Rating: 
Summary: Mr. Bryson just does not know the Appalachian Trail
Review: This is written from the perspective of a person who has hiked 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail and will complete the journey during the summer of 2001. It is also from the perspective of someone who has spent many volunteer hours maintaining the Trail. I, like I imagine thousands of others, laughed hysterically for the first 39 pages. Then I abruptly stopped when Mr. Bryson described how his friend Katz dumped pepperoni, rice, cans of spam, and brown sugar over a cliff as he climbed Amicalola Falls. On page 41 and 42 he amends this list by adding coffee filters which "...were great for throwing. Fluttered all over". Don't forget the cheese and peanuts (no doubt still in their wrappers) that went along with everything else. They must have made a nice resounding thud in the quiet of the forest. Evidently, neither Katz nor Bryson gained a greater appreciation for the environment because the dumping continued. On page 86, Katz flung his cream soda can into the underbrush. (Which one of us picked that one up?) Our beautiful trail in Maine was not even sacred to Katz's lack of environmental ethic. On page 239 and 240, he goes at it again - this time getting rid of clothing, water bottles, and food. I suggest that Mr. Bryson may want to atone for the damage that he has done by contacting any trail club and volunteering a few days. He may find that picking up after poorly prepared slobs really isn't that hilarious after all. Let's continue, I'm just getting warmed up! Trail maps. Perhaps Mr. Bryson is ignorant of the fact that most of the work on trail maps is volunteer. He also must be ignorant of the fact that, while he was writing and publishing his book for cash, Keystone Trails Association volunteers (yes, the Keystone Trails Association that was referred to on page 174) were hard at work replacing the old black and white maps with incredibly beautiful and detailed color maps. Did the volunteers make money for this? Nope! Not even enough to pay for Katz's can of cream soda that they had to pick up under the bushes! Perhaps since Mr. Bryson feels that the AT maps are so poor he would care to donate some of the proceeds of his book to help update all of the maps. One tenth of the sale of his book would go a long way. What enflames me is that instead of praising KTA, an organization filled with dedicated people who have spent thousands - hundreds of thousands - of hours building, signing, and maintaining PA hiking trails, Mr. Bryson criticizes them. But praise doesn't sell a book. And praise doesn't make a person rich. On page 189, Mr. Bryson admits that he only walked 11 miles in Pennsylvania, yet on page 173 he describes how lousy the AT is in PA. Oh, Mr. Bryson, the 11 miles you walked must not have included Pole Steeple nor the outstanding views of the Susquehanna River from Hawk Rock and Peter's Mountain. Those 11 miles could not have been on the crest of Peter's Mountain with its frequent pastoral views. You must have by-passed the Pinnacle, Pulpit Rock, the Bake Oven, and the lovely rhododendrons, mountain laurels and hemlocks. It's sad that you missed all this. You missed Pennsylvania. But you did spend 5 pages describing Centralia. What does Centralia have to do with the AT? It's an hours drive, and a four days hike, away! But since you only hiked 11 miles in PA, I guess you had to write about something! All this was bad enough, but on page 199 I gave up. Mr. Bryson states, "...the ATC seems to be positively phobic about human contact. Personally, I would have been pleased to be walking through hamlets and past farms rather than through some silent protected corridor". And on page 200 he states, "...the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and tilled fields". He also suggests that some riverside walking would be nice. What's wrong with this picture? For starters, Mr. Bryson didn't bother to hike the AT. For if he had, he would have known that the AT is all these things. He would have hiked through the trail towns of Hot Springs, Damascus, Pearisburg, Harper's Ferry, Boiling Springs, Duncannon, Port Clinton, Delaware Water Gap, Kent, Dalton, and Williamstown to mention a few. He would have met some of the wonderful people who live there and go out of their way to befriend the hikers (unless, of course, they are made fun in the way Mr. Bryson made fun of the Southerners). He just might have had to run from frisky calves and horses in fields through which the AT passes. He obviously entirely missed the 17 mile stretch of the AT through the pastures of the Cumberland Valley and the meadows of wild flowers in Virginia and Massachusetts. And he didn't walk along the lovely Housatonic River and spend a couple of hours in the gloriously warm sunshine on the rocks at Bull's bridge. In closing: There are those of us who hike the AT. There are those of us who hike the AT and write lovely, meaningful, and accurate books about it. And there are those of us who don't bother hiking the AT, but, what the heck, they write about it anyway. We know the difference! A final word to the hiking community. If you want to read this book, borrow it from someone who unknowingly bought it. Please, don't pay Mr. Bryson to pick up his garbage!
Rating: 
Summary: It would have been better as a short story
Review: I am very happy that I checked this book out from the library instead of buying it because it is really only half a book. The book starts out well, but it takes a bad turn when they quit hiking the trail. The book should have ended there, but instead drags on and on. I stopped reading when Bill begins to drive back to the trail for day hikes, so if the book gets better after that, I will never know.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny and heartwarming...
Review: What a hoot! Bill Bryson's account of his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail is quite endearing to me, a 41-year-old out-of-shape wishful hiker. You will laugh out loud at some parts. Bryson has an amusing take on the people he meets along the way, and his sometime sidekick Katz. I appreciated his descriptions of the wonders of the Eastern woods which I will never see, because Bryson has convinced me that the Appalachian Trail is beyond my abilities, although it will not stop me from attempting the trails in my own home state of California. I came across an advance reading copy of the book, so I don't know how it compares to the end product, but the situation near the closing of the book nearly had me in tears over concern for Katz. This is a wonderful, funny, informative book. Please read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly Enjoyable
Review: Okay, I've read the criticisms of purists who claim that Bryson had no call to write this book because he didn't hike every mile of the appalachian trail. So what? As Bryson said, few people have achieved that. Like me, for example. I've done many day trips and a couple of overnights (including 10 days on Outward Bound)on various parts of the trail, so I wasn't looking for another I Climbed Mount Everest type book, but someone who could enrich my own experience on the at. And while Bryson was more ambitious than I've ever been, I could identify with that as well, having entertained the thought of making such a trek. Anyway, I found the book to be a pleasant pastiche of anecdotes about the various types of people one encounters on the trail, commentary about the the history of the trail as well as its design and upkeep, musings about its flora and fauna (especially appreciated his high dudgeon when talking about what's extinct or endangered), surreal descriptions of, e.g., a Pennsylvania town that sits atop a smoldering anthracite mine, or what its like to experience death by hypothermia (reminiscent of the description of drowning in A Perfect Storm). And Bryson's relationship with fellow traveler, Katz, provided an added comic element (and a necessary one, in my opinion, as the book became overly pedantic when Bryson hit the trail without Katz, returning to a more lighthearted tone when the two were reunited for the last leg of Bryson's adventure). Best thing about reading this was learning that whenever I'm in the mood for a lighthearted travel essay (with enough gravitas sprinkled in to give it some redeeming value), I can always dip into Bryson's growing body of work.
Rating: 
Summary: Casually looking title, you are hard-put to figure out...
Review: ...how it could possibly be "a runaway best seller." No less than thirty-three sage reviewers (thirty-six if you count the three reviews no the cover) heap praise and commendation on Bill Bryson's story of his 870 mile trek over the Appalachian Trail (the trail is actually 2,200 miles long). All this, mind you, carrying a forty-pound pack. (Have you hoisted a forty-pound pack lately, let alone try to walk with it?) And all earthly needs, on such a walk, must come from this pack on your back. I daresay few of us have the strength or fortitude to carry out this kind of venture, particularly, as Bryson did, in part, with snow on the ground. In 1996 that's what Bryson and his friend Stephen Katz did and Bryson made it into a 274-page story that is "choke on your coffee funny" as one reviewer put it. For example: "I wanted to get back on the trail, to knock off some miles. It is what we did. Besides, I was bored to the point somewhat beyond being bored out of my mind. I was reading restaurant place mats, then turning them over to see if there was anything on the back. At the lumberyard, I talked to workmen through the fence. Late on the third afternoon, I stood in a Burger King and studied, with absorption, the photographs of the manager and his executive crew (reflecting on the curious fact that people who go into hamburger management always look as if their mother slept with Goofy), then slid one place to the right to examine the Employee of the Month awards. I then realized I had to get out of Franklin." Not only is Mr. Bryson's tale excruciatingly funny, he is an astute observer who lays out powerful insights on how modern mankind is wantonly destroying nature at an alarming pace. He captivates you with penetrating wit, yet at the same time, makes it crystal clear that if we keep tearing nature down at our present frantic pace, there soon won't be any nature with the result that, indeed, there may not be any of "us."
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I loved this book, it was the first Bill Bryson book I had ever read, and now I must have read it about 20 times and i also have all his other books. This is a funny and brilliant story, and is guaranteed to bring tears of laughter to your eyes. It is a perfect blend of comedy and fact, and Katz (Bryson's travelling companion), is also very funny and complements Bryson fantastically. It is basically the story of Bryson hiking the trail, but the way he continually makes fun of himself and Katz is what keeps the story going. Read it!! An excellent book
Rating:
Summary: A Minority Opinion!
Review: By now, most potential readers know the story. Two middle-aged guys, one of them (Katz!)completely out of shape in mind and body, decide to hike the Appalachian trail, from Georgia to Maine. The reader was suspect of the venture from the start, perhaps made so by the author's photo on the cover. This is no athelete. Full disclosure! They don't make it! They quit in Gatlinburg, TN. The author proceeds to make a series of negative comments about the area, which from this reader's personal experience are inappropriate, inaccurate and unfair.They try hiking the AT in sections, quitting again in VA, but only after Bryson takes several outrageous swipes at Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. The author is no Civil War historian (ie: Jackson and Robert E. Lee were in the Union Army at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid). The author sweeps dismissively through PA (it's a coal slag, you know), and skips NJ, NY and CT entirely. Bryson emerges in his native New England with smaller walks. Then the pathetic Katz resurfaces. They try to hike the Northern end of the AT in Maine, but surprise (!) they quit again. End of story. I suspect strongly that Bryson backwardsly decided to write a book and then to hike the AT. Since he didn' make it, he had to use filler-lots of it. The result is a story that is satisfying in part but ultimately lacking. It would have been better if Bryson had completed a whole section of the AT, which he may have with the right partner, and stuck to writing about the outdoors. In so doing, he would have spared the good folks of Gatlinburg his "humor" and let Stonewall Jackson lay beneath the trees in peace.
Rating:
Summary: Bill Bryson...International Man of Hysterical Mystery
Review: I have read most of Bill Bryson's books and this was probably my favorite. The book was not only great fun, but gave me a genuine feel and appreciation for the joy of walkin' the woods. Bill weaves uncannily humorous insight into the conflicting recommendations of experts. Read the "A Sh!t in the Pants" chapter for Bill's exhaustive survey of the latest research concerning bear attacks. Even when the facts are not in dispute, Bill can make the most arcane of knowledge seem simultaneously fun and relevant. Bill has a knack for finding humor in the most unsuspecting places...like Waynesboro, Tennessee. Read the "Romancin' the Woods" chapter to learn more about the joy of Beulah. If you ever decide to hike the Appalachian Trail, read this book. And, don't forget to pack your Snickers...
Rating:
Summary: A very entertaining and enjoyable book
Review: I was given this book as a birthday gift and honestly had some reservations about reading it, for it is not generally the type of book I tend to read. After the first page howerver, I was hooked. This book is very funny, informative, and very well written. It was a total joy to read. Like some of the other reviewers mentioned, it is a wonder Bill and Katz lived through it in the first place. Have they not heard of freeze dried food, tube tents or mosquito netting? I recommend two things, this book and if Bill Bryson asks you to go on a hike with him run like hell.
Rating:
Summary: Walking With Friends
Review: As one who revels in the concept of dropping everything to embark on an adventure, without benefit of exhaustive planning or preparation, I found this book to be a breath of fresh air. Almost on a whim, the author decides to tackle a 2,000 or so mile hike, drops by a sporting good store for some basics, talks an unlikely friend into joining him and sets off. The first half of the book was hilarious as a blow-by-blow journal of the trek that made me feel as if I was traveling right along with two buddies into a foolhardy, but fun, adventure clearly off the beaten track. The second half was a bit spottier - kind of like the author was trying to keep the story going without quite as much "meat", however learning more about the trail and its geography, with some interesting side notes, still made for interesting reading. If you're a devout hiker, you'll probably find this book rather trivial. But if you're a hopeless adventurer, you'll find it a refreshing way to lose yourself for a few hours in an account that deals with taking on nature in a most contemporary way.
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