A Modest Construct | Bill Bryson

Posts tagged `Bill Bryson`

¶ At Home

At Home: A Short History of Domestic Life by Bill Bryson: Publisher: Doubleday; Year: 2010; Pages: 512

A new book by Bill Bryson is enough to elicit undue excitement from me; said excitement is relative, of course, and so given my…inscrutable…nature, undue excitement looks likes raised eyebrows or perhaps a smile. In any case, I was so overwrought with joy that Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life was coming out, his first real book since A Short History of Nearly Everything. You may imagine my disappointment that the book would not be published stateside until October 5th, and yet came out in late May in England. I cheated; I imported it.

§5864 · September 20, 2010 · 2 comments · Tags: Bill Bryson, Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, reviews

¶ Notes from a Small Island

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson: Publisher: Harper Perennial; Year: 1997; Pages: 282

There is a peculiarity to Englishness which is historical, polite, and understated. After all, consider that England was, at one time, one of the most powerful nations on the planet and remained so for many years, despite the size of its landmass being vanishingly small and its natural resources slight. At the same time it was flashing its Germanic roots by turning the rest of the world into its empire, it was also cementing its reputation for stodginess and quaintness. Bill Bryson, though a native of Iowa and everything that entails, lived in the U.K. for most of his adult life, before moving back to the US in 1995 (and eventually winding up back across the Atlantic in 2003).

§5645 · June 16, 2010 · 4 comments · Tags: Bill Bryson, Book Reviews, books, England, nonfiction, reviews

¶ A Short History of the American Stomach

A Short History of the American Stomach by Frederick Kaufman: Publisher: Mariner; Year: 2009; Pages: 224

When I got Frederick Kaufman’s A Short History of the American Stomach, I had expected something along the lines of Tom Standage’s A History of the World in 6 Glasses, perhaps with the cultural slant of Bill Bryson’s Made in America.

§4627 · November 9, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: Bill Bryson, Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, reviews, science

¶ I’m a Stranger Here Myself

I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson: Publisher: Broadway; Year: 2000; Pages: 304

I’m perfectly well aware that Bill Bryson can be funny. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid had me laugh out loud; A Walk in the Woods, too, was hilarious.

But most of Bryson’s writing—and humor—is in long form. That is, Bryson writes books. There was a time, however, when he wrote a sort-of weekly column for a British newspaper (The Mail on Sunday Night and Day during the years he lived with his family in New Hampshire (he’s since moved back to England). I’m a Stranger Here Myself is about Americana, but not in the same way as The Lost Continent, nor is it about America in the same way that Notes from a Small Island was about England.

§4497 · September 25, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: Bill Bryson, Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, reviews

¶ A Voyage Long and Strange

A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz: Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; Year: 2008; Pages: 464

I’m something of an iconoclast; I used to enjoy telling people (smugly, as only an over-informed grade-school boy can be) that George Washington was the 8th president. I took fewer cheap thrills from knowing that Columbus wasn’t necessarily the saint we so often make him out to be, though I stopped of damning European imperialists and other overindulgent tropes of that sort—more on this later.

§4000 · September 12, 2009 · (No comments) · Tags: Bill Bryson, Book Reviews, books, history, nonfiction, reviews