Just finished reading this and thoroughly enjoyed it- just as good as A Short History Of Nearly Everything, if dealing with a more mundane (but still fascinating) subject- namely, the house.
Anyone else here had a chance to read it yet?
I just bought it today.
I always love Bryson’s writing, but I notice in the first few pages, some of the questions he puts forth have already been addressed on the Dope. Like the salt and pepper question.
I think Cecil’s already answered that one, no?
Oh well, his writing alone is worth the price.
I haven’t read it yet, but I shall be! I enjoy Bryson a lot, and I love social history, too.
Bastards are pricing it at over $13 for the Kindle version. I’ll just have to wait it out.
Consider yourself lucky. It’s something like $45 for the hardback edition in Australia. Great book though, and a most worthy addition to my Bryson collection. 
Dang, thanks.
Didn’t even know Bryson had a new book out.
Bryson is one of the few authors I’ll “one-click-buy” on Amazon without reading reviews, he’s great.
I’ve read it and I loved it. But he’s turning into a sort of QI author. Most of the book has very little to do with a home, and while everything he writes about is fascinating, he might as well have called the book ‘Lots of not really connected interesting stuff that I bet you didn’t know’.
Some of it is fairly gruesome, too. I learnt more than I wanted to know about certain medical practices - including removing babies from wombs.
I’ll add this one to my xmas list.
Just working my way through Notes from a Bg Country, which my wife picked up from a charity shop at the weekend.
Yeah, I know $13 isn’t a big deal. It’s a matter of principle at this point.
It’s off topic but… what’s the principle? $13 for a brand new book by a bestselling author is a hell of a deal.
In a recent thread about how much you’d be prepared to pay for a Kindle, much of the conversation was about how people would be prepared to pay for the ebooks. The conclusion was - not much. A typical comment:
When I bought my Kindle, Amazon told me they wouldn’t go over ten bucks.
Amazon promised not to exceed $9.99 for their Kindle books. That’s gone by the wayside because publishers decided to renege on the deal. Fuck 'em. When the price comes down to what was agreed upon, that’s when I’ll buy.
I just took it out of my local library. I love my local librarians.
I don’t think that’s exactly what they said. I was one of the early buyers of the Kindle and even in the beginning, some Kindle books were amazingly expensive. I’m talking $50. But they were for very obscure books with lots of pictures, ones you probably wouldn’t want to get on a Kindle anyway.
Uh, back to the book…
I got the audiobook and listened to it while walking around. I was a little disappointed that there was very little to do with some of the stuff I really wanted to know (carpet, for example, was very little touched upon) but had a lot of stuff, like diseases, that seemed to have little to do with the subject.
However, little bits have stuck with me. The hall and the fact it’s shrunk in the home but entire building are still called halls - I think about that a lot. Some of the construction materials were very interesting.
I liked it, at least the stuff that was relevant, and will probably listen to it again.
In case anyone can go, Bill Bryson will be part of the Boston Book Festival on October 16th.
He’ll be at the Back Bay Events Center at 3:00, in a segment called “Home and Away”.
The festival schedule is here - http://www.bostonbookfest.org/2010_schedule
In many ways I think it’s a very smart thing for him to be doing. “Funny Travel Writing” isn’t really a viable genre anymore since (as has been mentioned in another thread about nostalgia for pre-internet things), since pretty much everyone with a blog, a passport, and some holiday photos of somewhere marginally further afield than the neighbouring country has had a go at doing it, so branching out into an entertaining genre (and let’s face it, everyone likes being entertained) isn’t a silly movie IMHO.
Maybe, but I’ll be disappointed if Bryson never does Canada.
Has anyone ever gone to see him reading from his books? He’s appearing in my city soon and I’m deciding whether to go (inconvenient location, inconvenient day and time, etc.)