Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading but a bit uneven
Review: When Bryson returned to the United States, settling in New Hampshire, after 20 years in Britian, he was asked to write a weekly essay for a British magazine. The results are a compilation of these efforts and, as one might suspect, some of the essays are better than others. One will not find the raunchy humor of Bryson's "Neither Here nor There" nor the interesting detail of his Australian travel recounted "In a Sunburned Country." But Bryson, as always, manages to find humor, frequently directed at himself, in the trials and trivia of everyday American life, particularly those aspects that had changed since last he was a permanent resident. And since these were written for a British audience, there is some playing to British biases about American and Americans in general. Bryson's wit is what carries the book, and in most of the essays there are Brysonian gems and riffs to cause a smile, a snicker, sometimes an outright belly laugh. Sometimes he gets into too much silly exaggeration, at least for me, but overall there are sufficient truly funny pieces to cause one to part with a few shillings to buy the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful analysis of American culture
Review: This book is the US edition of the book published elsewhere as "Notes from a Big Country". Although the US edition has lost some of the strengths of the original, it also retains most of its enjoyable content. Bryson makes insightful and witty observations about American culture. Based on his weekly newspaper columns for an English newspaper, Bryson describes life in America. Readers are guaranteed to laugh out loud, but at the same time the humour delivers much food for thought about North American culture. For North Americans who are perhaps guilty at times of arrogance, such self-examination and a critical close look at ourselves is of great benefit. This is an entertaining as well as thought provoking read.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: This book nails us -- simply put. After buying it, I took it to the gym for light reading while doing cardio exercise, and I have to say, I probably put on five pounds during that period. I simply could not stay on the stairmaster long enough because I was laughing so hard. It's one of those books you take with you everywhere you go, and read even while you're walking to and from places. Enjoy. I sure did.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bryson's Best
Review: Bill Bryson is an incredible writer who usually chooses the most interesting subjects. But I think he missed a little on this one. The book is a collection of columns he wrote in a newspaper, all of which are about three pages long. After I read one, I felt as though I had read them all. Bryson makes observations about his homeland, America, upon returning from living abroad. Some of his observations are funny, some are profound. A few are both funny and profound, but a lot of it is niether. His writing is good as always, even if every short piece has a very predictable ending. However, I think the book sells itself as a collection of cultural observances when it is really several attempts at humor, and a lot of it seemed very contrived as I was reading it. Generally, the peices that reflect Bryson's well-known research into, for example, American holidays, are the best. However, Bryson's stories about himself often seem to be canards. Mother Tongue and A Walk in the Woods are much better reads.
Rating: 
Summary: Very amusing! Picture Dave Barry crossed with Douglas Adams
Review: I gave in to a friend suggesting I read Bryson's work, and I'm glad I did, as I got more good chuckles and laugh-out-loud moments out of this book than in anything I've read in many months. It's probably inevitable that Bryson would be compared to other modern humorists. The comparison to Dave Barry is apt largely because they both write brief essays on specific topics, and both tend to end their essays with sudden and silly references to something the touched on earlier in the essay. Though the comparison really ends there, since Barry seems more taken with bathroom humor and taking a ridiculous idea to its absurd extreme than is Bryson. Bryson seems more inclined to touch on issues that seem to have gone to a ridiculous extreme on their own, and that combined with his use of wordplay seem reminscent of Douglas Adams (Adams' bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the notice that Arthur Dent's house is going to be bulldozed being locked safely somewhere that Dent couldn't possibly find it could easily have been written by Bryson). His essay "What's Cooking", about the ridiculousness of ordering at a fancy restaurant, had me rolling on my side, and I've read parts of it to several friends. "Mail Call", an ode to the US Postal Service (and Britain's Royal Mail) is equally funny, and has real heart behind it. The charm of Bryson's writing here is the perspective of an American having been Anglicized and then returning to the US after 20 years. The contrast in cultures, portrayed by someone who's experienced both of them, is endearing, and Bryson makes it clear that when you move you're always giving something up, but getting something new and wonderful in exchange. It's almost enough to make me move to Britain to have the same experience myself. Alas, the essays - originally written for weekly publication in Britain - become less insightful as time passes, and as Bryson acclimates to his new life in America. He focuses more and more on general ridiculousness in life, and less on the contrast between America and Britain, which is where the book's soul lies. So, for instance, essays about the difficulty of using a Windows-based computer, or about the film Titanic, fall flat. And the essay on the US income tax forms seems entirely generic (what, for instance, are the British forms like, I wonder?). Despite this, fans of lively humor essayists should certainly give this a try. Another good comparison might be with Richard Feynman's autobiographical Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman; both books are funny, uplifting, and make you feel good just to be alive. It's heartwarming to know that there are people like Bryson in the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bryson's best
Review: This book is, by its nature, a set of disconnected essays written for a London newspaper. That in itself is not bad, except that most of the topics are mundane, trivial, and done better elsewhere. There's an essay on silly warnings on products, for example; another about how confusing tax forms are. The format works better when Bryson writes about culture clash, but too much of the time he comes off as a second-rate Andy Rooney. The other problem -- and this one is more serious -- is that the tone is so tongue-in-cheek, and the humor so exaggerated, that the reader never knows if Bryson is telling us an outrageous fact or if he just made something up. For example, he says "in the entire history of commercial aviation no life has been saved by the provision of a life vest." Extremely interesting if true ... but is it? Bryson's prodigious writing talents are much more effective when applied to serious scientific and cultural matters. "A Walk in the Woods," "A History of Everything," and "In A Sunburned Country" are all well-researched books where the information is factual, and the humor is used to get the point across. These other efforts are far better than this one.
Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable perspective on America
Review: Bill Bryson can be a curmudgeon. A very funny curmudgeon. This book is a collection of columns he wrote for a British publication over the course of a year. Collected here, they contain the experiences of a person returning to their homeland after 20 years and reacquainting himself. As mentioned by previous reviewers, a couple of the columns seem as if he was rushed (although I found the tax column funny), but many of them are spot-on. Many column subjects are about things Americans like to remember fondly - diners, drive-in movie theatres, the outdoors, and are therefore touching. Others are just plain hilarious. When he's in the 'zone', Bill Bryson is among the funniest authors alive. If you've read a column or any previous books by Bryson and slightly enjoyed it, there will be something here for you. Keep in mind that it is a collection of essays written over the course of one year, so a couple may not sway you, but overall this collection is definitely a keeper!
Rating:
Summary: Some parts of this book are classic Bryson, others not!
Review: This book, which consists of columns Bryson wrote for an English paper after moving to the US, is a mixed success, in my eyes. Bryson is one of my favorite authors, and some pieces were classic, classic Bryson---so funny you really do laugh out loud for a good long while! I liked best the pieces on pop culture---diners, motels, TV, dieting, etc. However, a few pieces were about subjects you can read about in almost any newspaper editorial any day of the week---government waste and stupidity, how hard tax returns are to prepare, and the overactive legal system, to name some. I found those pieces were not really done as well---they could have been written by any skilled writer and did not have the distinctive Bryson voice. Maybe this is because they were not written for an American audience originally, and maybe those topics are not as overdone in England. Overall I still did like this book a lot, although I think I would have liked better something that was less a collection of thoughts and more a real tale of coming back to America, from a more personal viewpoint.
Rating:
Summary: You may want to refrain from reading this book in public
Review: Bill Bryson has woken up from a coma. Although he has never been on life support or had people anxiously wring their hands while standing over his bed, he has just woken up from a coma. Twenty years ago Bill Bryson made that international journey to Britain and started a new life, complete with wife and kids. Two decades later he packs them all up and journeys back to his motherland, America. He finds that in the twenty years away from his native land things have changed a lot, some for better, some for worst. This is his account on moving back to America after twenty years away.
Bryson was called upon by a British magazine to write weekly columns about returning to America and unleashes a whole new level of wit and flavor as he comically blunders through life for the first few months back. Although sometimes he complains a little too much, it is a book that you will want to refrain from reading in public. Bryson includes interesting and eye opening statistics on mainly pointless but highly entertaining topics. Did you know that 142,000 people per year are sent to the emergency room for injuries inflicted by their clothing, or that there are 256 people in Stockholm named Lars Larson?
Through all of these random statistics Bryson also brings up a good number of points such as why is there a twenty-four hour hotline on floss, or about even important things like red herrings in the political world and what they are trying to cover up. Bryson has written a beautiful love letter to his native country and although possibly irrelevant to life it is a great read and I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a good laugh.
Rating:
Summary: Generally Great, Occasionally Annoying
Review: "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is a collection of columns by Bill Bryson printed in England for an English audience. Most of them are amusing anecdotes on life in America, and especially wistful recalling of life in America as he knew it twenty years ago contrasted with the present day. In his world, the present generally is inferior, though there is quite a bit of self doubting in his opinion pieces (notably especially when discussing motels and drive-in movies) and occasionally praise for modernity (look hard.) When he sticks to wry commentary on humorous topics (the IRS, computers, customer service, etc.) he is hilarious; kind of a more urbane Dave Barry. I was on a few occasions irritated with the book, and each time it was on one of two topics: air travel or immigration. He has nothing good to say about traveling by plane (and sometimes I would agree with him), and he goes to great lengths, for instance, to complain that he arrived at an airport with no photo ID, and had difficulty getting on the plane. (Who travels by plane without a photo ID?) In fact on several occasions he blames others for misfortunes caused patently by his own (frequently admitted) ineptness, ignorance, or forgetfulness. I find it perfectly reasonable that if you show up for a flight with no photo ID, that you don't get on the plane. He took the attitude that the security forces were inept, loser idiots who should have known who he was, and clearly should have made an exception for him, a celebrity. He goes as far as to contrast this to the UK where he relates a tale of a customs agent telling him to lie to get into the country and praising him for his efficiency. This truly rubbed me the wrong way, and I hope he would not have been so foolish to write that after 9/11. He is also goes off on a rant against people opposed to immigration in the US, saying that so little of the country is built up that we should, essentially, let anyone that wants to come in feel welcome. Mind you, this is the same guy who, just a few pages away who laments how built up the country is getting and how terrible it is. Nobody noticed this seeming contradictory position during editing, for some reason. He also thinks that it is unreasonable to deny benefits to illegal aliens, ignoring that in the state of Arizona alone, the cost of medical care for illegals is almost $1 Billion (of US taxpayer dollars) annually, and that in the Southwest an enormously disproportionate amount of crime is the work of illegals. I realize his wife is English, and I appreciate his toils to get her into the country legally, but to impugn that anyone opposed to illegal immigration is a cretin, is ignorant at best and insulting at worst. Hey, Bill, one more time: unlike your wife, the vast majority of immigration foes are talking about people here ILLEGALLY! Having said that, overall I liked the book, and will almost certainly buy more Bryson books. Some of the gems are truly worth reading and re-reading, particularly the address he gave to a high school graduation. I think it's worth four stars, and it would have been worth five easily if it wasn't for some of the pompous self-righteousness in a couple of the chapters. Read it and decide for yourself.
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