Just started the book last night and got into the first chapter. That discussion about why land around churchyards rise (the church isn’t sinking, the graveyard is rising!) was creepy and edifying at the same time.
Ha yes…Extremely funny!
I just finished it and mostly really enjoyed it, like all Bryson’s other books.
But afterwords I was left feeling a little disappointed. The reason is the subject is really “A Short History of Private Life in 19th Century England”. Few narrative excursions are taken away from this, either in time or place. And that’s a little narrower than what I was looking forward to.
Here’s a video recording of Bryson doing a talk to (and about) the Royal Society recently. It’s interesting in the same way “a short history of nearly everything” is. Skip to part “03. A Slight Change in Topic” for Bill’s part of the video.
Now that that’s out of the way: what is the book we’re actually discussing about?
He goes through all the rooms of a house and explains the history of how the things in that room came to be as they are. But it’s much more than that. The dressing room becomes a history of clothes; the bedroom becomes a history of sex; the bathroom becomes a history of hygiene; etc.