I found Bill’s newest
to be among his best, I really enjoyed it.
The Thunderbolt Kid was also a good read.
Agreed. It had maybe a bit of the same vibe as Jean Shepherd (“A Christmas Story”).
I also found ‘Notes From a Small Island’ to be a ‘lesser’ Bryson.
My faves are (titles to the best of my recollection):
- A Sundburnt Country (He’s got this great observation that Australia is home to something like 6 of the 10 most poisonous creatures in the world and that he’s bewildered that any Australian lives past age 6).
- A Walk in the Woods
- Home (history of the rooms in a house)
I enjoy that he doesn’t cast himself as some sort of travelling hero. He’s all-tto-human, full of mistakes and other failings, but still maintains his humour. All those folks who question his attention to the facts are (IMHO) missing the point. I find his books to be light entertainment, not an encyclodia on the places he visits.
As I enjoy travelogues, I read some Theroux, but he’s just such a curmedgeon and sees all the bad in things that it turned me off.
Well, I don’t say that about his travelogues, but when he writes a book like Made in America and The Mother Tongue, which are as much meant to impart factual information as they are to be an enjoyable read, it annoys me. It could have still been a fun read and more informative with a little bit more of fact-checking.
Now, I enjoyed reading them both, and they were the first two Bryson books I read, but I was disappointed when I read stuff like the “Eskimos have fifty words for snow” repeated naively and without explanation in a book that is talking about language. I just wish he would have run the book by an actual language expert to filter out or explain that kind of nonsense.
So, yeah, my take away from reading those two books is to find him untrustworthy as a reporter of fact. That’s not an issue for me in his travel books, but in his “factual” books, that’s irritating.
Oh, and of course, I forgot the best one: ravintolassa. Apparently, Bryson somehow was fooled into thinking that Finnish has no swear words but rather uses a phrase that means “in the restaurant.” How that doesn’t set off someone’s BS detector, I don’t know, but Bryson presented it unquestioningly.
I know an awful lot about the Appalachian Trail and have spent a lot of time with thru-hikers so I know that “A Walk in the Woods” is inaccurate, misleading, and poorly researched in a few key places. I could care less if the characters are made up or composites of various people he met along the way; authors are allowed to do that. But when he makes major factual mistakes for no apparent reason that don’t help the storytelling, or when he bills the book as one thing and delivers something else, it takes me out of the moment. I now read his other books (which I mostly enjoy) with a wary eye.
Thanks, everyone, for thoughts. I’m glad I’m not the only person who enjoys a good deal of Bryson’s output; but finds him, in various ways, decidedly flawed. Re his relationship with “the facts” – yes, I do find that he both sometimes wilfully “tweaks” them, or worse, in order to get a laugh; and also, quite often, he sloppily gets them wrong – particularly reprehensible in books supposedly written to impart information, rather than just to rabbit on about his travel experiences.
The most off-putting thing about him for me, is the way that just occasionally, he suddenly erupts into strident, almost hysterical fury against some seemingly random target – this tends to come out of nowhere. An example: in A Walk in the Woods, passing through Harper’s Ferry prompts Bryson to do a sudden, extremely savage “hatchet job” on Stonewall Jackson. This is not because of the guy’s being on the perceivedly wrong side in the Civil War; but because Bryson regards him as moronically stupid and pretty well certifiably insane – not fit to be a private in a special imbeciles’ battalion, let alone a general. I’d been aware that Jackson is recorded as being highly eccentric; but the violence of this outburst had me thinking, “Hey, dude, what’s all this about? What did Stonewall ever do to you?” I find Bryson strange, this way.
DrDeth recommends his latest, “One Summer – America 1927”. I’ve been undecided whether to bother with this one.
Completely concur – Theroux is an utterly miserable sod.
I think he is a very funny writer when he’s writing about things he loves. The Lost Continent and I’m a Stranger Here Myself, to take two examples, are sweet and warm and hilarious. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is borderline genius. But Neither Here Nor There gets awfully crabby at times.
His factual books, like A Short History of Nearly Everything and At Home, are highly entertaining, but whatever you do, verify what he says before you believe it!
The only Bryson book I’ve read is Notes from a Small Island. I’m an Anglophile, so I enjoyed the subject matter, and the book was funny in places. However, I was taken aback by Bryson’s irritability. He complained a lot, and he was annoyed rather than charmed by the eccentric locals he met. I think he was going for lovably grumpy, but his querulous tone soured on me.
I read A Short History of Nearly Everything a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. The best part was about what would happen if a large asteroid crashed into the earth–the atmosphere would become unbelievably hot, setting fire to just about everything. I read it because I saw in an interview that Ke$ha really liked it. I then lent it to a friend, and she liked it also.
I agree – I find him often just plain grumpy, rather than lovably so. Also, a particular personal thing set me against Notes from a Small Island. This was because of the part of that book which cooncerns the Ffestiniog preserved narrow-gauge railway in Wales. I’m British, and a railfan; and have had a lifelong passion for that particular railway. Bryson found his reception by the Ffestiniog Railway’s staff, when he wished to travel on it, less welcoming and cooperative than he could have wished (I forget the details). The result – his “going off on one” in the book, about this particular railway; and the unleashing of his large capacity for snideness and snottiness, upon railway enthusiasts and railway preservation in general.
One book of his which I did truly enjoy, was the one on Shakespeare. While, as ever, I’m a bit wary about the data offered: it’s very interesting; and it’s non-fiction, about an “external” subject, so contains blessedly little “Bryson about Bryson” blather – and it’s short and concise, without the padding-factor which one suspects in some of his books.
May as well get onto further musings about Mr. Bryson. I mostly enjoyed his Thunderbolt Kid, as an account of everyday life in 1950s America outside of the biggest-and-most-cutting-edge cities. One small element therein, however, annoyed the hell out of me. Bryson was born at a date which put him right in line for conscription to serve in Vietnam. (As was I – which makes me feel very thankful to have been born in the UK, not the USA.)
Understandably, Bryson was not keen to go to Vietnam; so took, successfully, the deferment-to-go-to-university route. Re just that, I’d say, “well played, Mr. B. – congratulations”. But, a thing or two in the book, attendant on that – his stating that “A quarter of young American males were in the armed forces in 1968. Nearly all the rest were in school, in prison or were George W. Bush. For most people, school was the only realistic option for avoiding military service.”
Leaving aside the jab at Bush – and regardless of one’s opinion about the Vietnam war or war in general – the just-quoted, strikes me as arrant crap. First, define “young”. Secondly – three-quarters supposedly equals what he says above: I don’t see it, in any sane perception of the world. He seems to think that crazy and nonsensical hyperbole is just fine, for the sake of getting a cheap laugh and / or making a point. I completely disagree – I don’t think that artistic licence means carte blanche to spout utter balderdash; and as far as I’m concerned, when Bryson does stuff like this, he’s being an arsehole, and it lessens my desire to read further stuff written by him. A pity – I feel that he’s a lot like the little girl with the little curl, in the famous verse…
His hyperbole goes to extremes, IMO. When it happens organically I can chuckle along with it and understand why he’s spouting off. When it feels forced it’s obvious he’s trying to hard to be curmudgeonly…and comes off being more arse-ish.
Des Moines (where Bryson grew up) was not a major metropolis back in Bryson’s childhood, btw. Maybe it was the “big” city in that area, but it was no Chicago.
I ready A Short History years ago and really enjoyed it - he is known for inaccuracies? like what?
darn!
Concur, I think. In a minority of cases, I can go along, and be amused. More of the time, I think he’s just being a dick.
I should reluctantly award him a good-conduct medal for one thing. I see from the atlas that in the far south-west of North Carolina, there’s a town called Bryson City – close to the Appalachian Trail, and passed before his recounting in AWitW of his – ideologically-prompted – wish to get the hell out of the South. No mention by him, of the place imaginably named after him and dedicated to him – which of course it wouldn’t have been in fact; but people like Bill can egotistically “go hog-wild” in the fantasy realm – anyway, here he didn’t.
For one, he repeats the myth that glass is thicker at the bottom of cathedral stained glass windows because it has flowed since it was installed.
Yeah, and that was a factoid for decades, even in encyclopedias. A Short History… was written in 2003 or so. Even Cecil mentioned glass was a liquid, altho he ‘clarified’ later.
Even the wiki page for the book sez "The book contains few factual errors and inaccuracies.[3] It should be noted that since the book’s publication, new discoveries have been made, and some classifications have changed. For example, Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet."
He did make a few math errors in some of his size analogies, which detract nothing from the general concepts he was trying to get across.
I still think it’s inexcusable in a non-fiction book, and 2003 wasn’t that long ago. As I’ve noted before here, I was teaching chemistry in the late 1990s, and made a point of bringing up the fact that it was a myth in my classes.
What’s more, in the few years before Bryson wrote his book, it was heavily publicized in articles and popular science magazines that it was a myth, including a 1999 article in Discover magazine and this article about a May 1998 study published in the American Journal of Physics:
As I stated before, you’d think that a writer of a popular science book would keep up with this sort of thing rather than perpetuating factual inaccuracies.