Rating: 
Summary: one of my all-time favorite books
Review: It's been a long time since I've devoured a book that I enjoyed this much. Bryson is a very funny guy, always good-natured, and manages to make even the tedious enjoyable. From the hiking to the geology to the forestry to the history to the personal he puts together a first rate story. It may have helped that I read it while vacationing only a mile from the trail in Massachusetts, but I suspect I'd have relished it as much or more at home in Los Angeles. To those reviewers who gave this book a thumbs down I say, "Take a hike!" This is a terrific book.
Rating: 
Summary: Do Not Bother Reading This Book
Review: I was very disappointed at this wimp's view of the AT. I can not believe that he had the audacity to write the book under the pretense of walking the whole thing and he did not even walk one third of it.
Rating: 
Summary: decent read.
Review: Bryson has a written an interesting look at the AT. Not as funny as the cover suggests...though there are some funny passages.While I suggest that you read A walk in the woods....I must disagree to the claim that bryson in the "best adventure writer today". That title belongs to Tim Cahill.
Rating: 
Summary: Bryson's "Walk" is 'arrestingly' misleading!
Review: First of all, the guy didn't even complete the walk. The reader is lead to believe Bryson actually walked the two-thousand-plus miles from Georgia to Maine, but NO, he only completed about a third of it, complaining and whining the whole time! If you're interested in being 'lectured-at' about why the 'AT' is such a disappointment, this is your book. It's no wonder he had to drum up someone to go with him (his wife, whose name we never even learn and whose chief duty was to anonymously but dutifully chauffeur him from one trailhead to another, didn't go with him - AND NO WONDER!). His fellow walker, a guy named Stephen Katz, was the only guy dumb enough to join Bryson and, dumber still, went back for more! Still, if it weren't for Katz, I doubt Bryson would have ever made it out alive! I don't mean to suggest that Bryson can't write. He's not bad, but I just think his next book ought to be about knitting or canasta - something where he won't be forced to come in actual contact with nature or the weird inhabitants of Appalachia. In short, Bill, stop complaining and start walking!
Rating:
Summary: Bryson's walk in the woods is fall down funny.
Review: Just as Bryson stopped and started his long trek in the woods, I tried to read this book in tiny bites just to make the fun last longer. In taxis and on airplanes, I scared people laughing out loud at his bullet-to-the-heart hysterically funny observations about turning 50, the humiliation of a beginner buying unfamiliar equipment and the wonderfully zany real characters living in the outermost boonies in America. It's a wet your pants funny book.
Rating:
Summary: A funny and often poignant look at the AT
Review: This is clearly not meant to be a book about hiking. That is what makes this book so enjoyable. We can all relate to his tiring but innocuous events while hiking the trail. Interspersed amongst the hilarious episodes are stinging indictments of our national parks policies. The details he uses to explain the detioration of the parks are shocking. A book to learn from and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: "Political Correctness" Detracts from Author's Hiking Humor
Review: Bill Bryson is a funny guy, and his Appalachian Trail experience -- from his pre-trip hysteria about bears, to his rather lame rationale for hiking only part of it -- makes for enjoyable reading. But his relentless ranting on "politically correct" themes detracts from his vivid descriptions. I want to know what hiking the AT is like -- not endure endless cliches about global warming, acid rain, evolution, and how idiotic Southerners are. He's lucky enough to get paid for having adventures. Why ruin it with political rants?
Rating: 
Summary: Much ado about average
Review: Great beginning, good ending, marginal (at best) middle. Bryson himself is terribly trite and uninteresting. His "side-kick" Katz is far more engaging and the book flags when Katz takes half the book off to actually work and rediscover his love for alcohol. Though some of Bryson's writing is poignant, too much of it relies on cheap shots. Worse an even greater volume of it relies on hasty conclusions from incomplete scholarship. Reading Bryson's absolutely Bizarre! rendetion of plate tectonics gave me my best laugh of the book. And his abject villification of hunters, after his reveries about killing bears--including a late night, idiotic attempt at stoning one, is puerile, naive and embarrasing. In one statement, he claims that hunters would have you believe that the moose is a man-killer. I certainly don't know any hunters who would entertain such a notion. In fact I don't know any hunters who view hunting as a contest against the animals they pursu! e. Hunters interested in dangerous mankillers are more closely akin to egotist thillseekers like shark-cage divers, Himalayan expeditionists, and unprepared, overweight, middleaged deskjockeys who, on a whim, take a half-a**ed stab at a 2200 mi. hike over rugged, weather-wary terrain.
Rating:
Summary: Twain in 1998
Review: A fascinating book that reminds of Mark Twain doing his laundry on Mono Lake in Roughing It or John Steinbeck travelling with Charlie. Not a laugh a minute, but not meant to be. Share Bryson's love/hate of the trail and its challenges.
Rating:
Summary: Why did Bill Bryson walk the AT or write this book?
Review: Most of the non-fiction, "adventure books" that I have read recently are focused on one or two central themes. After reading A Walk in the Woods I am not sure why Bill Bryson wrote the book or attempted to hike the trail in the first place. I feel very sorry for him. He obviously struggled and endured the hardships of backcountry living, and though he occassionally was inspired by the majesty that surrounded him, he never quite grasps that the adventure lies in the experiences encountered in the journey. If you are prepared for a "walk" like the AT then you should know what you are getting into. He refers repeatedly to the reasearch that he conducted prior to starting his hike, but spends countless pages addressing his surprise at even the most basic things that one encounters on the trail. Lastly, he condenms and sacrcastically describes, many of the individuals that he encounters along the way. And quite frankly he was no more prepar! ed than many of them. This is not a cohesive or pleasurable book to read. Though it hints at greatness in the opening chapters it grinds to a halt much the way his hike did. It's only poignant moments are when he accurately belittles the many government institutions charged with maintaining and preserving the great outdoors.
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