Rating: 
Summary: Life in America, Compared to Life in Great Britain
Review: This is unfamiliar territory for me--a collection of articles written for a British public. I was drawn into the book mainly because of Bill's sarcastic wit, and was held there by a humorous look at life in America, written by an ex-expatriot. The book is really well done. The chapters are short, originally written as newspaper articles. Several of his chapters bordered on boring--taxes, how to assemble a computer, etc. Mostly however, they were charming, well-written, and surprisingly personal. Bryson is at his best when tackling travel, and perhaps this is no surprise as he has written several well-received travel books. Originally I bought this book for someone else, but as I was traveling myself I began to read it, and found I could not put it down. The format lends itself very well to readers like me, who can often only read in short bursts. Finally, while Bryson's readers in Great Britain may have learned something of life in America, I also learned about life in Great Britain--what an experience at the post office is like, what renting a flat is like, and the great furniture debacle. Honestly I very often laughed out loud, drawing curious looks from others in airports and train stations. Highly recommended.
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Summary: BILL BRYSON AND HIS SATIRICAL HUMOUR AT ITS BEST
Review: So what's this then? A collection of columns written by Bill Bryson for the British Night & Day magazine, assembled into a book? I was sceptical when I first picked it due to the unfamiliarity here; I thought he was a travel writer. But then I started reading through the first few pages and am delighted to report that they were so entertaining and accessible that I ended up finishing the book very satified. This book is about America, about consumerism, hypocracy, politics, culture and everything else in between, such as motels and boring interstate highways and the condition of AT&T service these days. Why should all this be so interesting? Because Bill Bryson's voice shines throughout, dissecting normally more complex subjects into bite-sized articles which are eminently readable to the extent that it is at times impossible to stop. Of course, his trademark humour is present too. If you read this in public, there is the risk of embarrassment by your involuntary snorts of laughter. However, 'I'm a Stranger here Myself' isn't perfect. Much of the book is predictable, and 85% of the time, Bill appears to be complaining. Someone as talented as Bill Bryson should know not to engage in such indulgence because the end result is that the reader occassionally feels frustrated over the ostensible monotony. You also can't help but feel that an assemblage of brief columns is not enough to make a book. Although this book is not standard Bill Bryson fare, it still manages to excel. It really is exceptionally enlightening, to read what he has to say subsequent to spending 20 years in England. He compares the contrasts between the two nations and questioning so many aspects of life that Americans take for granted, such as driving from shop to shop when they are merely footsteps apart, or the blatant excesses of junk food. Each article (in my edition, Black Swan) covers only five pages so they are very easy to get into. If you are an American, perhaps you will enjoy this book more than anyone else as you will undoubtedly find it compelling to look into the views of an outsider in the process of 'assimilation'. 'I'm a Strange here Myself' doesn't feel like a book, more like a colelction of columns binded together. If you are willing to accept this, it is an extremely rewarding, insightful and refreshingly diverting read. This is enough to gain a hearty recommendation.
Rating: 
Summary: Wasn't what I expected
Review: After reading A Walk in the Woods, I picked this book up expecting much of the traveling commentary that was in it and books by Bryson made in the past. Boy, was I wrong. What the book really is, is a compilation of two years' worth of articles written by Bryson, about living in America again. These articles were meant for a British audience and so they do get a bit irritating, things being generalized to the reader that, in America, are well known. These articles may be entertaining, on a weekly basis as they were released, but as a complete read, do get a bit tiresome. This could be said for any article though: try reading a year's worth of Larry King articles, let alone two.
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Summary: A wonderfully hilarious book
Review: Its really a great thing when someone can look at the little, everyday mundane issues of life and make something out of them, and that's just what Bryson does in this book. A collection of articles on his reflections about american life after having lived in England for 20 years and then moving back, this is an absolutely hilarious book, an essential read. This guy is a wonderful complainer, explainer, and retainer of trivial knowledge. Reading this book, you'll not only end up on the floor laughing, you'll also learn something. While a few of the articles feel forced and aren't very funny (new computer/tax form/mysteries of life) overall this is an engrossing, fun funny look at American life, lifestyle, and the inconsistencies therein. From drugs to energy consumption to law to holidays to car trips,fresh air, computers, floss, pencil sharpeners, attics, schooling, post offices, junk food, gardening -- you name it, it's covered and exposed here. This is definitely a book very worth reading.
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Summary: A/K/A Notes From a Big Country
Review: As a huge fan of Bill Bryson, I was eager to add this title to the other works of his that I have read (all except Mother Tongue) and was amused to realize that the paperback book I bought in Glasgow is now available in the U.S. and that it has a different title but most definitely is the same book by the same side-splitting author. Two glaring errors that do not necessarily detract from the book but should be noted (and hopefully passed on to Bryson) is that the American holiday Thanksgiving falls on the FOURTH Thursday each November, not the LAST Thursday and that the journalism students who rescued an innocent man from death row were Medill School of Journalism students and their professor from Northwestern University, not the University of Chicago which Bryson inexplicably believes. All in all, I've laughed myself silly much more with his other books than with this one. It is clearly written for his British audience and, if one forgets that, sounds a bit patronizing. An effortless read if not his most enchanting, made all the more bearable by the brevity of his chapters.
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Summary: Bottom drawer Bryson
Review: This book is called Notes from a Big Country in Canada, presumably to cash in on the popularity of the author's Notes from a Small Island. This book is not in the same category as its namesake. It is just a collection of reviews written over two years (6 Oct 1996 to 17 May 1998 to be precise) for a British newspaper, offering various gripes about life in America. The book simply reproduces the columns chronologically, and as a result there is no overall organization. The Canadian edition that I read was appallingly poorly copy edited, which is ironic given Bryson's scruples about the English language. Some of the columns are funny, and some (especially one about the sinking of the Titanic) are just plain awful. In sum, this is not nearly as good as Bryson's other books, but still has enough humour to keep you reading to the end.
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Summary: Life, In a Nutshell
Review: I myself was in a micronized version of Bill Bryson's world, living in England for one formative year (my 14th) before coming back to America and marvelling at all the things I had forgotten-the possibility of buying something-ANYthing-on Sunday, the ice in the water... The experiences Bryson writes about are ones any former expatriate knows. Perhaps one of the reasons his columns don't make as much sense to many Americans is that many of us truly _don't_ see what's odd about suing McDonalds because of scalding coffee or the fact that our murder rate is astronomical. Perhaps it requires living in-and accepting-another culture before we can truly understand our own. For those who said that this is just a publisher's rehash of "Notes From A Big Country": Notes From A Big Country was published in Britain. This book in America. It's not all that uncommon to tailor a nonfiction book to the country it is being published in. If you're going to order books through Amazon.co.uk if you're American or Amazon.com if you're British, then please expect some confusion because publishers are different on each side of the Atlantic.
Rating:
Summary: Government Health Warning
Review: This book is a severe health risk. Reading it can cause heavy, long-lasting laugh-attacks. Persons with breath-disease (e.g. Asthma bronchiale), heart-sickness or lack of humour are highly recommended to read the annual rainfall statistic of Southern California instead.
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Summary: It should've been called "Notes on Being Bitter and Slow"
Review: This was the first, and consequently last, Bryson book I've read. When I purchased, and subsequently returned, this book I was looking for an outsiders perspective on life in America. What I received however, was 280+ pages with analysis as deep as a sidewalk puddle. Bryson laments how he cannot understand many basic American practices (even though he never really tries to understand them). He finds it "ridiculous", for example, that American bank cards have such long ID/account numbers. After all, he reasons, his bank doesn't have a billion customers, so why do they issue ID's with digits in the billions and trillions. Such a mind boggling question and such deep analysis. Bryson apparently could not figure out that long digits are necessary to create enough random IDs so that valid IDs cannot easily be guessed. That pretty much sets the tone for the whole book. He fumbles on unable to understand even the most basic of American (or modern day) concepts, all while droning on how much better England is than America (one reason, he explains, is because the English drink more beer. Brilliant). Most would argue that this book was meant to be more humorous than intellectual (it fails on both), but it's obvious that Bryson's attempt at humor is merely a guise for his disdain at not being able to figure out America or even life in the 20th century.
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Summary: OVER-RATED. NOT ENTERTAINING. CLICHE-RIDDEN
Review: While some of Bryson's observations about American life are amusing, most of his columns are tiresome, cliche-ridden and plain uninformative. His columns follow the old formula of ending with a seemingly-quirky statement resulting from an observation in the opening paragraphs. Bryson also doesn't seem to do any real reporting -- leaving his desk and his telephone and talking to people in person. Instead, he takes the lazy way out -- reading newspapers and magazines for all of his information. As a result, his columns tend to be predictable observations on funny statistics. As all good reporters and columnists know, you must get your own first-hand sources instead of merely relying on second or even third-hand sources. I bought this book at Hong Kong Int'l Airport, as I had many long hours on the plane to while away the time on the 18-hour flight home. Thank goodness I brought other books with me to read. Otherwise I would have been not just uncomfortable and cramped from the long flight, but bored and irritated as well.
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