even going so far as to break into and empty a beer warehouse and who also have a plan to explode a confetti bomb on the front lawn of their school. The bomb goes off prematurely and explodes inside their own home, causing thousands of dollars of damage, even knocking the house slightly off its foundation.

I really enjoyed this book, it was laugh-out-loud funny. When I read a funny book this is what I want, a book so funny that I just have to laugh. I wish all books that claim to be funny could be as amusing as this one.
Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. I am always quick to grab a new Bryson the minute I spy it on the shelf. Bryson never disappoints, so far his books are always amusing and informative.

For another review see The Guardian.

New Words
Squamous: scaly, flat, and plate-like. "You could also get small artificial ice-cream cones made of some crumbly chalklike material, straws containing a gritty sugar so ferociously sour that your whole face would actually be sucked into your mouth like sand collapsing into a hole, root-beer barrels, red-hot cinnamon balls, licorice wheels and whips, greasy candy worms, rubbery dense gelatinlike candies that tasted of unfamiliar (and indeed unlikable) fruits but were a good value as it took more than three hours to eat each one (and three hours more to pick the gluey remnants out of your molars, sometimes with fillings attached), and jawbreakers the size and density of billiard balls, which were the best value of all as they would last for up to three months and had multiple strata that turned your tongue interesting new shades as you doggedly dissolved away one squamous layer after another."
Bifurcated: Bifurcate means too separate, split, or divide. "So earthy devastation became both a constant threat and a happy preoccupation of that curiously bifurcated decade."